Fujiwara/Yamazaki vs. Maeda/Takada (NJPW 5/25/1987)

Third.

This was pretty awesome, and maybe the best mixture of shoot and pro style in a tag match that New Japan produced from around this time (that '86-'88 period with all the shoot style guys, between the original UWF closing down and the second iteration starting up after Maeda shoot kicked Choshu in the eye socket). I guess it was a little more shoot than pro so it was mostly back and forth the whole way, which is fine when the transitions are this strong, but I would've loved an extended heat segment somewhere to really fire it up a level. After all I'm a 90s kid who was raised on the tag team prowess of the Headshrinkers and Men on a Mission, I can't help but be set in my ways. The roles are pretty well established -- Yamazaki is the young technician with picture perfect striking and rapid fast feet, a real prodigy with the sky as his limit. He's in there with three-quarters of the shoot style Mount Rushmore so you expect him to play whipping boy, but I like that they almost circumvented that with the existing injuries to Maeda and Takada. The former has a taped up forehead from the Strong Machine mugging the previous week and Takada has a bandaged up thigh, so there are a couple bullseyes for Yamazaki to tee off on and tee off on them he does. Those moments worked as plausible momentum swings, where he could drag himself back into the fight with a flurry of kicks to the thigh without it feeling like Takada was giving him too much. Fujiwara was properly fired up as well, maybe because he knew that he was tagging with a kid and might need to carry the load a bit. He's the one who starts tearing at that Maeda bandage, then Yamazaki follows suit because why wouldn't you follow the godfather? Lots of killer strikes, snug submissions attempts, nasty suplexes and a great final pairing to cap it off. One or two weird bits of selling, but when everything else is so on point who really gives a shit?