[2015-11-26-NOAH] Yoshinari Ogawa vs Zack Sabre Jr.

[Ma Stump Puller]

Link to match!

Fantastic stuff as expected. Zack is at the very end of his NOAH tenure to go on to try his stuff in America and the indies (namely WWE and Evolve, though that would fall though) and so his final singles outing in the company is against his mentor and long-time tag partner to settle the score proper. Zack has all of his WoS spot-stealing, but Ogawa is indefinitely more crafty and knows basically all of his tricks so he keeps control for the most part with basic head work. What I really like is how these two get the audience's attention not with crazy workrate, but with smart planning and structure around repeating holds into more and more complex counters and vice versa. The first five minutes of this were all about Ogawa finding ways to snap on a side headscissors a-la those Kenichiro Arai clinics. In the hands of most this would be a total failure, but with these two putting their all into it and respecting the formula this crowd in attendance are loud and interacting well with every big moment between the two. They work a lot of move-stealing as well: Zack does Ogawa sequences beat for beat while adding in a little extra when they try to get countered, which is neat to see for turbo nerds like me who watched these two a lot around the time.

Ogawa's selling for the arm in the middle is amazing: he occasionally throws in like a startled yell that you'd make or he'd have a voice crack just to really get Zack's offence over really well with the crowd alongside his attempt to get over the idea that his stuff REALLY actually does hurt, especially with Zack making every little bend of the arm as animated as possible to assist there. There's a fairly easy to follow structure to things: Ogawa the vet controls most of the match at the beginning when both are fresh but near the end he's basically lost all of that carefully constructed control to the younger, more agile counterpart, needing to resort to old Rat Boy bullshit to try to even the score in the third half. I feel like this last third isn't quite as good as the rest of the match, namely because they go from particularly slick technical work to just going though their own bits, frankly Zack doing his leg-slap strikes over and over by itself isn't much good either even with Ogawa's godly selling. The road to the finish is strong however because they firmly build off the idea that these two just know each other so well that nothing in their arsenal works on the other long enough to be effective, forcing these the big counter-heavy sequences for pins. It's a good premise to finish on and builds to a genuine unexpected finish that catches you by surprise. 

This was quite good, even if I think it lost some of the lustre building to the end given the less than stellar striking displays. Rest of this is great though, two slick tag partners just going back and forth, squeezing a insane amount of mileage from not a whole lot of bombastic displays and instead just honing in on what they do best. Ogawa is, frankly, one of the GOAT's just watching something like this; even nearly 50 the dude is keeping up with and arguably is the better part of this match with his great selling, experience, and focus on strongly led mat-work fundamentals. Watching matches like this make you realise that he's very much a secret fan of British Catch what with his very insistent focus on raw fundamentals to build his matches around alongside lots of little things that only a seasoned watcher would really *get* and understand enough to throw in here. Zack isn't too bad either as a dance partner for his mentor despite some of his less impressive qualities of the time (random kick-based offence, slightly too cooperative when working transitions or static holds) showing their face here and there.