Chris Taylor vs. Jumbo Tsuruta

[5.0] "Decent match. Chris Taylor is obviously very green and somewhat limited physically, despite being only in his mid 20s, but his amateur wrestling credentials (Taylor won a bronze medal in the '72 olympics) and his size alone make for a great prospect and he shows some glimpses of potential in this match. Tsuruta does an admirable job carrying this match and adapts very well to the size difference. Tsuruta plays more of a physical underdog than perhaps he ever had up to this point, not even against Baba is the size and strength difference played up to this extent. The technical work is fine but, despite featuring two olympic wrestlers, the match is at it's best when things get heated in the 2nd and 3rd falls and Taylors starts pressing his advantage while Tsuruta is forced to pull out the big guns to take the big man down. In these falls, Taylor plays more of a bully monster heel than an olympic technician and it's by far the strongest part of his game. The finish is somewhat lazy and post match brawl feels obligatory and unearned, but decent match"

[4.0] "It was an OK match, Taylor seems like he had potential to be something but passed away a few years after this, he showed some of that here even if he wasn't all that great. Overall it was fine and Jumbo was solid, but can't say it left much of an impression on me."

[5.0] "This isn't a great match by any means, but it is an interesting one, as Chris Taylor is one of the people Jumbo competed against in Greco-Roman at the Munich Olympics. It's interesting to watch Jumbo try to bring down this mountain of a man, which is a simple wrestling story but not really one we'd seen from him to this point (Abdullah might be large, but he doesn't really operate in a manner that would be conducive to constructing a match like this). After a matwork-based first fall, Jumbo gets the pin with a diving dropkick at 11:20. Taylor evens this in fairly short order with a scoop slam and body splash, but when the third fall spills over to the outside, Jumbo gets the victory by countout after evading a body splash on the outside mat. **1/2"