[2005-08-04-NJPW G1 Climax 2005] Minoru Suzuki vs Osamu Nishimura

[Ma Stump Puller]

Suzuki has a smart starting bit as he keeps pining for the handshake and acting nice...until he cheap shots Nishimura when he lets his guard down and starts running around like a maniac. Thankfully we go away for that as Nishimura keeps hurling his opponent into numerous roll-up positions and he starts to not fuck around with constructive arm work and hard shots. Suzuki plays some good mind games with his opponent, consistently going from goofy joker to Pancrase demon seamlessly, making the tempo of the match very up and down workrate wise. Good bit of the early to middle half stuff is played like this, with Nishimura throwing out some smooth old-school work to counter Suzuki's more conventional MMA stuff. It's a interesting styles crash that I think the two work well into the action here, even if Nishimura doesn't click much with the more modern shoot-style approach. He mostly works defensively and manages to get the crowd behind him as Suzuki bullies the guy with stiff kicks and holds. Nishimura gets pissed as Suzuki keeps toying with him, so much so that when Suzuki slacks off too much when he misses a high kick and it gets trapped in the ropes, he relentlessly goes after it; even shoving the ref when he tries to stop him. Nishimura plays into this by slapping on a figure four and refusing to let Suzuki go when he hits the ropes as the ref is out. He moves into the middle of the ring afterwards like nothing happened, what a heel! Suzuki keeps goofing off, and that sets his opponent off more: we get wild angry swings out of Nishimura and him refusing to let go of a figure four on the outside, forcing Suzuki to punch the shit out of his leg to escape in a pretty good spot.

We get a great transition as Suzuki throws out a backslide and then counters Nishimura's own to go into a smooth Gotch Piledriver. We get a similarly great bit as Nishimura's O'Connor Roll is reversed into a rear naked choke, blending in the MMA/catch style clash even more. I thought they really effectively got this over as a world-ender, especially when Suzuki snaps it on while Nishimura is literally hanging on the ropes, Suzuki BENDS his back all the way down to turn it into a Bulldog choke instead; really simple but really nasty work that makes the move from *just* a choke to something terrifying. The two brawl for a bit, Suzuki gets a nose bleed after some hard slaps as Nishimura hits some of the harder shots of his career. I thought the finish was a bit goofy with the 5 minute (yes, that long) long Cobra Twist exchange and double dropkick w/ random staredown, felt really unnecessary and put on to add some random drama. But yeah, this was a good match that didn't feel overtly like a draw until the very end when they basically start to run out of ideas. That said, it's a really strong showing from both men as they combine bits from each of their styles to make something unique and fresh. I'm glad Nishimura got to kinda get out of his comfort zone a bit here and to be fair, he does really well on both sides as does Suzuki who was pretty hit and miss around this point. This is, however, harmed by this being after yet another 30 minute draw: the match right before this was a Tanahashi/Toru Yano match.....as you can imagine this did kill the crowd off a little bit for this. Still solid, definitely worth searching out for more Nishimura gems.