This review was commissioned by Dan Vacura over on my Ko-fi account.
A match so iconic that it launched a million imitators. Even for myself, memories of this bout get tinged by the frustration with how much its brought on in the years to come. There’s no escaping the strike exchange in the 2020s, and while they’re not the sole culprits, Kobashi and Sasaki sort of codify the trope in a way no single match had done before it. There’s just no getting over how fucking sick the key images of this bout are. Kobashi and Sasaki standing strong in the middle of the Dome, sweat flying as their muscled arms crash against those broad chests.
Who wouldn’t want a piece of that glory?
The match is most famous for the extended chop exchange in the second act. As with most things that get copied and diluted with time, it’s always refreshing to see the wonder of the original. For one thing, and this can’t be understated as a truly important part of it, every single chop looks brutal. There’s no understating how the physicality of it conveys a true sense of struggle here, not only of the body but of the spirit as well. With these two established vanguards of the Japanese wrestling industry clashing together on the biggest stage possible, there’s room for the action to take on greater meaning.
It helps too that there’s so much nuance in the performance of it. The slight cracks in bravado where exhaustion starts to slip in, those moments where the two come face-to-face daring the other to break. The way those minute changes in the dynamic actually draw the crowd in with them instead of merely overwhelming them with sound. It’s genuinely powerful stuff, a real true clash of these stubborn, bullheaded men with nothing but pride fueling their rapidly decaying bodies. Unlike many versions of this two, the segment actually climaxes: Kobashi reels back and nails a truly nasty chop that levels Sasaki, lovingly replayed to us in slow motion by the NOAH production.
And then beyond that, the rest of the match too.
Something that often gets lost in the conversation, or at least in my own memory, is just how fantastic the third act of the bout is. The chop exchange is not the eventual point of the thing, after all, but a means of upping the emotional stakes of the bout through a viscerally satisfying bit of action. The finishing stretch itself is just as great, if not even wilder than the chops. There’s some truly nasty bombs here, all in the grand tradition of the Kobashi’s beloved King’s Road, including a Sasaki Northern Lights Bomb to the floor, and some really gross head-first half-and-half suplexes from Kobashi. Not a single bump looks cowardly, every one of them looks like absolute death.
It’s how much they put into the best of this match that compensates for the worst of it. The match takes its time to get moving, fairly so given that they’re properly pacing this out as a real heavyweight clash, but that first act leading into the chop exchange don’t do much for me outside of the killer Chicana-esque point from Kobashi on the outside of the ring. I don’t get much from those early skirmishes, but that single point feels just as large as the stadium they’re in.
For all it offers for the most primal parts of the brain with its big chops and killer drops, so too does it satisfy something even deeper with those moments that allow us to breathe between all the action. Great wrestling moves with rhythm, and rests lead to those grand swells as much as any other note.
Rating: ****1/4
