This was part of the 2012 Global League tournament.
This match has a lot of slapping.
TONS.
With these two, that’s great. Nagata isn’t an all time great slapper or anything, but he’s good at putting a lot behind it and in between it, in terms of emotion and reaction. KENTA has some of the fastest hands in the history of wrestling, in addition to always striking true in a mechanical sort of sense. They’re also both incredible kickers. Not all of Nagata’s shot are as purely accurate as KENTA’s are, but when he’s off, it leads to him maybe for real knocking KENTA out when he’s a little off and lands a shoot knee lift instead of a kick up to the chest.
They don’t do much more than that. It’s a mid tour show in a smaller venue, and given that these two have two different major title matches over the next year and a half, it’s not worth getting worked up about. Most of that is because this match is still just so incredibly satisfying even without all of the bells and whistles and the epic finishing run.
KENTA stays in the slap fight a little too long, and Nagata is able to rock him with a heavier hand. Really interestingly too, Nagata catches KENTA with a cut off knee when he dives for the legs. A hard knee isn’t something Nagata never does, but it’s much more in line with the Takayama and Sugiura sort of attack that’s always worked especially well on KENTA. Given how the tournament ends up, it’s a really smart little touch that sparks the memory. It feels slightly off to accuse these two of putting a lot of thought into something like that, but it’s just out of the ordinary enough to draw attention to itself.
Following the big knock out, Yooj ties it up with the beautiful Backdrop Hold.
A practice run before 2013’s try at it, but what a fun practice run.
HANDWERK 