This would've been a great match if Nagata was as good as Murakami.
The opening was sketchy as that was where Nagata had his shine, and it
had him do weird slap-claps on Murakami's back, bad looking worked spots
and just generally offence that would look bad for a house show tag,
let alone a big Dome match, and his timing in general seemed off. Then
we get to the meat of the match, which is Murakami's beatdown, and it
rules every bit as much as you'd hope, he beats the hell out of Nagata
with all sorts of awesome punching and kicking variations, awesome
throws and so on. May not be the best one he's ever done, but still
totally badass. Then it's time for Nagata's revenge and he amps up the
violence, laying in some nice kicks, but it's clear his ideas on how to
project violence without actually hitting someone aren't nearly as good
as Murakami's, he can throw a good kick, and he can even throw a good
knee once in a while, but when he's forced to rely on them too much he
wasn't able to maintain that level of believability for long, when he
was on the outside throwing knees that Murakami bladed for they looked
quite good, but by the time he went for them again in the ring they'd
already started looking head scratching. His headbutts were just
disappointing, the idea of him throwing headbutts so the blood spills
from Murakami's forehead to his was cool, but the actual headbutts
weren't very good looking, someone like Akiyama can make headbutting his
own hand look way more violent than Nagata does actually connecting
with the move (maybe that's the problem-if you connect you need to go
all the way ala Ikeda/Ono while working allows more room for
misdirecting the viewer). I did like the finish a lot-Murakami
continuing to get up despite beating to a pulp was something resembling a
movie more than a wrestling match, maybe it's just that his facial
expressions are so big and memorable that one can't help think he'd make
a great villain, it was quite well done, Murakami's last flurry of
throwing desperation shots looked exactly like he was gassed/spent, and
when he went for a throw Nagata easily countered it with a Backdrop. I
also enjoyed how the crowd bit on the penalty kick as a nearfall because
they'd teased it in the beginning and they were conditioned to matches
ending at any time because of Inoki's insanity, and the post-match brawl
was lovely, I almost expected them to shake hands or show some kind of
respect when they kneeled in front of each other but instead they just
slapped the taste out of each other's mouths and it turned into a gang
war. Not on the level of their 2002 classic but still very much worth
watching. ***3/4
Nema komentara:
Objavi komentar