Unity comes to mind when I think of this match. That’s an idea that runs through the entire thing. On the surface it, there’s that sense of camaraderie and team-based feeling that comes from the 5-on-5 gauntlet set up to begin with. When the members of New Japan’s sekigun stand against Choshu’s Ishingun representatives as the sequence of entrants get announced, one can almost see the literal line in the sand. Inoki and the home team clad in white while Choshu and his goons stand across from them in black. It’s about as clear as it gets, the immediate contrast of good and bad, each side literally waving their banners before going into war. Goddamn, it’s a beautiful thing.
What really helps make this match come alive stems from how that sense of team unity permeates the entire thing. One of the match’s most incredible achievements is getting across that sense of team tactics and strategy that can be found in the best WarGames matches, the Thunder Queen Battle, or even the best CHIKARA ciberneticos. All that despite the fact that in practice this is a series of one-on-one encounters without room for double teaming or interference in the ring itself. Despite this, the inherent strategies and shifting dynamics created by each elimination inform the entire drama that runs through this nearly hour plus spectacle. Narratives form and extend beyond each individual encounter and the results of each have immediate and clear consequences for the things that follow.
To that end as well, I can’t really think of a pro wrestling match that offers as much rich variety as this bout from start to finish. David vs. Goliath narratives? Yatsu and Takada have you covered. Extended limbwork? Boy, do you get that early on. Heel stooging? Some of that for you too. An iconic superfight feel? I mean, it’s Inoki and Choshu, come on now.
Some of the match’s better qualities can be tied specifically to the standout performances in the match. Perhaps the one that most people associate with this, rightly so, is Tatsumi Fujinami’s astounding run as the opening entrant for his team. Fujinami lasts for three segments of the match, clashing with Kuniaki Kobayashi, Isamu Teranishi, and Yoshiaki Yatsu, in that order. The central feature of the bout is Fujinami coming in with a bad hand that the away team is glad to exploit. To this end, Fujinami’s hand selling is wonderful, the damage accumulating through each segment and having a progressively larger impact on his ability to carry forward in the match. Importantly too, is just how each opponent approaches the handwork with such variety as well. Kobayashi tries to engage Fujinami on a fairly sporting level as competitive juniors actually trying to wrestle for dominance, Kobayashi only really goes to the hand on occasion towards the latter end of the first segment. This feels like Kobayashi going to it really as something of a last resort dirty tactic to try and regain momentum and it never really pays off for him. Teranishi, by contrast, is like a shark smelling blood. There’s a remarkable laser focus by Teranishi who goes about basically trying to snap off Fujinami’s hand against the ropes, the turnbuckles, anything. Despite some occasional repetition, there’s a fantastic urgency to how much Teranishi attacks the hand and how much allows Fujinami to come across as sympathetic in the way he’s truly mastered at this point. By the time Yatsu enters, he’s more of a dog cleaning up the scraps, again going for the hand but also escalating the violence by taking the brawl out of the ring, a strategic play to get Fujinami out of bounds.
Fujinami’s performance through all of that is a wonderful display of emotional progression on top of all the selling as well. The initial scrap with Kobayashi dents his hand, but gives him enough confidence to talk some shit before the second bout against Teranishi starts. Watch him as the ring announcements are being done, basically telling Teranishi out and out that he’s going to go up 2-0 against Ishingun. Fujinami makes good on his promise–spitefully tapping out Teranishi with his own captain’s sasorigatame too–but it costs him dearly. Confident as he was and even victorious, the Teranishi encounter was a highly damaging one for Fujinami, and by the time Yatsu comes out, all that cocky bluster is gone. Fujinami expertly projects that he has to lock in and his doomed result against Yatsu is a heartbreaker because of that. One can read on his face that he probably didn’t expect to get past Yatsu, and to have meet his end in such an undignified way–strung up in the ropes and hanging without anyone to help him–might be one of pro wrestling’s greatest heartbreakers ever.
