08/19/1990 NJPW
IWGP Title Match: Riki Choshu def. Big Van Vader in 11:51
Jesus, I can’t believe this match was thirty-six years ago today. Vader beat Choshu for the title almost a year exactly before this match, and he also had his eye popped out of his head by Stan Hansen about six months before this match. That’s quite a year with the title for sure. Vader mauled Choshu early in the heavy-handed ways you would expect from one Leon White, but Choshu kept fighting. Vader stripped his own mask as a way of telling the crowd, “This isn’t phony baloney pro wrestling bullshit.” They brawled on the floor quite a bit in this one, and Vader got a couple of nearfalls from his normal power offense. When Vader started climbing to the top, Choshu ran to the corner and hit a superplex. To show how much Choshu would do anything to survive the onslaught, he clearly hit Vader in the aforementioned eye, much to the pro-Choshu crowd’s delight. Choshu started firing off multiple lariats until he hit Vader with a stiff-looking one to the back of the head, forcing the giant to collapse and finally giving Choshu the win. The story was simple, but the crowd was into it because Choshu was a hero, and Vader had been built up extremely well as the killer monster. ***3/4
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