Monday, December 19, 2016

Yuji Nagata vs. Manabu Nakanishi (NJPW, 12/17/16)

Part of me wishes they would’ve held off on this match until Wrestle Kingdom and made it Nakanishi’s retirement match because I doubt we’ll get anything this good out of him again. This was by no means a great match; however, it was a GOOD Nakanishi match. He gave it everything his increasingly immobile body could muster, including a plancha, a top rope dropkick and that awesome superplex spot, not to mention taking a top rope Exploder from Nagata! I liked the narrative early on, as Nakanishi gets the advantage on Nagata and Nagata resorts to attacking Nakanishi’s weakness in the knee – great selling in that moment by Nakanishi.  But that storyline is soon abandoned in favor of Nakanishi getting in his signature spots, which works for this match and the crowd was really behind him. Nagata pins him after using the rare wrist-clutch Exploder. Nakanishi’s annual good match was a lot of fun and I don’t know if we’ll get anything like this out of him again, which is why this may have worked better on a bigger stage. 

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