[2006-11-11-ZERO1-MAX Max Around] Kazunari Murakami vs Mitsuhiro Matsunaga

[Ma Stump Puller]

Matsunaga was "good" at one point in terms of hardcore wrestling standards as W*ING's big draw but he's way, way past it now: he'd not even been working full-time for the last 8 years or so due to his knees blowing out Rey-style (again) being used mostly for novelty matches. Gone are the kicks, gone are the massive overkill matches. This was purely going to be good by his emoting and reputation rather than anything to do with fancy bumps. He gets in and is immediately hit with stiff punches by Mura, forcing him to leave again. He's annoyed enough that he immediately produces bladed weapons, of which Mura scoffs at him for using before beating his ass again lol. He does get hit by them though, which allows Matsu the time to recover and push him into the barbed wire. He also pulls out a fork and legitimately stabs his opponent with it, causing gross cuts. Mura sells the subsequent "stabbing" of the fork as Matsu very gently and lovingly brushes the fork on his head, making little attempt to make it look realistic. We get some outside brawling, with Matsu jabbing one of the trainees with the fork in a also very gross spot. He pulls out more shit from his knee brace (seriously, how much does he have in there?) before Mura smacks him with a chair.

Doesn't stop him getting beat down with the blade though despite hurling out a judo throw and some shots. Otani (the ref for this one) tries to get them out of the corner and gets attacked for his troubles. Matsu pulls out ANOTHER blade from his brace and slowly stalks Mura to stab him with it, only for Otani to slap him up for his antics. This gives his opponent enough time to land another hard punch into a STO before choking the shit out of the guy: despite Matsu stabbing his hand while he's in the hold, Mura just rages though long enough to send him to sleep to finish this in a pretty desperate manner. This wasn't great workrate wise obviously, and the barbed wire stipulation was basically useless: outside of Mura going into it once at the very start it's never used again at any point, which feels like a waste given the setup. Mastsu is good as this crazy old weirdo who just attacks everyone and seems to hoard blades for a living, but obviously he can't do a whole lot bar shuffle and stab, so it's a more muted performance than what you might be used to seeing with his 90's material. This is mostly saved by Murakami putting on a pretty great performance, selling like crazy: at first he's cocky as anything in anticipation of beating up the old man, by the end he's throwing anything to just live though the match, it's super out of character for him. If you like grungy hardcore stuff filled with fair amount of violence, this might be up your avenue.