This review was commissioned by Elsche over on my Ko-fi account.
It’s possible I’m missing some of the context here, but this is about as straightforward a match as you can get. Funaki’s the longtime shooter with a deadly knockout kick and Suwama’s a big man with the Triple Crown Championship and some killer bombs. Crash ‘em together in the ring for a while and see who comes out the other side victorious.
Really, at the heart of it though, the match is about Suwama overcoming.
To that end, the match conveys its message pretty clearly. Funaki tries to ground the match early on but Suwama’s size and power allows him to wriggle free and even end up in a dominant position. Funaki tries to pick apart the champion’s leg with kicks, and makes some decent headway using that to open Suwama up for chops, but Suwama’s able to bridge the distance and nail a big backdrop. And once things get into the bombs section of the match, Funaki’s clearly out of his depth and eats the loss here.
There’s many individual sections of this I like a lot. When Funaki starts the leg work by kicking away at Suwama’s thigh, for example, I thought both men play their roles well. Funaki’s kicks still land with a satisfying snap, and when called upon to sell the leg, Suwama was quite decent here. I especially like the moment where after getting felled, Suwama instinctively moves towards the ropes and protects his leg beneath the bottom rope.
There’s also that delightful strike exchange a little deeper into the match. Funaki, sensing he’s got the champion rocked, really starts laying in this great flurry of strikes that Suwama has no choice but to try and fight back against. The exchange is sufficiently gritty and stiff with an errant headbutt or two thrown in for good measure, enough real contact that Suwama comes out of it with a cut on his forehead.
The striking doesn’t last and the leg work narrative gets sacrificed quickly though. I imagine that it’s in service of the story of Suwama showing up the challenger, as he even hits a somewhat awkward dragon screw-style maneuever here and the two trade ankle locks, but once Suwama and Funaki move on from the leg work, it might as well never have happened. It might also just end up being a me problem that I’m not bought into Suwama cresting this hill enough to care about that particular creative choice. The final string of powerbombs are all well-done and they never get too repetitive to drag things down, but there just isn’t enough meat on the bone here to make the most of it.
I imagine there’s something really great here at about half the length and really boiled down to all its best elements. I know it’s not 1989 anymore, but Funaki in something a little tighter and more explosive could have paired well with Suwama just throwing heaters and dropping him on his head. That’s not quite what we got, but what remains isn’t half bad either.
Rating: ***½
