Jim Steele vs. Mike Barton

[4.0] "Steele/Hawkfield/Lacrosse/whatever was apart of Movement with Barton back in the day, and they tagged together for much longer afterwards when Ace left in 2000, so the two have a as expected friendly battle with the other with the two letting the other have it in terms of clean offence. The offence is clean and their wrestling is mostly punch/kick with the occasional big move thrown in; nothing is botched and Steele and co get over their unique spots in a reasonable manner. This sounds good.....on paper, anyway. The issue is that the crowd really don't care bar a couple of spots: Barton running into a sideslam thrown into a powerslam gets a good gasp out of them, but asides that, they honestly couldn't give a shit about anything going on here. It's quiet as anything, there's zero heat, and the two don't really change things up to adjust for that. Barton tries a bit with more out-there spots like a top rope sunset flip and a Ace Crusher, but these don't get much attention either. The match doesn't really have any point where the two are trying to work anything in particular, it's just a "your turn/my turn" structure where the two go back and forth until Barton wins with the gut punch and powerbomb finish. The Japanese crowd politely clap, but it was very clear this was a match where neither man was actually over with them from a fan point of view. Functionally as a match its decent, but there's just nothing worth the interest sadly. Way too dry."