Nobuyuki Kurashima vs. Sanshu Tsubakichi
I’m a Kurashima fan. He has a few things he does very well, and he sticks to that. He will always do some cool matwork, engage in scrappy hard hitting, and occasionally throw a hefty suplex or drop his opponent on their head. This match didn’t have a suplex for some reason but it Kurashima adding some cool touches to the matwork such as pushing his foot into Tsubakichis face, grinding his knee into the shoulder while working an armlock etc. The scrappy hard hitting was fun too, with Tsubakichi eating a nasty headbutt early on, throwing some cool punches to the body and hitting some kicks that left Kurashimas head bouncing. Very gritty and simplistic opener so it was just the right thing.
Kazuhiro Tamura vs. CHANGO
Decent undercard action that needed a bit more matwork. It’s DRADITION, you gotta hit the mat. Tamura was coasting, but Changos scuzzy technical heel act is cool enough to carry the match. His cradles were awesome and also extremely well timed. Tamura really needed to do some matwork in this.
Seiya Sanada vs. LEONA
Surprisingly a very good match. Crowd was invested in this and they worked a bunch of basic exchanges at a nice pace building to some cool nearfalls over basic moves like a double arm suplex. LEONA did some pretty cool wrestling, I really liked the way he set up a dragon screw into a Figure 4 which felt meaningful, and his pins and cradles were really good. Sanada mostly served as an overdog to LEONA, he had some nice european uppercuts and one really slick sequence into a springboard move. I also really liked the cheekiness of him going for Dragon Sleepers on Fujinamis kid. Very worthwhile undercard match.
Kengo Mashimo & Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Mitsuya Nagai & Super Tiger II
Pretty fun match where every part was good and everybody was working really stiff and exciting. Mashimo had a good showing, really pelting people with his kicks and knees, his segment against STII was pretty good and had some really really good leg attack stuff. I liked Sekimoto fine and Nagai was fired up kicking people hard and even going after Sekimoto with a chair at one point which generated good head and buzz.
Taka Kunou vs. Masakazu Funaki
Kunou low key rules, he has that grubby tough old grappler charisma similar to someone like Osamu Kido. Funaki can’t be arsed to do more than the bare minimum but he brings some presence and something for Kunou to overcome, plus almost anything is a plausible finish. Very defensive and cagey bout early on with neither guy giving an inch as they worked some simple matwork. It builds to a really good explosion in the last few minutes mostly due to Kunou, who hits an awesome headbutt and the most awesome suplex while surviving more from Funaki than you expect. Dope shit, very far from a workrate classic but very intense and satisfying pro wrestling that feels real.
Tatsumi Fujinami & Hiro Saito vs. Jun Akiyama & Yuma Aoyagi
Solid if slightly short main event to close out a good card. Fujinami/Akiyama exchanges were built around both guys resisting the others signature moves in cool ways and I would've liked to see more of that. Nice to see even fossilized Hiro Saito can still hit a gnarly senton. Aoyagi was just a rookie here and soon dutifully ate the fall.
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