How Great is Sasuke? (part four of recurring)

Minoru Suzuki and Super Tiger II vs. Great Sasuke and Mitsuya Nagai, Real Japan, September 11th 2009

Found this looking for Otsuka matches on Lenny's site. This is a weird mixture of guys. This starts with a fun section where Sasuke is overly confident with Super Tiger, hopping around like Sayama, and then freaks out a little when the headkicks start getting close. After a short mat section, Sasuke demands Suzuki comes in, who proceeds to stomp on his chest and chop him. At this point, I thought they were going to do a fun fish-out-of-water story, but Sasuke isn't in this much afterwards. Nagai and Super Tiger have a uninspiring kick and forearm exchange, with Super Tiger throwing some weak looking forearms and me screaming inside my head for him to just start kicking harder. I don't know what's happened to Super Tiger this year - he was never a guy to hold a match together, but he'd had some great kicks and wild strikes. He's not even good for that at the moment. Neither guy does much to sell or build on these strikes and I stop caring. Sasuke and Suzuki have another section in the middle which is pretty much the high point, Sasuke misses a somersault senton, Suzuki kicks him right in the spine. Tiger and Nagai finish off together as Suzuki and Sasuke have brief exchanges around the ring and crowd. I felt quite disappointed by this overall. I was hoping for a heroic beating, but Tiger looked unimpressive and Suzuki only got serious near the end.

Tiger Mask IV and Great Sasuke vs. Jado and Gedo, New Japan, August 19th 2001

I enjoyed this - I didn't think it was ground breaking, but was still perfectly entertaining. I have been told that TMIV, a punchline in 2009, was decent around this time, but I didn't see much evidence of that here. His selling during the heel beatdown was perfunctory at best, and his transition after that section was landing on his feet out of a german, and hitting a tope which, ironically for two athletic spots, is very lazy. Sasuke's section features a lunatic high spot, somersaulting towards Jado on a table, but barely touching him and hitting the floor, which is a shame because it would have been a great high spot. At least he sells the back injury after that point, because that looked painful. The finish stretch is typical, with plenty of action, and the finish comes after Sasuke it hit with a thrown chair whilst on the top and falls into a flatliner, thus breaking up his series of finishers.