[1994-07-02-NJPW-Summer Struggle] Black Cat, Black Tiger & American Machine vs Jushin Liger, El Samurai & Shinjiro Ohtani

[MikeCampbell]

This is something of a holy grail match, as (at least at the moment) it's the only available footage of Art Barr's lone New Japan tour, which can be found on New Japan Classics #662. I'm quite certain that if this was out there when Will and Loss were making up the yearbooks, it'd have been included.

 

As an actual match, it's good (hardly a shocker with how good everyone was during this time), but Eddie and Art are both mostly in the background, while Cat is doing the heavy lifting. Eddie breaks out the slingshot senton early in their heat segment, and after they halt Ohtani's comeback, Art does the frog splash, but those are more exceptions. They're mostly found to be brawling, and them bumping and stooging for Lyger and Ohtani more than anything else. But the attitude you'd expect from the AAA Tag Team Champions is there, especially from Art in his early bits with Lyger. The real shocker to me was Black Cat, who struck me as the obvious fall guy and weak link, and how great he was at working over Ohtani, between his suplexes and matwork.