[1997-05-20-NJPW] Koji Kanemoto vs Tatsuhito Takaiwa

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Takaiwa brings the attitude here in his first chronological singles match on a yearbook that we have in full. He was awesome here, and Kanemoto may have been carrying the match as the more experienced of the two, but Takaiwa had the more dynamic performance. Kanemoto schools Takaiwa on his attitude problem by kicking him in the face multiple times and tying him in the ring ropes. Even the referee takes a bump when things get too heated. Takaiwa gets over in a big way for coming back just as aggressively no matter how much Kanemoto does to him, almost like he's the Steve Austin of the New Japan juniors. The reverse top rope rana spot was pretty wild. As great as this match is, this shows that Kanemoto is nowhere in Liger's league at being The Man against a younger opponent. But man does he make Takaiwa look like a million bucks. If Kanemoto keeping Takaiwa's attitude in check is this good, I can only imagine Liger doing it. Big win for Takaiwa!

[Kevin Ridge]

I'm a total sucker for Takaiwa's repeated powerbombs into a DVD driver finisher. He nails it good here and puts Kanemoto away.

[soup23]

I thought Kanemoto was pretty disappointing here. Taikawa was really good at stringing together big spots and he always has my favorite DVD but Kanemoto just seemed to want to do his own thing and not really feed the story of the match. I may be alone but I think I prefer the Otani vs. Tajiri match but both of these matches are good fun.

[PeteF3]

This got a lot better as it went along to a pretty heartstopping conclusion, and with me not having a problem with Kanemoto's performance, I may well have liked this better than anyone else. Kanemoto wasn't as good as Otani but this was a more even and back-and-forth match, and Takaiwa's gimmick of being a cruiser who wrestles like a heavyweight stands out as unique as compared to Tajiri working like an underneath guy. Both guys do a great job of making the multiple-powerbomb spot look realistic, which is incredibly hard to do (no blatantly grabbing onto the powerbomber's arms here).

[Microstatistics]

Nice narrative with Takaiwa, in an attempt to assert himself, tries to out-prick Kanemoto from the get go but as you know that is no easy feat. Both guys are great offensive wrestlers and characters (Koji especially) but selling is not their strength so I was a little worried but the transitions and selling were strong here. Kanemoto's control segment was great with him trying to show who's boss and both guys were just teeing off on each other for most of the match. Great match. ****