[9.0] "This is such a great match. It's all technical, realistic grappling, with Kobayashi getting manhandled in the early goings, biding his time to tire Andre out and THEN hitting Andre with a flurry of strikes and snapmares. Just hearing Andre scream and grunt and beg off Kobayashi is the COOLEST stuff, and Andre himself is still quite athletic and mobile at this point in his career. It's a total war of attrition, a game of inches instead of miles and it never gets boring or disinteresting. Andre tries to peel the padding off the turnbuckle, Strong nails him with a bodyslam 15 years before Hogan was the "first" person to slam him and Andre even scores the first fall via a freaking TOMBSTONE PILEDRIVER. The pace is a bit slow by modern standards, but by that same token, the limb work is SUPERB and you feel every submission hold in your veins. It *almost* feels like an early Pride FC bout at times, albeit with WAY more blatant strangulation and disqualifications for referee abuse. Oh, and the finish to the third fall is FANTASTIC. If you've never seen Andre prior to WrestleMania III before, you DEFINITELY owe it to yourself to catch this one."
[10.0] "Andre is seriously a wrestling genius, and his 70s Japan work especially needs to be examined just as well as the work of any other wrestling genius. This is as good as any match happening anywhere in 1972 and Andre is so captivating and mesmerizing while still giving so much to Kobayashi. Similar in structure and story to the Killer Khan match a decade later but a much nimbler Andre, and a more astute opponent in Strong Kobayashi."
[10.0] "Long match but deeply worthwhile if you have the patience. Andre the Giant in his mid 20s is a sight to see, still all the overwhelming physical presence but capable of being quick and light on his feet even when needed. Kobayashi works him over really well and the whole thing is an incredibly physical struggle, they fight for every inch of the match and you see some great sequences, a battle of technique against size that delivers super well."
[5.0] "It's weird to see Andre in such difficulty, he wasn't built as this unbeatable giant yet at this time. As for the match in itself damn... I lost the plot halfway through. Andre's character here isn't compelling, he's just a "bad" heel. He keeps screaming at the crowd for half of the match and frankly it gets boring really quick. I don't mind slow matches who build up gradually, the only thing here is that it aims to nothing of value."
[7.0] "Weird one to review this, so this goes on for 30 minutes of the slowest paced, most boring hold work I've seen in a minute. Then it seems to end, then it starts again and suddenly it's absolutely awesome and builds to a finish I never expected that I actually really enjoyed. The intensity, the speed, the character work and selling is all turned up to 11 and it becomes a great match. I'm tempted to say skip the first fall or x2 your speed on it but sitting through all of that shite for the match to completely change gear does add something to the second fall. So I liked it a lot but I also hated most of it but I think the bit I hated is also kind of essential to enjoying it... my nose is bleeding"
[5.0] "I agree that it's intriguing to see early Andre footage, back when he was far more mobile, but that's not really enough for me to be blown away by him or this match here. He was fine enough for the most part, with Kobayashi a bit better as his partner, but this is definitely one of those old-school matches where there are only a few elements that carry over to today's levels of entertainment. And that's not to say there aren't properly good matches from this era of wrestling, or that this match was without interesting work, but for the most part it seemed to meander at a mediocre level for long periods. The story of the match obviously followed Roussimoff's size and strength advantages as well as his speed and agility disadvantages against Kobayashi's grittiness and grappling prowess, with Kobayashi having to be more intelligent and opportunistic than Roussimoff in order to stay in the match and eventually get the win. It's funny because Kobayashi strongly resembles Inoki and could easily be mistaken as his brother, and he actually wrestles not too differently from him either, though with notably less charisma, intensity, and physicality. A good portion of the match was just Roussimoff wrenching away at Kobayashi, but he had to rely on his immense size alone to put over the damage of this work, since these submissions otherwise weren't too captivating because he wasn't super active with them, while Kobayashi sold his pain and desperate struggle decently enough but not to any notable extent. That work from Roussimoff was still fine, as with his various clobbering strikes, but I've never super enjoyed the big men who deliver such lumbering offence as opposed to being more actively violent. Kobayashi would get many control segments where he'd dominate with some strike flurries and even submissions of his own, plus a handful of spots where he'd dominate in slightly more creative ways, but he never had the intensity, physicality, or flash to make that work more exciting. And, to be fair, Roussimoff wasn't the best worker from underneath in order to elevate Kobayashi's control work, since while Roussimoff did well enough selling his stumbling around when overcommitting on movements, plus when generally taking whatever bumps he physically could, he always undercut his selling with his over-the-top, Chewbacca-like wails of pain in response to every bit of successful offence he sustained. I know that was just one of the most common foreign-heel characteristics back then, but I can't help still finding it too cheesy to take seriously, and I know there were at least some contemporary heels who were more realistic and thus more convincing with their selling anyways, so I feel this still deserves to be criticised for how often it turned the match too far in the pantomime direction. It often