[2018-03-08-BJW] Daichi Hashimoto vs Takuya Nomura

[Jmare007]

Day 1 of the Strong Climb tournament. After watching these two develop over their young careers, I felt like a proud dad watching this. Daichi starts the match thinking he might pull this of off the strength of him being the champ and Nomura still being below him on the totem pole. But Takuya has had some really tough tests coming into the tournament against Abe and Togo so he has NO TIME for Daichi's laziness, he kicks and bitchslaps Hashimoto like he ain't shit, forcing the champ to take him seriously from the get go. There's a ton to love about this, from the crowd LOVING Nomura from minute zero and craving for an upset to Daichi's selling and portrayal of a legit champ - I almost shed a tear when he did the "get pissed off and karate chop THE FUCK outta your opponent to show him who you are" spot that his daddy did so fucking well - to Nomura's fire and not give a fuck attitude. He knows he's faced stronger competition than Daichi so he fucking goes for the W like a madman. Finish could've been a little better but it served it's purpose.

[superkix]

I prefer the Aoki match to this but this was still a fun bout which saw Hashimoto have to step it up in order to stomp out Nomura's testiness. Hashimoto has to keep cooling him down with elbow strikes but then Nomura will start shoving him around, tapping into that Maeda energy with the capture suplex and crossface chickenwing. I love the fact that he teases hitting a crossface chickenwing suplex later in the match! Then Hash hacks him down with those vicious chops and starts building his own momentum before Nomura catches him with the reverse armbar and continues targeting the arm. Nomura's final strike flurry ending in the high kick was great before Hashimoto eventually puts him down.