And Now These Three Remain: Faith, Hope and Love. But the Greatest of These is Yoshiaki Fujiwara

Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Dick Murdoch NJPW 10/10/82 - FUN

PAS: One of the coolest things about this NJ HH trove is the chance to see early 80s Fujiwara. I guess this is young Fujiwara although he looks like he is in his mid 40s. Much like the Slaughter match this would have been better five years later, when it would have been competitive. This was more like a competitive squash, but as you might imagine the execution on the simple things in this match was off the charts. Murdoch is so great at working a simple armbar and wristlock, Fujiwara tries a bunch of different adjustments to get out of it, and Murdoch is constantly twisting the wrist in different ways, such masters at work. I also loved how Murdoch kept bionic elbowing Fujiwara's hard head and how frustrated he kept getting, only to get smacked with headbutts. Fujiwara is pretty overqualified to work as Rufus R. Jones, but he is a great Rufus R. Jones.


Yoshiaki Fujiwara/Seiji Sakaguchi/Keiji Muto/Nobuhiko Takada/George Takano vs. Riki Choshu/Tatsumi Fujinami/Akira Maeda/Super Strong Machine/Kengo Kimura NJPW 10/6/87 - EPIC

PAS: The treasure trove of NJ HH footage delivers us what seems to be a previously unearthed New Japan 10 man elimination match. The other Elimination matches finished very high on the NJ DVDVR 80s sets, and this might be a slight step below a MOTD level, it is still really awesome. This was worked at a super sprint pace which works well with all of these guys in this match, and with Choshu, Muto and Fujiwara we have some of the greatest sprint wrestlers ever. I actually really loved Takada in this, he was about as violent as I have seen him, he really kicks the shit out of Choshu and at one point mounts him and lays out some nasty ground and pound. I also love Sakaguchi as a big bruiser chucking people around, he kind of felt like a proto Akira Taue in this. Kind of an odd match structure as the Choshu team gets a four on one advantage on Fujiwara at the end. We get an awesome Stone Cold moment where the crowd in chanting for Fujiwara as he tries to fight everyone, but while he gets a near fall or two, it would have been cooler if he had gotten an elimination before going down. We did get a great Choshu lariat on the finish and Fujiwara sells a Choshu lariat better then anyone. Still that was a minor complaint for an otherwise awesome match. Had no idea this match existed until a week ago, and it was such a treat to have it show up.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FUJIWARA