2017 Ongoing MOTY List: Sabre v. Tanahashi 1

74. Zack Sabre Jr. v. Hiroshi Tanahashi NJPW 7/17

ER: This was the opening night of the G1 and these two didn't seem to care at all that their limbs would have to hold up over the following month. Early on Tanahashi goes for his leaping elbowdrop and Sabre shifts to catch him in an armbar. You can ask why Tanahashi - with bicep tendinitis - was even attempting an elbowdrop, but you dance with what brung you and he paid. Tanahashi attacks the arm the whole match, firing kicks, and locking on painful octopus holds to overall weaken Tanahashi and make it easier to get at the arm. Tanahashi finds openings by landing a bunch of nice body shots, hard shots under the ribs, and going after Sabre's long legs. We get some real nasty leg whips and dragon screws, and a tightly locked in cloverleaf. Finish was a nasty bit of business, with Tanahashi going for the high fly flow and eating knees about as painfully as possible, leading to Sabre trapping his good arm and dismantling the bad arm. The crowd gets super loud cheering for Tanahashi, as Sabre removes the bicep pad and starts unraveling Tanahashi's arm tape, yanking and snapping that arm around like a guy trying to rip a branch off a tree. Tanahashi's selling throughout was good, and I especially thought his pained howls were effective. A lot of wrestlers have a weird habit of staying quiet through pain, and Tanahashi's pain was palpable thanks to his screams. Killer, simple match.

PAS: There was some stuff in this match that was pretty bad looking, both guys have some of the cringiest looking stuff for supposedly great wrestlers (Sabre I think is pretty good, Tanahashi I have never gotten). I thought those body shots Eric was praising looked crappy all windup and no impact. There is a section where they both duck their heads and get kicked in the stomach, and both guys do ever step in the processes badly, the head drops for the backdrops look bad, the kicks don't connect, the selling wasn't plausible, I was ready to delete the file and curse Eric for making me watch this, but it got really good by the end. Tanahashi did an awesome job of selling the bad elbow, and I really liked the viciousness of Sabre tearing at the elbow tape and his manipulation of the elbow was grotesque. It is a big deal to make a huge star like Tanahashi tap out, and the violence of Sabre elbow attack made it plausible, it was experimental, he felt like a sadistic toddler trying to find new ways to rip the wings off insects. Hard match for me to rank, as the good stuff was awesome, but the bad was pretty bad.


2017 MOTY MASTER LIST