SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR!!! NJPW 10/23/92

This card was the beginning of the WAR v. NJ feud and had the frantic riot feel that you would want an inter-promotional blood feud to have.

Akitoshi Saito v. Masao Orihara

PAS: This is a young gun v. young gun match to open the feud and was a total barnburner. Saito will always be known as the guy who killed Misawa, which is a shame because he has had a great under the radar resume of matches. The crowd is a GOP Debate audience (pro-WAR..yeah daddy I gots the jokes), and they want the heads of the karate army. It is worked kicker vs. grappler and both guys do an amazing job of getting that across. Orihara is desperately grabbing for leglocks and suplexes, while Saito is kicking his lungs out. They never seem to be fulling cooperating with each other which adds to the match, I don't want good execution, I want this to feel like the end fight of a kung fu movie. Great in ring acting from both guys, Orihara comes off desperate and bought in, this is life and death for him, while Saito is great as the emotionless killing machine. Wrestling rarely has this kind of intense sentiment from a crowd anymore and it can make an average match great, and a good match epic. The same match hold for hold would have been a nifty undercard match on a WAR card. You put it in this Korakuen, on this night and it is a truly memorable piece of history.

ER: Damn Saito has just always been this size, hasn't he. He probably weighed 240 as a 12 year old. Both men are shaved head punks here, Saito yet to grow out his bleach blonde mullet and Orihara yet to disgrace his family by becoming a yakuza button man. And I love this type of match, where some shots miss, and then other shots hit so hard and so awkwardly that you swear it's real. The crowd is crazy hot for this, at one point cutting to a tiny man angrily flipping off the ring, which is not something you really see in Japan. I love these types of matches, they feel like they could end at any time. Every time Orihara leaps on Saito with a sleeper, or Saito plants his heel into Orihara's dome feels like a potential ending with legions of jogging suits and karate gis waiting to swarm. Inter-promotional stuff with karate guys always seems to add even more of an edge, as you already have wrestling promotions feuding, but then it adds this whole new level of wrestling vs. "real" fighting and the fans always seem to get up in an electric lather for all of it.

SEGUNDA CAIDA DECLARES WAR