[1982-05-26-NJPW] Tiger Mask vs Black Tiger

[Loss]

Before this match, Tiger Mask's matches suggest a guy who was doing some fresh stuff and was pretty good, but who was not really the transformative worker his reputation suggests. Still, he was pretty good and I would consider strong criticism to be hyperbolic. This is the worst performance he has had so far, slipping on the ropes quite a few times and looking very lost at other times. I also have never really liked the Black Tiger gimmick at all, probably because New Japan has taken two guys with great facial expressions and sleazeball charisma -- Mark Rocco and later Eddy Guerrero -- and pulled that personality into a vortex. It's the opposite of the Midas touch.

 

Watching this also makes me appreciate other masked wrestlers even more for how demonstrative they are. Sayama eats plenty of moves, but there's no expressive selling or anything like that. My-turn, your-turn is a criticism that has always been difficult for me to understand, but it's awfully apparent here. You have Tiger Mask just working a wrestling match and doing things at the times wrestlers typically do those things in a match because that's what they typically do. But there's no mileage from the shifts in momentum and no real emotion driving the action. A match spotlighting the new style du jour shouldn't feel so joyless. And I realize I'm saying that even though the crowd ended up really into this by the finish, but this was still a disjointed mess.

[tcg91]

This wasn't too good. Lots of unexciting limb work, which is fine I guess, but one would expect a 10/12 minutes Junior Heavyweight match to be a bit more interesting. Mask was a bit sloppy and got a few things wrong, both in execution and while conducting the match, their chemistry wasn't the best. Anyway, they managed to keep this short and simple, with a clean finish to boot
**1/2