[2007-01-28-MUGA 2007 New Year Series] Osamu Nishimura vs Toshiaki Kawada

[Ma Stump Puller]

We sadly only get about 10 minutes of this in terms of footage; Kawada was rather inconsistent at the time (this was around about the time his body was just outright failing him when it came to delivering most of the time) if anyone could get him to something really good, it would be Nishimura, plus we still get some good work so I figured there's something at least to discuss. We start off with some really aggressive stuff as Kawada's leg gets wrecked from the get-go, with even the ref having to run in and try to stop Nishimura bending it, Kawada spends virtually all of the first round on his ass as Nishimura bends the life out of the leg. We strongly clip to the later rounds as Dangerous K fires off some strikes and noticeably struggles to maintain momentum with said bad leg. They go to the outside to throw baby slaps at each other before the round ends. We skip to round 7: Kawada runs out and immediately lands a suplex and a kick to the back, taking advantage of the ambush, Nishimura dodges one to the front. He eats some more kicks before timing one into a great Dragon Screw and figure four, which Kawada barely escapes from. Round 9: Kawada is limping bad but Nishimura's attempt to just run in and grab him for a sleeper ends badly as he eats a backdrop for his troubles: he's just not as strong as the other guy. Nishimura tries to join in with one of his own: obviously again, he isn't as strong, he definitely isn't winning on a Kings Road bomb battle so he quickly falls to a second one and a Gamengiri shot.

Kawada goes into his greatest hits but can't make Nishimura tap, even with a ridiculously long Stretch Plum that did drag things down a fair bit. By round 10 Nishimura is basically done physically yet he's able to squeeze out a last-ditch backslide attempt from a brainbuster and a few more roll-ups, with Kawada punishing these with stiff kicks to the head and even a cross armbreaker at one point. The two just go full cavemen mode with forearms to the head, a historically hated spot yet I was fine with it here because they actually worked a match around fatigue, so a spot like this was always going to come up at one point. I did really like the extended figure-four tease as well as Kawada keeps trying to reverse it but gets thrown back everytime. It's great to see Nishimura just bend and contort his entire body in a desperate attempt to keep the leverage maintained, however the bell sounds and this thus becomes a draw. It's a shame, because this looked pretty good: if we had the full thing on tape I think it would've been known much like many of the other MUGA showings to be impressively solid. As good as their 2004 Triple Crown match? Doubtful, but still. These two work well together and Kawada looked like he was actually motivated here. Nishimura is a master of selling and tension building: his ability to make a crowd explode for simple moves is a lost art these days. It's just a shame that a potential classic like this was cut in favour of a tag match involving the following four people:

Hiro Saito

Tatsutoshi Goto

Mitsuya Nagai

Yutaka Yoshie

.....is there even a argument for these guys having more footage on them than these two? Like I think even their biggest fans would probably wanted one match over the other.