Stiff fests are an easy sell for me. Show me two wrestlers just beating the crap out of each other and I will definitely go out of my way to see this match. So when a GIF circulated of these slapping the taste out of each other’s mouths, I decided that after several months I needed to watch a NOAH match.
On the whole, I didn’t regret it. There’s a lot of stiff shots peppered throughout this entire contest. Kenoh starts laying in some really great kicks early and he doesn’t ever let up, only getting more brutal down the stretch. Nakajima got goaded into throwing some stiff shots as well but I found him far more inconsistent. In fact, much of the first half of this match gets dragged down by Nakajima’s incredibly weak offense. Kenoh’s just throwing these bomb kicks from the go and Nakajima just kind of wanders his way into control.
There’s far too much fat on this match. There’s a really strong, undeniable 15-20 minutes in these guys but boy, does that excess leave its mark. It takes about half the runtime for things to kick into second gear and luckily when that begins, it doesn’t really let up. The strike exchanges were as satisfying as I’d hope based on the GIFs. Just absolute brutality especially on their kicks. I thought that it was a clever touch to end the match on a KO from Kenoh’s high kick. It made those strike exchanges key moments in the narrative instead of just stuff to do.
I wish all wrestling matches could be broken down so simply. Keep the kicking, leave the rest. This one isn’t hard to figure out.
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