[2008-04-08-AJPW-Championship Carnival] Osamu Nishimura vs Suwama

[Ma Stump Puller]

15 minutes is within the time-frame of a good Suwama match, and Nishimura works well with his kind of smashmouth rampaging. He shows a different side here with his technical fundamentals coming into play against Suwama's sheer strength, a dynamic he's done aplenty. I also liked the narrative of Nishimura getting miffed about his opponent doing well and throwing in some dirty work to even the odds, namely some unclean breaks and the like. This quickly gets into a ugly brawl on the outside as the two land some stiff shots to the other before Nishimura goes back to his technical stuff, namely working on the legs. Good Inoki-style Enzuigiri to the Suwama on the apron, as well as Nishimura just no selling rough forearms and egging for more. There's a lot of that classical fighting spirit stuff in there that really makes this distinct from more scientific Nishimura bouts; here he makes Suwama throw tons to tire him out before honing onto the leg again, but at times he'll just start swinging with the punches, which is unusual out of the guy; he has a plan but sometimes that just goes out of the window because he really wants to settle into controlling the match by any means possible, which was a cool theme that ties right into the finish later.

He really hones in on the leg of Suwama with a vengeance, even resorting to wacky caveman-lite headbutts to keep the holds maintained alongside just spamming knee drops onto it for added damage. The finish for this is particularly cool as Nishimura's obsession with keeping control on the young ace causes his downfall: he keeps trying for headlocks which are answered with big backdrops. Suwama spams out about six of these for the win despite some tricky roll-up attempts and near falls by Nishimura, but he just can't get over his need for the headlock and so eventually crumbles. This was perfectly paced around Suwama's better features, namely his strikes and bombs, which respectfully look pretty good here. He sells well and gets the crowd going in his struggles against Nishimura's fairly strong work, mostly focused around trying to ground him down. It's not mind-blowing for a 15 minute match, but manages to do a lot with what it's given and as such we avoid the dreaded Carny match filler for the most part in favour of some good dynamics instead. Solid stuff.