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[1982-11-04-NJPW] Tiger Mask vs Kuniaki Kobayashi


Loss

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Kobayashi was always one of my favorite juniors and I’m reminded why watching this. He goes move for move with Tiger Mask and has an impressive variety of kicks at his disposal. This is better than the Dynamite Kid match, if only because you get the feeling watching those that fans are just waiting for the next big move. Here, the crowd even got into the submissions, chanting loudly for Tiger Mask when Kobayashi locked in the cross armbreaker. There is some sloppiness from Sayama here yet again, but he’s opposite a guy who seems to have the perfect understanding of how to work opposite him, so it doesn’t detract from the match as much as it does in some other cases. Kobayashi goes all rudo trying to unmask Sayama, which builds the heat in a big way. He even yanks Sayama from the ground by his mask at one point. The match ends when the referee can’t stop the mask ripping and I’m actually really looking forward to their January match. This was pretty great. ****1/4

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  • 1 year later...

I thought Tiger Mask looked really good here, with his swanky takedowns and reversals, and a lot of really innovative offense for the time. This was definitely one of his more...impassioned performances early on. He's got plenty of fire, great agility, and a little extra spicy mustard behind his strikes. Kobayashi was the really solid yang to Tiger's yin. He's great when he's frustrated with Tiger and going after his mask out of desperation toward the end. A fun work rate match with a good crowd.

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  • GSR changed the title to [1982-11-04-NJPW] Tiger Mask vs Kuniaki Kobayashi

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