232. Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Masahiro Chono, NJPW 5/31/1991
Damn, I didn't expect to like this so much. Any Fujinami big match is guaranteed to have a ton of wrestling, and there was a lot of that here, but there was also a ton of disdain right from the opening which has Chono spitting Fujinami in the face. Chono is far from a great matworker, but he was game here, busting out an awesome calf slicer and a flying clothesline that was like something Necro Butcher would do. He also wasn't afraid to get into stiff slap battles and I liked his headbutts and mafia kicks he would use to combat Fujinami's mat prowess. Fujinami on his side had one of the most brutal dropkicks I've ever seen and an epic dive. This was a very typical NJPW style match, there was no grand finishing run with a ton of big moves to be kicked out of or something, instead it was about avoiding the other guy's finisher when push came to shove. That and the fact both guys sold a ton of exhaustion made the second half of this pretty great. Little bit of a lucha title match influence here with some dramatic bumps for momentum shifts and that sick guardrail dive from Fujinami. Great stuff, glad that this was brought up as the 232nd best match of the 90s
241. Meiko Satomura vs. Sugar Sato, GAEA 10/11/1998
Leave it to a pair of 18 year old girls to have an excellent lengthy match in 1998. The cool thing about the mat stuff they did here was that it wasn't shootstyle stuff, but closer to NWA-ish legbars and kneedrops, executed in really vicious fashion. Sugar doesn't have the high end offense of Satomura, but I thought she did well enough to mix it up and keep the match going. Everything made sense and built really well to their respective finishers (Death Valley Driver vs. Liger Bomb), and while there wasn't any super-focussed extended selling they worked hard to put eachother's offense over as devastating. Plenty of neat spots, including Sato finding ways to counter Satomura's arm attack stuff. Best GAEA match of 1998?
246. Bull Nakano vs. Shinobu Kandori, LLPW 7/14/1994
I was disappointed to see this not holding up quite well. I remember feeling there was something fishy about this when I first watched it years ago and now I remember why. This had the lamest crowd brawl in the middle. I enjoyed them punishing eachother with the chain and there were some great visuals here, but this could have been so much more. Outside distraction was crap, so was Kandori's armbar. I liked Nakano avoiding Kandori's feeble punches and just kicking her in the face. Finish makes up for the dragging parts. Good match.
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