[1999-04-08-AJPW-Championship Carnival] Vader vs Kenta Kobashi

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

Kobashi stays focused on Vader’s leg and gets a lot of offense. He also gives those fired up comebacks that I think a match like this needs. On top of that, this clip is nice and compact. The match did go to a 30-minute draw, but we only got the last 10 minutes or so.

[tim]

Not too interesting. They seemed not to have much direction left and were just waiting for the draw.

[Tim Evans]

Not bad but I can't imagine watching 30 minutes of this. Both guys were just throwing bombs and kicking out. Especially Kobashi laying punches to a kneeled Vader.

[soup23]

It doesn't look like we missed the first half of an all time classic but the clips here were good to me and built up some drama to the 30 minute draw. Vader hasn't quite had that stand out AJ performance but seems to be finding more footing with each outing.

[PeteF3]

Yeah, this was enjoyable enough, though not so enjoyable that the first 20 minutes seem like a lost classic or anything. Just a long, drawn-out finishing stretch. One minor thing I haven't noticed until now is that I'm not sure Vader is built for a match with a bunch of false finishes, because it sort of strains credulity that a man of his girth and power would really be unable to hold a guy down. There are a few instances where Kobashi nicely slips out from a cover but others where it's patently obvious that Vader has to just let him out because that's not the ending.