Koshinaka Can't Put Back Together What You Sever

Masashi Aoyagi/Akitoshi Saito vs. Shiro Koshinaka/Kuniaki Kobayashi NJPW 3/9/92 - EPIC

PAS: This is pitched at the speed and violence of all of the other matches in this feud, a pair of guys in Gi's barreling full speed ahead throwing wild punches and kicks, while a pair of guys in long wrestling tights try to subdue them with the art of pro-wrestling. Koshinaka is a revelation in these matches. He isn't a guy I have ever been super high on, but put him in an invasion scenario and he is a stone cold killer. That hip attack, which can look silly, is just awesome in these matches. He looks like he is landing KO blows to the temple and jaw with his hip bones. Finish of this match was really iconic, with Saito getting his eye opened up, and both Koshinaka and Kobayashi making a real solid attempt to blind him for life. The match eventually gets stopped as Saito is crying blood, and we get a wild New Japan versus Karate Guys pull apart post match. AEW should just get a bunch of guys from Bart Vale's Florida Karate dojo and just redo this whole feud, I mean how incredible would Dustin Rhodes fighting Karate Guys be?

ER: This is great. We were just able to watch a fight that happened a few weeks before this match, with Koshinaka and Kobayashi really trying to push Aoyagi over the line in some pretty hellish ways. I thought it was such a fascinating way to present the home promotion boys come off looking like real assholes, intentionally or not. This is a tornado tag, and absolute shoot fight craziness because of it. The phrase "this is a shoot" got really overused the last few years on some pretty shitty wrestling, and you see something like this and you see multiple moments where these guys are clearly shooting on each other and you get that sense of actual danger and unprofessionalism. 

Koshinaka and Kobayashi are monsters, and Koshinaka is especially a prick here, kicking Saito multiple times in the cheekbone when you could tell he was not expecting to be kicked in his face. It takes a certain kind of man to kick a man in the face when the owner of the face is not expecting it, and Koshinaka shows he is definitely that kind of man. Around those kicks were all four men throwing knees as hard as they could into each other's chest and throw as many hard elbows and palms at each other's heads as possible. Every move to submission or strike is doused in hate, and some more unprofessional shots open Saito wide open and lead to a stoppage. Koshinaka took things too far, and I was dying for the karate guys to split his head open with an axe kick. There is a weird/cool restart with a new karate guy replacing Saito (whose head won't stop bleeding) and this man is smaller, and gets tossed around like a prison bitch by Kobayashi. Kobayashi drills him into the mat with a couple capture suplexes, rips at his gi, then flattens him with his body to lock in a choke, just the cruel kind of way a vet would treat a guy first day of camp to see if he can accidentally murder him. Koshinaka and Kobayashi really put me on the side of Team Karate here, can only imagine how I would feel as a Japanese teenager in 1992.