[2005-08-07-NJPW G1 Climax Night Three] Kendo Kashin vs Toshiaki Kawada

[Ma Stump Puller]

A lovely little gem: Kawada typically isn't known a whole lot for comedy stuff outside of his HUSTLE dates, but Kashin pulls him into his wheelhouse and gets a pretty entertaining crack at it. Kawada tries to get a handle on him early however he's simply too slippery for that, getting out of his straight-forward wrestling attempts. We also get random segments of Kashin beating up young boy Taichi between sequences (because let's just face it, no one likes the poor guy) which sets K off and gets him sloppy. The lads have some stiff exchanges with kicks and elbow smashes before Kawada hits a good arm wrench heel kick to knock the guy down. He takes control with some big shots before Kashin sneaks in a low blow and gets in his corner headscissors to choke him out. He tries stealing Kawada's kneeling head kicks but he naturally gets pissed and starts hurling big stiff slaps to the face, even hitting his own wacky corner headscissors in response, funny bit. Both men have a brawl outside before Kawada gets the upperhand and lands a big powerbomb.

He tries to follow that up with a brainbuster but gets countered into a small package for a near fall and tries for two more in succession: Kawada quickly stops this with a Gamengiri shot for his own near fall before applying a Stretch Plum. Kashin actually is able to fight back against it a good bit, managing to get to his feet and stand up. He then flips over Kawada into a flash pin that works, getting him a insane upset win! This is fairly basic but good enough G1 formatted match with some fun comedy. Kashin sells a fair bit for Kawada's big offence and the latter in question can still land his big bombs really well: he's a bit slower in that regard yet is still a Kawada that can move well and not his more depressing outings later in the decade. There's not a lot of bones to the match in terms of anything of real importance, but it follows a basic structure very well and the two have a goofy dynamic that does actually work into some great bits here. It's definitely a relaxed match for Kawada, honestly it might be better than some of his usual G1 showings this year.