Simple but smart junior heavyweight wrestling is the best junior heavyweight wrestling, in my opinion, and Daisuke Sasaki is one of the unheralded wizards of the style. This isn't a match that is going to blow many away and that's okay, that's not what they were setting out to do. But it had a little bit of everything, including a great counter-based approach, a couple of high risk spots, and a little comedy with the ropes shenanigans, Asahi's cobra strike, and the ref bumps. Shiori Asahi has a lot of the right tools, especially in his counterwork, but he tends to try to do too much in his matches. He was more grounded here (sometimes not by choice) but he's got a lot of neat touches to his style, like his simple counter to a side headlock. Sasaki goes after the neck early on to set-up for his crossface hold, and like Asahi, he's wrestling more of a grounded approach, though he does pull out his great diving elbow drop to the outside. I thought the octopus hold merry-go-round was fun, and I loved Asahi's answer to the backslide struggle by slipping through the legs into a swanky pin attempt. He's able to slip out of the crossface holds a few times but when Sasaki finally catches him, he uses the crossover version and Asahi quickly taps. An easy, breezy watch well worth your time.
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