[1992-03-22-AJPW Champion Carnival] Akira Taue vs Yoshinari Ogawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

This got caught on fancam and it's a surprisingly good romp for a fairly nothing Carny Block. As expected, this turns into a generic David/Goliath matchup for the first few minutes, with Taue throwing his weight around and Ogawa having to use his smarts and tricky arm-work to keep him busy. While it's obvious the two have a way to go before they get into their primes, they manage to work a pretty good pace that's more grounded and based around Taue trying to out-grapple Ogawa and obviously failing at it with some surprisingly flush technical spots like doing the Inoki/Gotch triple arm drag sequence and Taue trying for a scoop slam that gets rolled over into a armbar instead. While this had the potential to be boring, Ogawa's arm-work is actually pretty great even this early with him relying on not just the busted arm but clever uses of leverage via that arm to get him into bad positions to wrangle it more. Eventually Taue is able to get his angry Baba Jr chops off alongside getting his size over, using a lot of power moves and cranking the neck to establish his own work. 

Ogawa's plan B is to throw punches and hope for the best, which...also doesn't go well for obvious reasons. Him landing a second rope dropkick was cool though. It was also nice to see some early Ogawa antics as he counters a fallaway slam into a small package and gets his snap neckbreaker on for a 2 count. Taue's first suplex is countered but his follow-up DDT isn't, and from then on in it's just a traditional Taue bomb-fest until he wins with the chokeslam. Not anything amazing or exactly out there for AJPW especially in 1992, but a nice, compact showing that really showcased two emerging talents well, even if Taue is still growing as a performer and has a few hiccups here and there with how he tends to lumber around with very numbly movements. Ogawa is flavourless as a generic underdog but his actual ring-work is more or less the same as it would be in a few years bar the Rat-Boy shtick (and some well-needed pushes) His arm work is robust and his comebacks are well-timed while not making his inevitable loss incredibly obvious like a lot of underdog matches tend to do. All in all, a decent showing and one of the very early bright spots for baby-Ogawa.