BACKGROUND
Muto won the IWGP title in April of 08 from Nakamura. If I remember correctly, his title reign was very successful for NJPW with higher ratings and attendance rates than usual. One of the greatest of the old guard of NJPW had reclaimed the championship in what would likely be his last reign with IWGP gold. The goal was obvious: create interest in the belt and have him put over someone of the current generation. Tanahashi was the perfect candidate for that. They had wrestled to a draw recently in the previous year's Champion's Carnival, showing that Tanahashi definitely had the power to be on the same level as or possibly even beat Muto.
MATCH
We get the typical basic grappling, maneuvering, and holds you'd expect from the first few minutes of the match. Muto gets out of a head scissor hold and takes a few seconds outside to regroup. When he comes back, he's met with a dragon screw (first of many) and targetting of his moonsault-worn left knee with submissions and strikes. Muto is finally able to counter a dragon screw attempt by attacking Tanahashi with a right knee strike and immediately shoots off his own dragon screw on Tana. He pulls off one more from the apron to the floor and then another on the floor. We get a shining wizard while Tana is against the guardrail. Another dragon screw from Muto, this time with Tanahashi straddled on the guardrail.
There's a ref count and Tanahashi makes it back at 15, selling the knee. Muto attacks him and gets another dragon screw with Tanahashi in the ropes, then yet another. He locks on the figure four until it gets a rope break. We get a knee dropkick contest that ends with a Muto dragon screw. A little while later, there's a dragon screw and figure four again. Muto has been in control for quite awhile now, but Tanahashi gets in the occasional offense, almost all knee attacks from both guys.
From here, the moves are somewhat more varied, but there's still a lot of repetition with dragon screws, low dropkicks, sling blades, and shining wizards. Tanahashi pulls off a cradle german and hits a high fly flow. It takes a lot out of his bad knee and he sells this excellently. There's one sad botch where Muto goes for a springboard low dropkick and completely misses, but Tanahashi falls down anyway. Muto locks on a third figure four with Tanahashi dramatically holding the ref until he can get to the ropes. Tanahashi is able to desperately pull off a frankensteiner pin, which is how Muto was able to beat Nakamura. Tanahashi then gives Muto a neck screw in return for getting the move done to him earlier. Tanahashi is looking good, but can't hold the german suplex pin because of his knee. Excellent selling. He slaps feeling back into it and pulls off a dragon suplex for a nearfall. Tana gets a high fly flow and misses the second and recieves a SHINING WIZARDO. Muto goes up top for the moonsault, but never put Tanahashi in position, so Tanahashi rolls towards him and the moonsault misses. It looked awkward and contrived, but didn't really hurt the match's momentum. The crowd was still into it. Tanahashi finishes off with two high fly flows to become ACE OF THE UNIVERSE!
REVIEW
This one is difficult to rate. It's a good quality match with some definite flaws that bring the score down. The match was very focused with the leg work and selling. The constant move repetition did get old and start to drag the match down, but at least with the dragon screw, it was done with purpose. The overall theme here was Tanahashi being on the same level as established veteran and mentor Muto and the passing of the torch. It succeeded in that for sure. I still had the feeling that the match could have been tweaked to truly make it a classic.
RATING: 8 out of 10
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