Low-Ki Advent Calendar Night 6: 2005 NOAH Trios

Low-Ki/Bison Smith/Mike Awesome vs. 2 Cold Scorpio/Doug Williams/Ace Steel NOAH 3/20/05 - GREAT

PAS: What a goofy on paper bunch of guys to work each other and it was pretty fun to watch the match ups. You wouldn't think Ace Steel and Mike Awesome would have ever wrestled each other, and that is a fun matchup, I would have dug seeing a singles match. Ki and Scorpio have a couple of fun exchanges, and I clearly need to dig up their IWA-MS singles match up. I loved Scorpio trying to big time Ki at the beginning only to get lit up with chops and kicked in the face. We get a neat dive train and a fun finish run, all around good time although it never hit the top level which NOAH matches can get to.

ER: I love this era of NOAH, and love NOAH six mans, and I loved when NOAH or AJPW would seemingly throw nearly every single gaijin on the tour into their own match. Ricky Marvin was the only non-native on this tour who was not in this match, and it makes me wonder if any fans that night in Korakuen were entertained by this in the same way that a few hundred people were entertained watching Kaientai DX in some tiny town in Massachusetts. Ace Steel is a guy I always forget did several NOAH tours, and I liked him a lot here as "guy clearly taking fall" as he worked like a guy over his head with nothing to lose, so he was aggressive about attacking Mike Awesome and Bison but great at stooging when they would catch up to his initial surprise attacks. He hit a big missile dropkick off the top and got a few moments to shine. I'll always have a soft spot for Bison. I saw a bunch of his very first matches when he came up in APW, and was a big fan of his APW turn as Super Destroyer 2000, my friends and I all loudly whooping when he'd break out his heart punch finisher. So it was great to see him get such an extended run in NOAH, really one of the longer gaijin runs in history (which is nuts when you think about it). Here he was super generous bumping around for Ace Steel and gamely going along with and getting into position for all of Doug Williams "exact same order every time" World of Sport stuff, actually selling being off balance when Williams crawls backwards through his legs and schoolboys him. The dive train was nuts as there's just not much room between ring and guardrail at Korakuen, but Awesome hits his no hands dive, the camera misses Steel almost blindsiding Awesome with some kind of wild dive (no clue what he did but it sends him into front row laps), Ki does a big phoenix press that 4 people manage to miss, and Bison does a huge crossbody off the top to the floor (and watch Ki run the hell out of the way so he doesn't have to catch the big man). It was really cool seeing Scorpio and Ki go against each other as I had only seen them teaming in NOAH (looked it up, and this match is literally the only time they were on opposite sides in NOAH, and that's incredible to me! What a missed opportunity.). Scorpio amusingly asks for one of the big guys to tag in but Ki is totally cool hanging. NOAH six mans from this era are some of my absolute favorite junk food.


COMPLETE AND ACCURATE LOW-KI

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Phil's Ongoing 2007 MOTY LIST

1. Nigel McGuinness v. Samoa Joe ROH 3/3
2. John Cena v. Umaga WWE 1/28
3. Nigel McGuinness v. Takeshi Morishima ROH 4/14
4. Chris Harris v. James Storm TNA 5/13
5. Jimmy Jacobs v. B.J. Whitmer ROH 3/4
6. Samoa Joe v. Takeshi Morishima ROH 2/16
7. Matt Hardy v. Finlay WWE 6/19
8. Shawn Micheals v. John Cena WWE 4/23
9. Jimmy Jacobs v. B.J. Whitmer ROH 3/31
10. Solar 1/Mano Negra v. Negro Navarro/Black Terry Lucha Libre VIP 3/10
11. MNM v. Hardy Boyz WWE 1/28
12. Briscoes v. Ricky Marvin/Kontaro Suzuki NOAH 1/21
13. Bryan Danielson/Takeshi Morishima v. KENTA/Nigel McGuiness ROH 5/12
14. John Cena v. Great Khali 5/20
15. Mitsuhara Misawa v. Bison Smith NOAH 6/3
16. John Cena v. King Booker v. Bobby Lashley v. Mick Foley v. Randy Orton WWE 6/24
17. Briscoes v. Murder City Machine Guns ROH 4/28
18. Finlay v. Undertaker 3/6 WWE
19. Briscoes v. Kevin Steen/El Generico ROH 4/14
20. Colt Cabana v. Jimmy Jacobs ROH 2/24
21. Takeshi Sasaki v. Yuki Miyamoto BJW 3/14
22. John Cena v. Shawn Michaels WWE 4/1
23. Shinjiro Ohtani/Takao Omori/Kazunari Murakami v. Kohei Sato/Hirotaka Yokoi/Yoshiro Takayama Zero 1 1/19
24. Matt Sydal v. The Man Gravity Forgo PAC ROH 3/4
25. Davey Richards/Roderick Strong v. Jack Evans/Delirious ROH 4/14

