Kaz Hayashi & Satoshi Kojima vs. Ryuji Hijikata & Toshiaki Kawada

[7.0] "This is cut down to 11 minutes of the original 20 but I would implore you to check it out regardless; it's a solid watch. The meat of the bones is obviously between Kawada and Kojima as they keep up their hate-filled antics here with lots of hard hitting shots, including a disgusting full force lariat by Kojima that forces people at ringside to roll Kawada out due to the trauma. Thankfully it seems to be a stinger than anything serious as he returns later. Naturally most of the match outside of that is fairly decent work by Hayashi and co as they work over Hijikata without having to worry about interference...at least until Kawada finally shows back up and stiff boots Koji for the trouble. Hijikata really works for the hot tag with some good kicks and when we DO get Kawada in the ring, it's a really by the numbers awesome showcase of his stiff strikes: kicks, elbows, forearms, nothing off limits. Him and Kojima have a few decent spots getting their shit in before Hayashi misses his top rope dropkick and ends up in the angry grasp of Kawada, who picks him up like 15 times in a row for chops lol. At the end both are just gassed up and barely try but the visuals are just awesome to see. I thought Hijikata kept up well to maintain that audience hype by having some awesome kicks of his own, and Hayashi keeps up that pace with a big moonsault into him just shoving Hijikata's face into the mat to try to get the three count, which fails amazingly. I thought the finishing stretch was well done and also deliberate by nature: keeping the main guys to the background while Hayashi and Hijikata had some great exchanges between them, namely between Hayashi's bombs and high flying vs Hijikata's kicks and flash submissions. Eventually the finish has Hayashi try to stand up to Kawada, only be beaten down with forearms which stuns him enough for his partner to respond with a great roundhouse into Fisherman's Buster for the win. AJPW in the early 2000's had these kind of Jr/heavyweight mixes pretty well at this point, and this was no different, despite the Jr guys feeling like a afterthought until the last 5 minutes. Kojima and Kawada bring the big meaty shots and heat while the Jr guys get to show off their own stuff as well: was particularly impressed by Hayashi and Hijikata's stuff here as most of it was seamless. A pretty solid main event all in all."