[2009-05-28-BJW] Takashi Sasaki & Yuko Miyamoto vs Isami Kodaka & Masashi Takeda

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[fxnj]

For the longest time, this and the March tag just blended together with the main difference in my mind being that this one was more focused on strikes and went longer. Watching them both almost back-to-back, though, really makes me notice how fundamentally different the dynamic is. Whereas the March tag had Kodaka and Takeda selling for most of the match and wrestling as if they had something to prove, here they've already proven themselves with the win in the prior match and a good showing for the rest of the tournament. That's reflected in the much more even style of this match. Kodaka/Takeda even get the first big control segment of the match when they work over Miyamoto and it takes Takeda running into a bundle a light tubes and getting a pretty nasty cut on his shoulder to turn the tide.

 

I remarked that March tag was a really good standard tag with deathmatch props providing a backdrop, and that's even more so the case here with most of the first 30 minutes just being hard strikes with the occasional light tube because blood and glass makes everything just a little bit more awesome. Of course, these teams wouldn't dare to disappoint deathmatch fans in the finals of a deathmatch tournament, so they do bring out the props when the match goes into overtime and we see some pretty sick spots. My favorite was Miyamoto taking a german suplex at a sick angle on a barbed board that got placed on Sasaki. I remember this getting criticized at the time for overkill, but I was actually pretty impressed with how well they managed to believably work in all their near falls and the effort put in protecting Miyamoto's Fire Thunder Driver. It's never kicked out of, only broken up, and ends up taking Kodaka out of the match for several minutes after he eats it towards the end. Doesn't quite reach the overall heights of the March tag, mainly because it drags at points due to Kodaka and Takeda not being quite ready to work a match of this length while on offense for significant periods, but that was how the match needed to be worked both to establish them as a team and to show they had more to them than pure deathmatch guys like Ito and Kobayashi. ****