felt like if both guys just decided to actually let loose with their strikes and show more desperate struggle during their various submission sequences then this could've been a good match, but instead their intensity levels always felt far too close to 'neutral' for longer than was suitable. What oddly did appeal to me quite a bit in this match was the structuring of all the falls, as obviously this was back in the day when wrestlers were immensely more invested in protecting their characters, thus match structures had to be carefully planned out so that neither guy looked "too weak" at the end and thus became less appealing of an attraction (or so the old-school mentality went). This meant there was a dividing up of how both guys were presented, as Roussimoff looked strong with his Tombstone for the first fall (a move which looked really good, so props to him for that) plus how it was implied he may have actually won the match had he not gotten overly aggressive by illegally choking Kobayashi and manhandling the ref so as to get DQ'd to even the falls, and then he ultimately gave up the 3rd and final fall as he was entangled on the ropes for a countout. This meant Roussimoff was never visually pinned/submitted despite eventually losing the match, maintaining his monster heel aura. In contrast, Kobayashi did seem a bit weak by being pinned with the Tombstone and then being so dominated with the hold Roussimoff was DQ'd for, but he never willingly submitted to Roussimoff's offence, got more or less equal control time, and then the story of his constant evasions and opportune capitalisations culminated in entangling Roussimoff in the ropes to ultimately pick up the win. While they'd feel like cheap finishes if used today (because they'd genuinely be unnecessary given how the business and its reception have since changed), seeing this sort of 'double-protection' was kind of cool for showing the sorts of creative methods they'd have to use to satisfy both sides, and it's good enough that there was still a declared winner who achieved said win directly through his actions, as opposed to the winner only winning via DQ or even getting no winner at all via a no-contest or draw. Anyways, this wasn't too interesting of a match overall but there were still some nice ideas on display, plus most of the match elements at least reached the minimum standard for this to be considered a fine match. **1/2"
[10.0] "HOLY SHIT, THIS WAS SO EPIC. I legit popped at so many different moments. You usually don't say that about an old-school match from the 70s because of how methodical the style used to be, but man, this match was all psychology. What a match. Also, this was my first Andre match. I only knew Andre from WWE, never actually watched a full Andre match from WWE either. But man, he was absolutely amazing. This is not the Andre I was expecting at all. This might also be my first Kobayashi match, and he was amazing too. Such a great dynamic between the two. The mat work was phenomenal and genuinely engaging, and the high spots were also really well done. It was such a fun and entertaining match. This is modern "pro" wrestling at its purest form. No bullshit, just a perfect heel vs. face dynamic. Really, really great. I was recently thinking that maybe I'm overrating matches a lot, but fuck it, this is a solid ***** to me."
[10.0] "Not sure if this is truly a 10/10 match but after seeing the wretched Andre/Ultimate Warrior earlier tonight, this early match with a young and still able Andre was a breath of fresh air."
[8.0] "Great stuff, and like so many others I wish there was more footage of IWE and Andre at this period. Kobayashi is nice, but Andre is the standout and you see how his career went in such a positive direction."
[7.0] "Andre was a tremendous vocal seller ! Heel Andre is so great. Kobayashi is not very good. 40 minutes is a bit long but the work is pretty pretty good with good storytelling."
[8.0] "Actually aged really well for such a old match. A lot of people ignore the fact that Andre was actually a REALLY solid worker in ring when it mattered (and before his gigantism started to break down his body) and this is a good showing for it: a lot of versatile technical moves, and even some pretty brutal ones like a jumping tombstone piledriver at one point. Kobayashi..... is fine and basically plays the basic face wrestler here, nothing remarkable but nothing bad either. Andre works the headlock for most of the match to try and neutralise his foe but fails to keep him down and gets countered a lot. There's a good moment where he has a little tantrum after the ref tells him off and it keeps the crowd pretty hot, there's another where he gets a sneaky attack in by consistently grabbing the ropes and distracting Kobayashi using the ref: just little things that Andre does here with his facials and mannerisms that really add to the match and get the crowd invested. I love when in the middle of the match Andre just stops working the headlock and just starts smacking the guy with chops to the neck out of frustration. Kobayashi gets the last fall after trapping Andre's foot in the rope and him losing via count out. Solid bout and definitely didn't feel like 40 minutes, and having Andre work a more Flair-like style with the cheating and good amount of actual selling is definitely worth checking out just for the novelty factor."
[8.0] "This is the final match of the 1972 IWE World Series tournament, and the meatiest bit of footage from Andre's work for the promotion. Even if you're aware of how Andre's work in this era differed from the lumbering giant role he would most famously inhabit, a match like this can be jarring in how he doesn't utilize his size advantage much at all. This is very much a technical big-man match, but it's a great one. Andre's facials and selling are great, and Kobayashi is a very effective straight man. This is an old-school match through and through, but I really enjoyed it. ****"
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