Finlay is Walking Home Three Parts Pissed

Fit Finlay vs. El Samurai NJPW 4/23/92 - FUN

ER: Finlay was a regular fly-in for the early 90s Juniors tournaments, but his matches always were clipped to shreds if they saw tape at all. So it's satisfying to finally see an actual Finlay singles match, albeit one worked a little more house show style. I'm about as cool as can be with Finlay working a house show style, though. When everything you do looks that good, flash isn't necessary. Instead he just drops 12-6 elbows on Samurai's noggin, pastes him with standing elbows, strangles him in a grisly straightjacket choke (with a kick to the spine for good measure), collides into Samurai with a couple short arm clotheslines, the kind of thing you'd expect, getting his shots in while Samurai works over his leg. The stuff on the floor was cool, with Finlay attacking him with nasty chairshots and Samurai eventually getting fed up and attacking back. Finlay hits this lighting fast clothesline off the apron, and I never recall him doing that before. He drifted out of view from the camera and then suddenly in the background he just launches himself at Samurai. Back in he drops the most precise and quick knee right between Samurai's eyes. The finish felt like a house show finish, with Finlay hitting a leaping tombstone, missing a splash or headbutt off the top, and getting rolled up. It was weird seeing Finlay attempt some flying move off the top, that's not a thing that happens.

PAS: I thought Samurai was close to a non-entity in this, which kept it from being anything more then a fun Finlay showcase match. Finlay looked great though, very WCW era Finlay, smash mouthed, nasty and hard hitting. I love watching Finlay do simple things, he has the best bodyslam in wrestling history, and his elbows and knees are just perfection. The brawling on the outside was great too, Finlay's selling on the edge of the chair chairshots was great. It looked like it smashed him square in the face, and I am sure it barely touched him at all. I pretty much hated the finish, that Tombstone was the nastiest move of the match, and Samurai winning on a banana peel spot, right after eating that move was dumb.

ER: New Japan juniors routinely told tombstone piledrivers to go fuck themselves.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE FINLAY