[1998-07-24-AJPW-Summer Action Series] Gary Albright & Yoshihiro Takayama vs Akira Taue & Jun Izumida

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Last few minutes. Doesn't look like we missed much here. Albright and Takayama win the tag titles.

[Zenjo]

This wasn't for any tag titles. They'd never let a career jobber like Izumida fight for the world tag straps.

[soup23]

I thought this was pretty fun on the clips with Izumida getting a rare big shot on the big show and I enjoyed his diving headbutt from the top. Glad to see Takayama slowly but surely start to rise in the All Japan hierarchy.

[PeteF3]

Takayama hits a bunch of legdrops for an...anticlimactic ending, to say the least. It draws absolutely no pop because no one seemed to think for half a second that Izumida would actually get put away by that.

[TravJ1979]

Fun finishing stretch. I don't think I want to see the whole match.

[cactus]

I thought this match was a lot of fun. All three of the standout talents deliver, but this had a career performance from Jun Izumida trying to hang with Takayama and Albright. He's a big meaty lad with a heart of gold and a belly full of fire. At first he's clearly outmatched, but when he's able to block multiple belly to belly throws from Takayama, the crowd gets behind him and  this pisses Takayama right off. It's impressive  how massive Takayama was able to make himself through his posturing and body language. I was also impressed with his selling, it's very similar to how Kawada would sell a big strike. My only complaint about this is that the finish comes out of nowhere and they really did limit the Taue/Takyama interactions, which is a match I'm very interested in seeing. 

★★★½