[2013-11-10-OZ Academy Respect/Disrespect] Carlos Amano vs Sonoko Kato

[Ma Stump Puller]

Sonoko Kato was a GAEA trainee who's had her fair share of solid matches; more of a shooty kind of wrestler than anything flashy, injuries dragging down her potential sadly long before she could've done anything substantial bar winning tag gold with a young Meiko (good company there.) She got her incredible second wind in OZ and wrestles to this day if you can believe it. Anyway, this was really good: Amano at this point had mastered the art of the sub-15 TV match and knew how to get a lot of quality out of relatively small portions of time. The starting sequences were established around cool basic grappling and Amano aping random Osamu Nishimura spots for the fun of it. Kato gets pissed off with the goofy ahh nonsense and turns this into a brawl where we got some nice scrappy moments and cool spots with Amano doing a DDT on the outside and Kato hitting a apron senton.

Outside of a awkward botch where Amano seemingly can't get in position for her diving second rope headbutt the in-ring stuff ruled. Loads of stiff shots from Kato as she can do all of these floaty senton attacks in the corner or turtle kicks while Amano mostly had to rely on technical counters and using her durable head to get leverage here with savage headbutts. Kato seems unstoppable as she throws out multiple big kicks and a meaty top rope leg drop, but can't get a proper good 3-count despite her best attempts. I thought the tension was well-put together here as Amano had to chain up stuff like the snap Tiger Suplex or fake out running headbutt to try to equal things out, really got the match going with the sheer speed of it at points. Goofy finish through: having Amano basically no sell Kato's big finish and multiple headkicks so she could then win with a random small package out of nowhere felt a bit politick by nature. Bar that through this was pretty good! A bit shaky in places as I think the two try to get a bit too cute with how speedy this could get, mostly this was just really well constructed wrestling bits that never got to a truly great level but were still extremely enjoyable, especially with how they'd work in the striking portions into everything else. Another solid late-Amano outing.