[2005-08-11-NJPW G1 Climax, Night Six] Osamu Nishimura vs Yuji Nagata

[Ma Stump Puller]

These two generally always have a good grove and I felt like this was no exception. Nagata is kinda tired of Nishimura's shit and tries kicking his head off early when he tries his handstand nonsense. Nishimura tries it again later on and Nagata just keeps pushing him over petty as anything, which causes Nishimura to just freak out and start hurling big forearm smashes alongside wild strikes and headbutts. This eventually goes into a more conventional pace as Nagata wears down the arm with hard kicks and holds while Nishimura generally has to eat the blunt of it and hope for a counter here and there. Nagata really excels in matches like these as he's just so overbearing with his stiff shots and attitude, while Nishimura tries to eat the shots and even goes for some fighting spirit, but that's not really something he's very good at so he quickly gets stomped out of it.

Like he tries offering his arm to Nagata to kick like he's some Strong Style"™" badass when he clearly isn't, and it clearly doesn't do him any good as Nagata just keeps his beating up anyway despite said spot. The crowd admittedly wasn't super excited about Nagata essentially spamming kicks and Nagata Locks all over the place but at the same time we do get a faint Nishimura chant here so not all dead, and they pick up well for his comeback when he starts throwing out really deep Dragon Screws. We do go into more or less Nishimura's control segment as he pulls for leg work, but Nagata doesn't really acknowledge it much outside of selling in the moment and we quickly get back to the status-quo with more Nagata Locks and kicks. Things go back and forth more as the two start to fatigue, with Nagata stealing from his opponent in places and vice versa to mix things up. I thought the crowd bit hard into some of the later near falls; there's one where Nishimura counters a Nagata running knee into a cradle that has them go from 0 to 100 in a few seconds that was particularly fantastic and actually got the crowd pumped for a upset.

Nishimura throws a ton of offence out but ultimately Nagata runs him down with a big backdrop, a sharp knee to the head in the corner before a second backdrop pin finishes things off. Not as good as their 2002 or 2003 outings, but still a good showing that got pretty solid near the end. This does suffer from a extended heatless Nagata control sequence that pads this out a bit too much: Nagata isn't the best at this sort of stuff generally: but the hot start and road to the finish made up for that. Both looked pretty smooth out there even if Nagata was opting more to just sit in holds than his counterpart, though that probably has to do with Nishimura being great than Nagata being bad. Enjoyable G1 romp.