KENTA vs Takashi Sugiura-NOAH 13.11.2011.

A month before KENTA has beaten Sugiura in a grueling, thirty minute match to become the #1 contender for the GHC Heavyweight Championship. You can see that tensions are still high even before the match, as their postures and facial expressions tell you they're ready to duke it out, and boy do they ever. This match is kind of like the world's most awesome Pancrase sprint, as they just go out there and slap the hell out of each other, but they don't just exchange strikes by doing the "I strike you-you strike me" spot for two minutes before going to a finish, they bust out combinations, duck, block and counter. KENTA stops for a moment before the Go 2 Sleep, and it's uncertain whether KENTA was genuinely unbalanced, selling his knee which was tapped up or the lines blurred, but it's not even that important as the effect is the same. The finish plays up the urgency really well, as it's not something usually used as a finish, rather a swift adaption to the attacks and a more definitive method than insisting on finisher spamming and a war of attrition unfit for what they were going for here. All time great 2 minute sprint. ***3/4

Takashi Sugiura vs Kensuke Sasaki-NOAH 23.7.2011.

This is a lot closer to how many japanese matches are worked these days than the Kensuke matches I've recently reviewed, partly due to when it took place and partly due to who he was facing. There isn't a lot to it-there's a million strike exchanges which make up almost the entire match, Sasaki overwhelms Sugiura in the beginning, beat the shit out of him and Sugiura gradually comes back before the match finishes in total parity with a double KO. Lacking the other ingredients needed to reach greatness, but it's still fun two see two guys just shitbeat each other without any eye-rollingly dumb spots, and these two sure brough the violence, and also varied their striking combinations a lot, particularly as the match went on, and appropriately finished it off with shoot punches. It is telling of how poorly Sugiura protected his offence that winning a strike exchange got a significantly louder reaction than his Dragon Suplex. Kensuke using elbow strikes once a year and them then being sold like death brings me joy. The German Supex popping up in a 2011 match won't surprise anyone, but this match felt chaotic enough that it hardly mattered. There are probably inherent limitations in a match where you limit how much the input variables can matter, but this match isn't relevant enough to thoroughly analyse that. ***1/2

Alexander Otsuka vs Takashi Sugiura-ZERO-1 18.4.2001.

What a match. It's always neat to see amateur wrestling stuff incorporated into prowres, and these two did a really neat version of that while simultaneously gradually increasing the intensity, with it just exploding in the finishing stretch. That damned Headbutt may be the most a wrestler's ever bled from one, talk about a spot that insantly completely changes the flow of the match. Of course the Suplexes were just beautiful, but they also smartly build the nearfalls playing off previous spots, and the execution was amazing, you don't see anyone else do a gutwrench suplex counter into a leglock, let alone done as smoothly as here. ****1/4



Pičku materinu kako je jebački ovaj meč bio jebate.