[2006-06-18-NJPW-Best of the Super Juniors] Tiger Mask IV vs Minoru Tanaka

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[dawho5]

A few things stand out early. Minoru's gimmick has changed wholesale. He even works the arm in the opening minutes, which is a nice touch. And in 2006, New Japan had small crowds. This is a small building for the BoSJ finals. Match is perfectly fine. TM works over the injured shoulder as expected. Minoru sells it well to the end, but TM needs to go back to it more to get back on offense. Make it look like less of an obvious ploy to get the fans behind Minoru 9which they were already). Finishing run is surprisingly well laid-out. Minoru's gimmick may have changed, but the flash armbar submissions are still there. For whatever reason, the match never really made me care about either Minoru or TM4. They both had perfectly good performances, but I just never got into it.