[2002-08-28-NJPW Osaka Dream Night] Osamu Nishimura vs Shinsuke Nakamura

[Ma Stump Puller]

This was a fairly solid match focused around showmanship, with the Super Rookie trying to prove he can work on Nishimura's ballgame of tricked-out technical work. I especially loved how extra Nishimura is here: while Nakamura at times will be showy Nishimura will almost intentionally throw out some brilliant counters to relatively simple moves, flying around at points to show off his funky WoS-lite technique. It's not necessary; Nakamura establishes by simply strolling to the ropes instead prior when in a similar situation; but Nishimura almost refuses to do so out of principle, he's not letting this kid outshine him. At the same time I think he gives a ton of room for Naka to stand his ground and get over with the audience as they go head to head, generally having Nishimura be on the backend when having to go strike to strike. This plays into the middle half with Nakamura's knees proving particularly painful for his opponent, who sells hard for them. Nishimura has to pull out some wacky stuff with a headscissors on the apron and a big knee drop to the head afterwards to change things up.

He keeps his opponent on the outside with big dropkicks, as well as dropping his knee on the guardrail in a particularly nasty bit. The leg work inside and outside of the ring as the slower heat spot is fairly decent, despite Nakamura kinda botching his big comeback with the Shining Triangle with a sloppy transition. He makes up for that with a nice bomb in the form of a German Suplex alongside a gnarly kneeling Torture Rack. The finish has a second Shining Triangle get countered into a Spinning Toe Hold/figure four for the tap-out win. Nishimura sticking a towel on the guy afterwards was a cool spot, if a bit ruined by Nakamura not selling the leg work and getting right back up afterwards like nothing happened lol. That's a general issue here: his sustained selling is pretty shoddy, with him not really bothering to showcase the effects of Nishimura's leg work whatsoever, even just slight pauses. His pacing is also a bit iffy and seems stiff, there's not really a feeling anything he's doing feels spontaneous or off the cuff, which was needed given Nakamura's comebacks were the big moments of the match. That said, this was a fun technical showing designed to get him over which was half-successful judging by the crowd's positive reactions, even if he felt far from ready for a main event outing. Nishimura once again really shows his stuff as the calculating Catch-act who works this masterfully as the overbearing vet intent on dragging this down to the mat. It's a easy gameplan to understand and he pretty much follows it to the letter.