Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Kengo Kimura (NJPW 5/16/1986)

There are a few different faces of Fujiwara. One is the elite grappler whose general decorum is befitting of his status, aggressive but fair, tenacious but ultimately sporting. Another is the old master who's happy to mess around a bit, who can still enjoy life even past his prime, satisfied with the legacy he's built, secure in his standing. Both of those Fujiwaras are great, sometimes for similar reasons, sometimes for different ones. But my favourite Fujiwara is the one who's out to watch the world burn. The Fujiwara who sets it alight in the first place, where decorum goes out the window and victory becomes a secondary concern. The Fujiwara who wants to make Choshu's life a misery, to drag him down to Fujiwara's level, even just for the sport of it. This was that Fujiwara, and I don't have a clue what prompted it. He attacks Kimura while the latter is stepping through the ropes and after a minute Kimura is bleeding all over himself. You could tell right away that Fujiwara wasn't arsed about winning this and was more bothered about putting Kimura through hell. Any match against this Fujiwara is a fight and never a fair one. Even more so it's a test, one less about skill and more about character, your mental and physical toughness. How much can you take? How much can you give back? How much does Fujiwara really care so long as he has his fun? Kimura had no choice but to embrace the challenge and basically his first bit of offence was pinning Fujiwara to the mat and grabbing him by the throat. It didn't last long and pretty soon Fujiwara was back headbutting him and showing him how you really choke someone. Fujiwara has one of the meanest chokes ever, and I'm not talking about the guillotine or rear naked sort. He'll just wrap his hand around your trachea like a vice grip, crazy-eyed and frothing at the mouth and maybe a part of you wonders if Kimura shouldn't just live to fight another day. He's a wrestler and this isn't even a wrestling match anymore. Pick your battles and all that. I'm a sucker for a good rock solid Fujiwara cranium spot and this had three great ones. First Kimura smashed a chair over his head and Fujiwara merely took the skeleton of it and passed it to a bystander, then Kimura rammed him head-first into the turnbuckle bolts, the foolishness of it swiftly laughed off. There came a point where Fujiwara was covered in Kimura's blood, a wide, bloody streak of it up the side of his face that resembled the grin of Heath Ledger's Joker. If that isn't a perfect visual then I don't know what is. Kimura sells every legbar like his tibia's about to snap and Fujiwara looks demonic, like a snapped tibia was the least of his intentions. When you think Kimura might have a shot after the piledriver Fujiwara just takes him to the floor again and dumps him over the railing, and it's hard to explain but he did it with a casualness that was sort of remarkable. His body language, physical demeanour, whatever - that one moment pretty much summed up his entire thought process and he communicated it in a way that not many wrestlers could. That he had the cheek to bow to the crowd in the middle of the ring after the bell was the cherry on top. Really one of the great Fujiwara performances.