Masahiro Chono vs. Osamu Nishimura

[4.0] "These two trade holds on the mat for the first ten minutes or so: Chono is obviously a lot better at this than many give him credit for, but at the same time it's padding, no real way to say otherwise. Nishimura works with this well until Chono starts using dirty stomps and strikes to get the advantage, including headbutts to the stomach? Weird pick for the guy but sure, I guess. We get a neat spot of Chono slapping on a front face lock and doing some fancy transitions to stop his opponent escaping, which of course eventually fails and we get the signature Nishimura hammerlock spots as per standard. Nishimura and co try for the hammerlock fling out of the ring bit but Chono is sloppy so it doesn't look particularly good. There's some small things here like Nishimura having to play a bit dirty, working on Chono's level to get the advantage, but this didn't really have much going for it in the first half. Chono's leg gets wrecked after a long figure four spot and we build up to Nishimura landing a Cobra Twist, only Chono's timing is off so they have to awkwardly slide into position. They exchange some more positions, including Chono's weird roll into shoulder crank. It does build to a nice Nishimura Northern Lights though. He spams out roll-ups to try to get the win before Chono gets the drop on him with a reverse atomic drop + Downward Spiral. The finish is particularly flaccid as Chono just sits in the shoulder crank some more before pinning Nishimura. Again, Chono proves he's one of the few people that Nishimura just is incapable of having a good match with as Chono's worst tendencies to sit in holds comes out terribly here. I thought this was a particularly poor performance from the latter as he just felt lethargic and unwilling to really do much more than the bare minimum, selling his leg for about a minute before just having no issues at all; he felt sluggish. Nishimura tries to get the crowd going with his routine but there's no real tension going on here and the crowd felt muted. Just stinky."