There’s a spirited underdog junior performance by Nobuhiko Takada here, and some fun stuff with Yatsu, and even a real crisp and efficient stretch from Kengo Kimura but the next wrestler to really steal the show is Animal Hamaguchi. Hamaguchi’s role here as the second to the last member of Choshu’s team is to weather the storm, even up the numbers and try to regain the advantage if possible, and his approach to it is stalling! And oh my god, it works brilliantly. After all the fire in the first thirty to forty minutes of the match, seeing Hamaguchi intentionally trying to take the wind out of the sails of the home team is infuriating. He’s scampering to the floor, avoiding engaging, and generally just running the clock until he can pick his spots with those beautiful Baba-esque neck drops which he gets a ton of air time on. He’s just the perfect scummy little heel that the away team needs to start evening the odds.
Hamaguchi meets his match against a fellow scumbag though in Yoshiaki Fujiwara. Fujiwara only has one segment in the entire match as he comes in against Hamaguchi in the penultimate slot for Inoki’s team. Fujiwara comes in with a cut on his forehead and that knowing crooked smile like he’s about to finally get some comeuppance. Fujiwara and Hamaguchi had brawled a few times in the run up to this match and they rekindle that spark with each other pretty much immediately. Earning his namesake, Animal bites and claws at Fujiwara’s wound, basically playing a lovely rudo here for a red hot Kuramae Kokugican who are ready to despise the villains and uplift the heroes. Fujiwara, on his part, plays a great walking tall babyface in spite of his overall vibe. Who wouldn’t smile along with him when he grabs Animal by the hair and starts laying in those signature headbutts?
The Fujiwara/Hamaguchi portion ends with a masterstroke of booking as well. Instead of playing for the numbers advantage, Fujiwara instead aims for a defensive tactic to wipe the slate clean. Hamaguchi tries to run as he’s done all match long, and Fujiwara gives chase. Fujiwara literally plays defense here as if he’s out there on the hardwood, holding his arms out to catch Hamaguchi as he tries to slip back into the ring. The double count is immensely satisfying as a win for the home team, and it works on several levels. One, it mirrors and therefore acts as comeuppance to how Yatsu eliminated Fujinami earlier in the match, but secondly, it leaves the teams directly even so that Choshu and Inoki get to square off one-on-one without any interference.
In previous years, the Inoki/Choshu match-up failed to live up to the intensity of the rest of the bout, but on rewatch, the tone they go for is exactly right. Fujiwara and, by extension, the rest of the home team put in all the work so that Inoki could come into this without any questions or disruptions. The fact that both men come in fresh, neither worn down from the rest of the gauntlet, means that the reset in tone is not only necessary, but the actual kayfabe goal of the babyfaces involved. If it’s just mano-a-mano, why wouldn’t Inoki and Choshu approach it with a certain caution when everything boils down to this? There’s no more clock to run out, just two men at the top of their game trying to outdo the other.
And when everything else is stripped away, the natural conclusion follows as well. Choshu’s game, competitive, and filled with struggle, but he just can’t get it done at the end of the day. On the mat, Inoki always has an answer, and so Choshu does what he’s always done best, escalate and move into the bombs where he has the best shot. But even then he can’t quite get the momentum right. He fights hard for a sasorigatame but Inoki doesn’t even need the ropes, he counters with an almost practiced ease to neuter Choshu’s most effective submission hold. When Choshu attempts to start a firefight and get punchy? Inoki’s ready for that too. Did you see what that man did to Rusher Kimura’s face in 1983, Choshu? You had no fucking chance.
A truly astonishing piece of work here. The synergy between crowd, performance, and booking here feels unrivaled across all of professional wrestling, especially when one considers how many factors were at play that could have sent it unraveling. A genuine epic, in the trust sense of the word. Sprawling, grand, and featuring characters that can extend beyond themselves and move into the realm of archetype. It’s not just that the planets aligned for this match, it’s as if we all had a chance to watch the celestial bodies fall into place on the world’s most powerful telescope in real time. Put simply, out of this world good.
IS IT BETTER THAN 6/3/94? Dude, were you paying attention? Of course.
Rating: *****
