Superstar Sleeze Posted June 10, 2023 Report Share Posted June 10, 2023 NWF Heavyweight Champion Yoshihiro Takayama vs Shinsuke Nakamura - NJPW 6/13/03 Budokan Six Months before Nakamura and Takayama squared off in the Dome to unify the IWGP & NWF Championships they met in the Budokan for the NWF title only. This is a bit weird as the previous month Takayama won the IWGP Championship from Nagata at the Dome but this didn’t unify the titles. He would defend the titles separately. I watched this about ten hours ago but the match is pretty basic so I’m not too worried. The match follows a different layout than previous Nakamura matches. In other Nakamura matches he is the young gun counter wrestler that use flash submissions to win matches. Here he is the aggressor and brings the fight right to Takayama with big strikes and a barrage of submissions. He even goes so far as to use Takayama’s one foot cover to show up Takayama early. It is an early Triangle that saps Takayama of most of his energy early. Nakamura is wrestling circles around Takayama because of it. Nakamura was catching kicks and turning him into powerbombs. The only reason Takayama gets can into it is a MASSIVE KNEELIFT! Nakamura shoots in for a takedown and eats nothing but knee. The Takayama heat segment and finish is just classic Takayama. Pretty similar to the Kenta if memory serves me correctly with Takayama just obliterating Nakamura with kneelifts and strikes before polishing him off with an Everest German. Besides a Nakamura Triangle Choke that Takayama powerbomb out of I don’t really remember much or hope spots. I appreciated the inverted narrative of Nakamura getting all his hope early looking like he was going to win on a fast break only to obliterated by a knee, cool match. ***1/2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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