[2007-10-21-OZ Academy White Rose] Carlos Amano vs Kaori Yoneyama

[Ma Stump Puller]

When doing these sort of random watches from around about this time it's inevitable that you will eventually come across a match with Kaori Yoneyama (better known as Fukigen Death by more contemporary fans) given she's been literally everywhere and done all you can imagine and then some. This focused around Yone clearly not being in the same league as Amano; she's a crafty Jr heavyweight who lacks the height/weight/experience/skill to properly defeat her opponent in a straight-forward match. She instead decides to basically turn the pace up to 11 and make this into a High Speed outing where she can blindside and possibly win off sheer agility alone. Now with a lot of the heavyweights this would be a bit janky (the weird stop/start nature due to the differences in speed between the two, the general apathy for the heavyweight to really put over the other all that much at all) but Amano can not only bump like a saint for all of Yone's incredible lucha sequences, she can also occasionally land some pretty fast-paced stuff of her own. This combined that with some pretty heated outside brawling as the pair got pissed and started slamming each other's heads all over the place. Amano doing Jun Izumida spots as she no-sells chairs to the head and hits stiff shit will never not get old, especially when she has someone who is more than fine to bump and throw themselves around. I'd say the two were pretty giving here despite all of the violence.

Another issue with hierarchy-based matches is that they tend to get a bit too cutesy with themselves and drag immensely with near falls and consistent never-ending will they/won't they hope spots. This kept itself really tight in terms of pacing, barely hitting 10 minutes and having only a couple of truly big momentum shifts between the two. They made sense; Yone using her speed to get reversals or simply just to hit a move quicker than her opponent, but inevitably getting caught out when she would try for her bigger bombs eating some mean shots in response. The triple O'Connor Roll/Chaos Theory spot that ended with Amano deadlifting her out of the pin and into a headbutt to the back of the head was just plain vicious stuff, we get another later that looks even more nasty when it gets attempted again. Solid finishing stretch as we get Yone just spamming German suplexes, Amano milking big heat with her strikes and submissions getting good reactions etc etc. Right near the end Yone just starts resorting to Tenryu punts to the skull and super sick tricky pins; seriously, this was some amazing stuff. She ends up losing eventually to a couple of mean running clunks to the head and that's the match basically.

Tremendously good for a sprint, Amano wasn't afraid to actually make her smaller opponent actually look threatening (unlike some certain talents) but always tied everything back together into her being in control and needing to be outpaced to lose that. Yone's pretty great as well as a more fleshed out talent of the time that relies less on big GIF-worthy spots and more on having just really good fundamentals and the speed to use them competently...though she still has the cool moments anyway because they're cool, obviously. Very much a must-watch, good cooking ngl