[2000-02-20-NJPW-Fighting Spirit] Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs Kendo Kashin & Minoru Tanaka

[soup23]

I can always take another dose of these guys dishing out punishment to each other. I did think while watching this that if I see this match iteration around 7-8 times a month like the ECW fancam stuff, it would seem grating. Jumping in around 2-3 times a month is much more agreeable to my palate. I compare these matches to the Seikmoto/Okabayashi tags we see in modern times. Beefy and not enriched with psychology but it can be there at certain points if you go searching for it. I think Tanaka again looks much better and spirited here than in BattlARTS. Kashin kind of brings this match down a bit with some weird low blow spots that seem out of place. Kashin ends up tapping out Otani which is odd and feels underserved too. Overall, some good stuff still but this one had more flaws than their other matches this year up to this point. **3/4

[Loss]

There is a sameness to these matches in the same way there's a sameness to the Guido-Tajiri-Crazy stuff, where you get used to their signature stuff, but there are enough wrinkles and variations to keep it interesting. That said, I do agree this was the weakest match from these guys thus far. Everything from Minoru Tanaka since the Tokyo Dome match has disappointed me. He still seems to wrestle in a vacuum a little bit compared to guys around him, but I'm finally coming around on Kendo Kashin. Maybe it was the Shattered Dreams that finally made the difference for me, maybe it's that with experience he's genuinely improving. But he no longer looks out of his league in these matches. Even if he's not an elite worker, he can blend in with elite workers. I was even perfectly fine with him submitting Otani for the finish. But there was really no overriding narrative here to push this match along and so it was just a bunch of tags in and out, a bunch of exchanges and then a finish. The exchanges were really good technically, but there wasn't much heat because there wasn't really much going on.

[Moonsault Marvin]

This one was technically fine, but was bland, as Otani didn't have the character moments he usually brings to a match. Kashin's low blows were the only thing interesting, but they didn't really do anything with them. Average match.