Genichiro Tenryu vs. Tatsumi Fujinami, from NJPW Battle Formation 1996

There's a lot here designed for someone like me to love, from keeping things short to clearly establishing the characters (Tatsumi Fujinami is an old rascal that loves submissions while Genichiro Tenryu hits stupidly hard) to executing everything in convincing fashion. Pity it doesn't go hard enough with its strengths to be wholly compelling. This isn't terrible by any stretch, but there's nothing inspired about it and yet still feels like it had five minutes cut out of it. Perhaps, as the semi-main event, they didn't want to overshadow the main event, but this reeked of needing more of everything.

6