[2000-08-11-NJPW-G1 Climax] Kensuke Sasaki vs Satoshi Kojima

[soup23]

Kojima continues to be a slog for me to get invested in with his matches. This had a lot of back and forth but the moments between the big spots didn’t have much time to breathe. We get a lot of quick kickouts. We actually had about 7.5 minutes which is as much of any G1 match as we have gotten so far and the final lariat by Sasaki was brutal and felt like a knockout blow. Overall if this match was in full, I could see a lot of people loving the hoss fight feel of it and me being lower than the consensus. NR

[AstroBoy]

I loved Sasaki just punching Kojima in the face and battering him while tossing the ref around. The trading of lariats fell a little flat for me past a certain point. It never really felt like overkill, it just felt unnecessary. This worked a lot better with Sasaki bullying Kojima and him fighting to stay in it than it did as a 50-50 toughman contest.