Michael Elgin vs. Togi Makabe
Both guys had decent runs in the tourney, and they closed it off w/ a nice hard hitting sprint'ish bout. Good stuff. ***
Hangman Page vs. YOSHI-HASHI
Hey, a Destroyer spot that isn't stupid! Hell yeah! Not only that, but this was a really good match overall, too! Most of it is with Hangman on top, doing good work over YOSHI-HASHI & showcasing very nice swagger & charisma while doing so. YH was solid fighting from underneath, and Hangman brought some good fire out of him. Happy to report that both guys closed their tournament runs out with a bang. ***3/4
Bad Luck Fale vs. Minoru Suzuki
This was well on it's way to becoming one of the best matches of the tournament, but then the interference gimmick kicked in. Before that happened, this was such a wild, violent fight. Oh well - still a really good match overall, but it most likely would've hit the 4*+ status without such a long interference segment. ***3/4
EVIL vs. Jay White
Very good sense of urgency from Switchblade to start things off; he was pretty vicious with his work over EVIL & EVIL was a damn good FIP. Once EVIL's comeback starts, the match goes down in quality though, as it seemed like all the sense of urgency & standout physicality went away - still a pretty good one overall, but had they kept a couple of aspects from the beginning stages, this could've been something more. **3/4
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada
Tanahashi spends at least half of the match working over the leg of Okada, and of course he rules at it - the standout spot of the match was certainly the Cloverleaf one; they milked it to the max & it was such well done drama. Okada's selling was, well, certainly just as expected, which is not a good thing; he did the usual Okada limb "selling" where he does all of his movez like nothing, then grabs his leg a bit. Sigh. Another thing that disappointed me greatly was the lack of urgency from Okada, especially in the last 10 minutes or so; the whole thing about the match was that Okada needed THE WIN to go to the finals, Tana would be okay with the draw, but if I hadn't known that, by watching the final 5 minutes of the match, I'd feel like their actual roles would be reversed; Okada wrestled like he always does, but it was Tana who showed masterful levels of urgency. Great performance from him, "the usual" from Okada (which I am not a big fan of) & a very generic/expected match structure. **
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