Koji Kanemoto & Minoru Tanaka (Continued)

 Kanemoto & Tanaka vs Takaiwa & Makabe, 4/1/01

This was also very fun in the same way as the previous Makabe tag. Takaiwa is a step down from Liger as a partner, but him and Makabe clicked well and had some good teamwork together. This is all about the hierarchy of Makabe once again being the young lion taking it to the champs. Kanemoto & Tanaka are kinda just there for a lot of this, not having many big moments themselves but giving Makabe the room to have a big performance. I did like Kanemoto blasting him with a straight punch when he tried to interrupt an ankle lock though. Late in the match, there was a pretty hot strike exchange between Makabe and Kanemoto where Makabe got the better of it, going from pest to serious threat. Makabe has a lot of fire in his belly and he gets one last big hulk up attempt before getting put away, and this is a formula that just works.

Kanemoto & Tanaka vs Dr. Wagner Jr & Silver King, 3/2/01

Total showcase for the luchadores, which is really fun but there is a ceiling to how high an exhibition like this can go. The champs are total passengers here, though like the Makabe matches they provide a platform for their opponents to have a show-stealing performance. Wagner/SK have a bunch of fun highspots and teamwork, and Wagner is always a great personality to watch. They really translate well to the Japanese style, they hit hard, thrown bombs, were fired up and really eat the champs up for like 90% of the match. The only chances the champs had were catching them with flash subs and pin attempts. Couple big spots in particular like a huge top rope splash mountain on Kanemoto (dude got fucking launched) and a poison frankensteiner on SK (which he really could have sold better but whatever it was the setup for the finish). Really wish we got more of the luchadors in Japan, they really clicked in this setting and were a breath of fresh air in a scene which was fairly stale at the time.

Kanemoto & Tanaka vs Kondo & Hayashi, All Japan 3/1/13

A good decade or so after these guys were at their peak both in terms of ability and popularity, but they’re still an established team. This was an all-action go go go workrate tag, which isn’t the kind of match I get excited about these days, but to be fair they did that match well. There was enough fire and bad intentions to go along with the effort that I still enjoyed it, and Kanemoto was still a big star who felt important every time he was involved. There really wasn’t any let up in the pace, super fast moving, which at 20+ minutes can make everything feel like a blur, but they got good mileage out of the big nearfalls thanks to relying on saves and some tricky pin attempts that it didn’t stray into overkill at least. Probably still better than most modern matches of this flavour.