[1982-02-05-NJPW] Tiger Mask vs Bret Hart

[Loss]

This was interesting. Bret really was mechanically very good even this early, when he had yet to see his 25th birthday. But my biggest takeaway from this is, "Oh, so that's why so many wrestlers have long hair." The right hair and ring attire gives everything a bit more umph, and that's a lot of what's lacking here -- just that everything seems so small. Besides that, the match is technically well worked but on the bland side, although by the standards of 1982, it's pretty action-packed. I like Bret working as a power junior, with the biggest aspect of his game being hard strikes and a great suplex. The timing on the dropkick as Bret was running the ropes was fantastic, and I'll never complain about a butterfly suplex getting a win. Not really hugely memorable, but a good, enjoyable match. ***1/4

[Ma Stump Puller]

My opinion stays....mostly in line with Loss but I'm more negative about this match, especially when watching it as a whole as apart of the NJPW Tiger Mask deep-dive. Not to say the match was was bad, but it certainly wasn't "title contender" levels either. Bret works a very generic foreign heel style that's not very fitting of him at all, though he does do it as mechanically good as you would imagine a Bret heel performance to look like. I did like Sayama getting some attitude in response with some skirting of the rules; some delayed rope breaks, some more snappy offence etc. The main issue is that the crowd never truly bites into the match, never truly sees Bret as a genuine contender who could steal the title away from Mask; sure, you get occasional crowd chants for him, but there's never a big burst of heat anywhere here to justify the slow pace, so you just have the two slapping on a lot of holds for a weak payoff. Bret has always been a good seller and he in turn really gets over Mask's usual limb work great, it's just that his arsenal of moves here are rather bad for a supposed top Jr contender: I get he's a heel, but we've already had numerous lucha wrestlers (Villano, Brazo de Plata, Canek, Texano) work the same heel dynamic far better despite having a bigger set of moves to fall back on, as well as obviously Dynamite Kid just outright doing Bret's job better.

The match for me felt listless, never really kicking off proper and always playing it safe with a stop/start pace to it: whenever there was some drama it never really got going, it just grinded to a halt for more strikes. It gets better around about 20 minutes in (which is really saying something about a Bret/Mask match lol) as Sayama hurls out more risky dives to get the momentum in his favour, including a great bit where he hops from the apron to the top rope in a instant to land a dropkick when Bret tries running off the ropes to knock him off. The finish has him just land a Butterfly Suplex afterwards for the win, which did feel abrupt despite the big spot before it. But yeah, Bret isn't a bad worker but he is NOWHERE near a position where he can hold his side of a match on this calibre: had we gotten 90's Bret here this could've been a bonafide classic but sadly what we get is a lower-tier version of Sayama's formulaic "roadblock" B-show matches, which he does very good with still despite the conditions, but never really goes into full gear. Middling stuff.