[2000-10-28-IWA-PR-Heavyweight Title Tournament] Yoshihiro Tajiri vs Ricky Banderas

[soup23]

A dog is wondering around ringside. Glad the spastic editing of the show the day before is gone and we get a longform look at the title tournament. This was a hardcore tv match that was solid for the first round of the tournament and to get the crowd going for the night overall. Finish was kind of weird and uncooperative as Banderas does essentially a roll up German suplex to get the pin. **

[GSR]

Haha, there’s a dog casually walking amongst the fans which I wouldn’t have thought would be allowed, then again this is Puerto Rico and maybe different rules apply there.  Banderas has got the size of advantage and when he blocks a Tajiri hip toss ‘the Japanese Buzzsaw’ kicks him around the side of the head.  Tajiri accepts the ‘test of strength’ which may not be the smartest move, but he’s got a plan and there are some nice wrestling exchanges ending with a ‘stand off’.  The two exchange open hand slaps to the face before a Tajiri spinning wheel kick takes Banderas off his feet.  Tajiri does the mocking of his opponent which gets some laughter and then kicks him around the head again.  He backdrops him over the top rope, however Banderas lands on the apron and heads up top, only to fall off the top turnbuckle and back onto the apron.  In a truly bizarre moment he then struggles to enter the ring between the ropes, like his brain has gone to sleep or something.  A sloppy belly to back suplex that Tajiri kicks out of and ‘the buzzsaw’ returns to kicking the snot out of his opponent.  Banderas escapes the brain buster and some weird rolling cradle that he has do twice sees him pick up the win, hooking Tajiri’s pants in the process.

The start of this wasn’t bad at all but the match fell apart when Banderas lost his balance on the top turnbuckle (what is it with those turnbuckles in Puerto Rico?).  I don’t know if that shook him up or whether he was legit shook up from an errant kick (I didn’t see one), although the latter would certainly explain why the final few minutes were such a mess.  Tajiri was much better than Miguel Perez, but just as with Crazy this feels like a waste of him in what hasn’t been much of a tournament so far.