George Hines vs. Satoshi Kojima

[6.0] "Hines has never been great but Kojima gets a fairly decent match out of the guy here despite working another match in the main event as well. This match focuses around the plot of Kojima's damaged lariat arm, which was further undermined after the finish of the last match which had him lariat a chair. It's bad enough at this point that Hines simply applying a triangle lock on it causes him to scream and reach for the ropes. Kojima's selling is also a lot more profound: while he can throw his chops and strikes he can't make any headroom without pausing; Hines is quick enough to recover and get on top of him with offence. The first half of this is rather creative, focusing around Hines using the ring barriers to damage Kojima's arm and the latter having to use some out of the box stuff (namely a lariat to the legs and a few big dives to the outside) to work around his limitations. Hines isn't on top for long and Kojima spends a bit landing all of his signature stuff, which is all by the numbers. He does land a decent second-rope Koji Cutter for a near fall. They keep going for top rope stuff until Hines counters for a superplex for his own. The second half is a bit more spotty as the two go for moves over and over, trading Hines Driver attempts with no selling, a dub spot afterwards, and Hines getting a big near fall after some real snappy German suplexes. The finish is kinda abrupt as Kojima just goes for a Koji Cutter off a Pumphandle counter and lands a singular lariat to win, albeit damages his arm in the process. There's some decent work here and there but this just felt a bit too hollow as a match, focused around Kojima's bad arm until it just gets dropped and having Hines do lots of work despite the fact that no one thought he was winning this at all. I'll say this: the first half paces the limb work well with spots, the second just defaults into conventional puro-bomb throwing, which Kojima is infinitely better at than his opponent. I didn't really get the whole "your turn my turn" top rope exchanges in the middle and while Hines is decent enough, he's just not convincing as a final four, perfectly highlighted by his lax offence and needless "intense" random yelling to try to get the crowd involved, which was rather cringe. Match was decent enough, just not really something I'd want to see on such a big stage like this."