[2002-07-19-NJPW] Tatsumi Fujinami vs Tadao Yasuda

[Jetlag]

At this point Fujinami was mostly relegated to tag work. Now he takes on Inokis project Yasuda. Before the match starts Yasuda insists Fujinami puts on MMA gloves, so when Fujinami does so Yasuda rushes him. One punch exchange later and Fujinamis nose is gushing blood. This really feels like a fight to the death with Yasuda trying to choke out Fujinami, but the old guy can always hit a surprise move. Only 5 minutes but a surprisingly good match.

[Mr JMML]

Tadao Yasuda vs Tatsumi Fujinami (NJPW - 7/19/2002)

We’re getting closer to the end of Tatsumi Fujinami’s career, the match I‘m going to write about today is a far cry from 70’s Fujinami but as I said in previous reviews it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, this match is pure Inokism, the MMA-like presentations and the structure of the match itself looks like something out of an early PRIDE main event, in pro wrestling it works, it’s a short match, in fact, it’s the shortest match I’ll review in this project, it hardly goes 5 minutes considering that one and a half minutes are spent convincing Tatsumi Fujinami to put on his MMA gloves, you know his match against Inoki in 1988 the opposite, in this match Fujinami looks like an old man that has no idea how a shoot style bout works and that’s amazing, he’s from another generation and playing with that was a very intelligent choice made by NJPW creatives, I think it’s the first time I praise them in this project, as you could expect they went at it hard, they didn’t waste a second both wrestlers did a great job selling the sense of urgency, they are trying to finish each other as quickly as possible, no sportsmanship either, I love how Yasuda looks an asshole heel the whole way through, he had a better performance than Fujinami, he had the night of his life against one of the greatest wrestlers in the company’s history, he should be proud of this match, he looked like a million bucks, this is without a doubt my MOTY of 2002 just for it’s uniqueness alone, probably the match that resembles this one the most is Daisuke Ikeda vs Takeshi Ono (Futen - 9/26/2010) but that one was just two dudes hitting each other very hard, in this one there’s a clear narrative with Fujinami not being able to keep up with younger talent, the word I’d use to describe this match is necessary, time passes for everyone.