Jun Akiyama vs. Takashi Sugiura

[8.0] "Great, unheralded match, unfortunate to have occured long after NOAH's peak but before the proliferation of Japanese wrestling on streaming sites. Akiyama and Sugiura do some classic wizardry here with spots that look like they should knock either man unconscious. Akiyama does a great job eating strike after strike after strike and selling his way back into the fight. This goes a long way to getting a half full Ariake Coliseum into the match, because as you can tell from the opening minutes, they weren't exactly blowing the roof off the rafters. It's a twenty five minute match but I never got close to wanting them to wrap it up. The match keeps escalating until they arrive at an absolute mother of a finish."

[8.0] "Not as good as their Global League match, but a very worthy followup. The formulaic structure of a big title match held this back a bit which is ironic to say. Sugiura was very dominant here which I liked as Akiyama's biggest strength in my opinion is his selling. Nice back and forth of big moves and lots of strikes, ****1/4."