New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV Episode 4 Workrate Report

1. Prince Devitt vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (6/22/13)

This is a 15 minute match clipped down to 2 minutes of highlights, so that seems pretty pointless. I liked some of Tanahashi's stuff in this, like his somersault senton and he actually snapped off the Slingblade. Devitt's stuff was all mostly complicated and looked good because Tanahashi flew into it. He's selling a knee intermittently throughout, yet still goes for a huge double stomp off the top. He misses and starts grabbing his knee, but I guess I'm failing to see how it wouldn't still hurt real bad if he had landed flush. Even in these brief highlights we got a fair amount of Bullet Club interference, and at one point Fale/Devitt wait around in hilariously bad fashion for a Tanahashi HFF off the top to the floor.  Devitt gets bumped to the floor and then he and Fale immediately get into position to take the crossbody, even before Tanahashi had even made a motion to do the move. So there they are waiting to take a move that at his quickest would have likely taken Tanahashi 5+ seconds to get into position to perform. Horrible ref Red Shoes Unno also is distracted for a preposterous amount of time by Anderson, just a poorly conceived spot to end a match. So, we get two minutes shown, and there are a couple of horrible moments in those two minutes. Oof.

2. Togi Makabe vs. Kazuchika Okada (6/22/13)

I really liked Makabe in this one, really did not like Okada in this one. Makabe threw a bunch of really great clotheslines and a couple real nice bridging suplexes, but none of it mattered as Okada would just do offense whenever he pleased, sometimes just beating Makabe to his feet after being the one who just took a big move. There were a couple different moments where Okada would get dumped by a suplex, then with both men selling on the mat Okada would be the first one up and just do a move of his own. And a lot of Okada's stuff did not look good. He has a real bad top rope elbow, and the match ended with the Rainmaker, which in this match just means that it ended with a clothesline that looked weaker than all of Makabe's clotheslines. Mauro went full scream mode pretty early in this match, too, although the crowd did get real hot at one point off a Makabe German suplex near fall. But man I'm not getting very excited for more big Okada main events. Dude will just get all his shit in, no matter if it makes sense the way the match is building or not. Still, I liked Makabe a lot more than I remembered, so this wasn't a total waste.