Ma Stump Puller Posted March 6 Report Share Posted March 6 The stipulation seems batshit (and the match isn't too far off it in practise) but as a match this was real good. This was a eight man survival tag, for the record. The key idea is that OZ Academy as a team are massively outgunned here; Ozaki is here, sure, other than that she's surrounded by essentially rookies. Team GAEA by comparison have Nagayo/Devil/Meiko, a hellish trio that would make any prospective wrestlers shit their pants and run for the hills, insanely superior hierarchy-wise; even Meiko this early already had tag team gold for instance. There's no way you can look at these two teams and judge them equally, and thankfully the match doesn't attempt to do so. The aired version skips over some of the early eliminations with Nagashima being eliminated by Miyaguchi while she herself takes the fall to Sato in some fairly decent sequences. The pace is set at a fast one as Team OZ have to really get frantic and essentially just go through as much as humanly possible to try to balance the books here. They'll do crazy combo top rope dives and then it'd barely matter even after all that because Devil would no sell and start throwing weight around again, really making the imbalance tangible for anyone watching. The feeling of hopelessness is amped up by team GAEA just swamping the ring with their beefy brawlers before Devil is able to take out Sato with her signature rolling senton, leaving things at 2 for OZ. There's this great sequence where Amano is trying to go for submissions but there's so much shit flying between Ozaki and co with their wacky brawling that she can barely get in anything without getting kicked in the head or having Devil just do a leg drop even if she does grab a limb for something, communicating how chaotic the match was by this point. Nagayo has some amazing bully antics as she torments Amano on the mat with submissions, actively egging Ozaki on to interfere so she can get stuck fighting someone else or Nagayo herself gets to throw a stiff shot in like a stiff headbutt. She really feels like the big bad boss of the crew only getting in if she's really needed/she gets to stick the knife in to Ozaki in some way. Amano did a good job working as the feeder here, really throwing herself all over the place to try to get some sort of advantage yet typically getting her ass kicked and thrown around for her troubles. Devil generously gives her some leeway and even gets stunned one or two points before finishing with a mean double-arm powerbomb. The bit where Devil's just gleefully smiling knowing that Ozaki's basically screwed with the two having a tense standoff is real solid and the crowd immediately took to what they were dishing out here given it was being delivered by some of the GOAT's at the time. Ozaki also had a solid comeback run as she gave a ton to Satomura who in turn throws out some really frantic offence that was convincing enough to make the crowd think Oz might actually get tripped up here. She almost gets the pin to boot, it's just the combination of Oz being tough/smart with some sneaky counters that lets her barely get by with a rushed powerbomb. The last few minutes focus on Nagayo and co being dicks by trying to choke her out which only backfires due to more interference muddling the waters. Devil getting eliminated with a couple of backhands and a dodgy roll-up isn't the greatest but it helps with the tension aplenty alongside being appropriately sold as a fluke by both parties than anything serious. Crazy ending sprint with Nagayo absolutely terrified of losing as the two exchange some great fatigue-fuelled back and forth work all about hitting their bombs as much and as soon as possible while everyone else is scrapping. Ultimately Nagayo takes advantage of Oz's speed to get her up for a Running Three (while Ozaki was running, no less) and then a incredibly mean high-angle Superfreak powerbomb to get the conclusive pinfall. It's not much of a "clean" match if that makes any sense; there's not a lot of classical work to be seen here in terms of measured and "clean" wrestling. It's a lot of tag psychology paired with some tremendously great moments scattered here and there from individual performances forming to make a lovely whole that composed the match. What works about it is that everything feels very coordinated as in there's no wasted movement here, everything feels connected to everything else, there's no random filler stuck in for the sake of it and the focus on the GAEA troop naturally taking a big advantage lets the Oz and co work as underdogs, which is something that needless to say does a lot to enhance the quality of a potential mess like this as it's more up everyone's alley for people like Devil and co to wrestle on top than pretending this was even fair going in. Solid watch for sure Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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