[1995-12-21-FMW-Year End Sensation] Hayabusa & Great Sasuke & Koji Nakagawa vs Super Delphin & Ricky Fuji & Taka Michinoku

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[Loss]

This mix of wrestlers produced a much better match than I thought they would. This isn't quite a Michinoku Pro match, but there's not much difference between the MPro and FMW guys. They find a happy medium and everyone stays in that groove. Not a great match, but a really good one, and one that overcame a potential styles clash really well. Taka/Hayabusa in a long singles match probably would have been a MOTYC in 1995 or 1996.

[El-P]

Probably. Sadly, Hayabusa worked with Sasuke, and it wasn't as great.

Well, there's quite a bit of difference between the MPro guys and Nakagawa/Fuji.

[Loss]

Well yeah. But they still had a really good match. The right guys did the bulk of the work here.

[FLIK]

there's quite a bit of difference between the MPro guys and Nakagawa/Fuji

Eh, you're underrating Nakagawa.

 

Of this lineup Fuji is the only guy who sticks out on paper as far as "style clash" goes but he was actually usually a really good guy to have in multi man tags, especially against quality opponents. Has a lot of firey, energetic stuff he can hit in short burst, works well as a "hot tag" guy. It's singles whear he struggled.

 

Nakagawa was always great or well, most of the time atleast (we'll pretend most of the Hayabusa singles matches & the feud vs Onryu never happened).

He has some really good matches vs Taka & Funaki later on in 96 that are worth tracking down.

 

Taka/Hayabusa in a long singles match probably would have been a MOTYC in 1995 or 1996.

Probably. Sadly, Hayabusa worked with Sasuke, and it wasn't as great.

They did have one

11/16/96, went 16-17 mins, one of the first puro matches I ever saw actually.

Not a MOTYC but it was pretty damn awesome last I remember.

[El-P]

Hayabusa vs TAKA was a great short match.

I'm not underrating Nakagawa. He could be good, especially during his "Bret Hart" days. And when he sucked, he sucked pretty hard (no, I can't forget the infamous Hayabusa matches nor GOEMON vs Onryo:)). He just wasn't on the same level as any of the MPro guys, who were three great workers.

[Tim Evans]

I take it Koji was a big Bret Hart fan? This was a fun match, Hayabusa and Sasuke work well together. Always good to see Ricky Fuji.

[PeteF3]

A juniors 6-man based less around the usual Michinoku Pro lucha/comedy spots and more about six guys beating the shit out of each other, with some primo dickishness by the heels. Nakagawa and Fuji were pretty much warm bodies here but they didn't actively hurt anything either, and everyone else was going balls to the wall. Short on psychology but since you didn't have two seconds going by without somebody either getting pummeled or flying out to the floor, that's easy to overlook.

[Zenjo]

I'd say this was an MPro type of six man with fast paced action all the way. So not surprisingly it was at its best when the visitors from the North East of Japan were in there. Only Fuji was a weak link. It won't make my year end list, but passed the time pleasantly enough. Taka vs Hayabusa in a long singles match from this time would've been good at best and quite possibly a mess.

[RazorbladeKiss87]

This was a fun match but kind of a mess, with guys seemingly out of place a lot, leading to random seeming moves. Taka/Sasuke worked best together. I really liked the double lariat Doomsday Device style move that the heels pulled out.