[1997-12-18-Michinoku Pro] Taka Michinoku vs Shoichi Funaki

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

The match is JIP with Taka taking a bad bump outside the ring and hurting his knee. Funaki capitalizes on this with some great limb work. Taka puts on a really strong babyface performance here, again I think trying to show the WWF he could get over in the U.S. and work that style. We see about 12 minutes of this and they are a great 12 minutes.

[Kevin Ridge]

Taka was really selling the knee as Funaki works on it. Michinoku still goes for the high flying moves but can’t follow up right away due to the knee. I wonder if Taka was just filling obligations at this point since he was back to wrestling in WWF.

[soup23]

I have really liked the M-Pro stuff in 1997 and it is a strong effort from a company that most people would say was on the decline. The amount of work FUnaki did to Taka's leg here was great with Taka repeatedly having to get to the ropes using his teeth. Taka does an inspiring comeback and is able to put the match away as both shake hands and embrace afterwards.

[Jetlag]

Great last 10 minutes. Funaki is absolutely out of control with the legbar variations here. Anytime TAKA attempts a comeback his fucked up leg thwarts him. It makes for a great dramatic contest. At one point TAKA fights out of another Funaki leg lock and Funaki just gets up and slaps and kicks the shit out of him. What a statement. This may be one of the best examples of "junior match with damaged leg selling" I've seen, makes you wish the full version was available somewhere.

[PeteF3]

Awesome stuff, though I suspect we got all of the real meat of the match. I watch this and want to weep for what the WWF did with these guys. An MPro/WCW alliance would be drool-worthy. MPro was going through some severe financial troubles at this point, but they've offered us some fresh match-ups after all the multi-man tags from '96.