Finlay is Going to Make him a Big Sharp Axe, Shining Steel Tempered in Fire

Dave Finlay/Murat Bosporus/Big Boy v. Yoshiaki Fujiwara/TAJIRI/Hajime Ohara SMASH 12/30/11

This really felt like a classic lucha trios match building to a big singles match. The match they were setting up was TAJIRI v. Finlay although this could have easily set up Finlay v. Fujiwara or Finlay v. Ohara as Finlay gets awesome sections with all three. Finlay has said that an early 80's match with Fujiwara is one of his favorites, and three decades later we get a glance of what that might have looked like, and it was awesome. I loved Finlay bullying Fujiwara into the corner and cheap shotting him, just to see Fujiwara fire back with this great "not in my house motherfucker" look on his face. Finlay pummeling Ohara to get under TAJIRI's skin was great, as was Finlay's interactions with TAJIRI. I don't really think of TAJIRI as a matworker, but he hit the mat hard here. The turks were mainly there as window dressing, although TAJIRI's berserker chopping down of Big Boy was one of the cooler finishes of the last half a decade. Great stuff, and one of the better matches of the year