03/08/20 AJPW Randoms

Steve Williams def. John Nord in 9:18. I don’t know if Williams felt like he needed to break out all the stops to get an old friend a job or what, but these two broke out all the stops. Some of the highlights were Williams doing a suicide dive, Nord doing a pescadero, and Nord giving Williams a piledriver on the floor. It’s amazing Nord was this good here after showing none of it as the Berzerker in the years prior. Nord missed a knee off the top and Williams gave Nord an insane looking backdrop driver for the win. I liked it even more because Williams took a lot of Nord’s shit, was able to pull off one move out of nowhere for the win and went right back to selling. ***3/4

Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi def. Big Bossman & Stan Hansen in 15:12. A lot of this match was the big gaigin beating up Kobashi, and it looked really good. They had a couple of perfectly timed saves at the end, but didn’t overdo it. Finish was clever when Misawa tripped his own partner to avoid a Hansen lariat, sending Hansen to the floor. Kobashi ended up giving Bossman a suplex, and Misawa finished him with a frogsplash. Bossman was better here than he had been in years in WWF, and was always such a better worker as a heel. With that being said, Hansen was just always so great as an out-of-control cowboy. It started the moment he walked out the curtain, and ended as soon as he walked out of the arena. Misawa and Kobashi are two of the best ever, so this worked. ****1/4

Tenryu def. Hara in 12:43. The match was a little slow, but then they did an excellent job with Hara putting the heat on Tenryu, including throwing one Memphis-style right hand. That tickled me. Then, Tenru did some botched rollup coming into the ring for a fucking TERRIBLE finish. They looked like they were building to something special, but that was a poorly-exectuted bad idea. Read that sentence two or three times. Blah! **1/2