Saturday, December 1, 2018

DANIELSON + Suzuki vs. ZSJ in the WTL

PWG An Inch Longer Than Average: American Dragon vs. Frankie Kazarian
They start it off by battling over control and the way they convey the STRUGGLE in the lock up is just absolutely masterful stuff. Absolutely blew me mind how good that was. Dragon eventually gets the upper hand after some fantastic, intense back & forth w/ just the right amount of urgency in there. Loved Kaz going back to that front facelock again & again; it was a gameplan that worked well for him until Bryan did indeed establish his dominance by going after Kaz's arm in simply RUTHLESS fashion. He shows tremendous intensity, anger, viciousness & focus as he goes to town on that damn arm. Kaz's selling is pretty damn good too & his overall work fighting from underneath was rock solid. The dynamic flowed perfectly between that & Dragon's incredible work on top. Never did I expect Frankie Kazarian to have a match like THIS in him. Now I am not too familiar with his pre-TNA singles work, but if he has a better match than this in his catalog? Then I've been missing out on some VERY good stuff. ****1/2

UWAI STATION 12/03/06: Bryan Danielson vs. Fujita Hayato
This has a great, scrappy fight feel to it - it's lovely work on the mat w/ some nice grit in there & then some stiff strikes thrown in there. Danielson has an edge for the majority of it & they go with the formula of Hayato fighting from underneath, and he certainly rocks that role superbly. He gets more & more into his comebacks as the match goes on; Danielson is great at cutting him off, and overall he fed for Hayato's big comeback towards the end excellently. It's some very nice stuff all in just under 10 minutes. Great scrap. ****

NJPW World Tag League - Day 10: Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka vs. Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr.
This ruled. Had a very "Suzuki-gun feel" to it, in that it felt very chaotic, in an authentic way. The MiSu/ZSJ exchanges rule & are a great teaser for a possible singles match at some future G1 tourney (please) - and Iizuka! Goddamn that spot where he got the choke on ZSJ was wonderful; Korakuen was going nuts & for a good reason. That was an absolutely excellent sequence w/ ZSJ's selling adding quite a bit to it. Very good match overall. ***1/2

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