[2004-07-22-AJPW] Toshiaki Kawada vs Mitsuya Nagai

[ohtani's jacket]

I was interested in how much matwork they would do in this, and the answer was a little. If you squint a bit, it almost looks like Kawada is fighting Yamazaki, which would have been a pretty cool match up come to think of it. The idea of Kawada vs shooters has always been tantalizing to me, but it would have had to have happened in the mid-90s. Kawada looked washed in 2004. He’d done his dash in the immediate post-split period. Nagai was a fairly lousy pro-wrestler as evidenced by his weak selling in this bout, and even weaker facial expressions, but they could have worked a much better bout if Kawada had brought more energy to the bout.