[6.0] "A great finishing stretch but a little too fatty and meandering in the first two rounds. Andre bumps around like mad and even hits his famous tombstone piledriver but the neckwork he does on Kobayashi doesn't really amount to much. Like most best-of-three matches from around this era it feels like they're just killing time until the final round without anything properly building into the next fall."
[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. ****"
