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[2016-08-10-NJPW] Tetsuya Naito vs YOSHI-HASHI


GOTNW

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Very interesting match. Essentially it's Matt D's write up of the Buddy Rose-Martel match I'm going to watch like three years from now. Naito has to get YOSHI-HASHI over and help legitimize him after he spent years as a jobber. There isn't much in the opening portion worth discussing-but there was a phenomenal moment during YOSHI-HASHI's early shine where it looked like Naito was going to cut him off because he positioned himself like he was going for a Hiptoss, which is a lead in to his Sliding Dropkick. Just *positioning* himself like that made YOSHI-HASHI executing a move during his run mean that much more. There was *armwork*, in terms of how much the limbwork meant, they didn't really go all in on it but it did provide at least some interesting moments and served a purpose in getting sympathetic heat on YOSHI-HASHI. The only modern New Japan-ism I dislike I remember seeing in the finishing stretch was YOSHI-HASHI's comeback Lariat, and that's because you can see it coming and Naito wasn't really *going* for anything. It's not that it even bothered me much (didn't really affect my enjoyment of the match one way or the other)-but it is worth getting that type of thing out there and thinking about predictability vs. unpredictability. I do accept the predictability of Makabe's comeback. I know what's coming next and it doesn't matter. But sometimes the same thing is an issue. Hopefully watching more of the stuff where these types of tropes are heavily featured will help me explain it better. As far as the stretch goes-it was special. It was special because instead of just doing *stuff* they truly struggled over it. And sometimes it wasn't even about the struggle-but just that Naito smacked YOSHI-HASHI in the face ten times before doing a Frankensteiner instead of just doing the move on its own put over YOSHI-HASHI as a threat. And where the armwork helped is that you could do a sequence where YOSHI-HASHI would fight out of Naito's move and then have Naito attack his shoulder, quickly cut him off and continue his control segment. Another thing that made the match special was that Naito, who usually goofs around and sticks his tongue out even in the dreaded New Japan serious moments like forearm exchanging and whatnot, sold YOSHI-HASHI's main submission closer to how he sold when he was a face than now when he is a heel. It wasn't to get heat on himself here put to put over YOSHI-HASHI's hold as a serious threat. The elbow exchange they did here was very good-no weird pauses, worked with urgency and with them slapping the taste out of each other's mouth incorporated into it. There was a botch that the match would've been better off without, but sometimes you just can't help those things, a man slips from you when you're trying to slam him, what can you do? And that's not something I'm going to hold against this type of match when they did so many things right. ***1/4

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