Previously on the list

Necro Butcher v. Toby Klien CZW 1/13
Chris Benoit v. Chavo Guerrero WWE 1/16
BJ Whitmer v. Jimmy Jacobs ROH 1/27
Nigel McGuiness v. Jimmy Rave ROH 3/4
Matt Hardy v. Ken Kennedy WWE 3/13
Samoa Joe v. Eddie Kingston FSM 3/17
Takeshi Morishima/Mohammed Yone v. Jun Akiyama/Takeshi Rikio NOAH 4/1
Undertaker v. Batista WWE 4/1
Chris Benoit v. MVP 4/10
Yuji Nagata v. Hiroshi Tanahashi NJ 4/13
Mitsuhara Misawa v. Takuma Sano NOAH 4/28
John Cena v. Great Khali v. Umaga WWE 6/4

7. Matt Hardy v. Finlay WWE 6/19

Matt Hardy has really developed a great TV match formula in the first half of the year. A batch of hot offense, he injures a body part, the heel works over the body part, Hardy does a great job of selling, and then he pulls out a flash win. It is pretty much a formula you can use with anyone half decent and have a good match. Hardy plays the role great, he is probably the best seller in the WWE outside of maybe Cena, and his offense is simple and looks good. When you plug a master like Finlay into the formula you are really going to have a treat. Finlay is spectacular here, going after the leg, everything he does is with force and violence and I am loving the indian death lock as a secondary finisher, maybe it is a shout out to Princess Paula.

13. Bryan Danielson/Takeshi Morishima v. KENTA/Nigel McGuiness ROH 5/12
This was a blow away main event of an otherwise crappy PPV. I have read people complain about Nigel just throwing lariats, but I am a Choshu fan, nothing wrong with simplifying what you do, if you do it well, and Nigel was killing people with lariats here, from all angles. Nigel's big match restarts are always fun, and I loved him coming back in with the taped up arm, and the jawbreaker with the bad arm was a great near fall. You kind of forget how good Danielson is, but he was amazing here. KENTA and McGuiness are two of his best opponents, and all of their interactions were great. The multiple reversal finish is a staple of indy wrestling, but Danielson may be the only guy who can really pull it off. The whole finish section with KENTA was completely awesome. The match wasn't perfect, for guys who trained together and work constantly KENTA and Morishima don't interact well, and the points where they were matched up were the weakest parts.


15. Mitsuhara Misawa v. Bison Smith NOAH 6/3

I was down right shocked at how much I enjoyed this match. I really loved Misawa in his matches against Sano and Sugiara. He plays the role of a broken down old Samurai trying to will his body into one more battle, he wants to pass the torch but no one will take it. It is a cool role, and he is incredible in it. Still its Bison Smith, outside of a 2001 match I saw live against Donovan Morgan, and some fun UPW tags with Luminous Warrior against Orlando and Marquis Jordan, he kind of always sucked. No real reason to think that broken down Misawa could drag him to anything. Boy was I wrong Not only was this good, it wasn't a great wrestler dragging a shitty guy to a good match (like Jacobs v. Whitmer or Cena v. Micheals), Smith was right there wrestling the match of his life. Misawa is overpowered early but uses his guile to injure Smith's leg. Smith does a pretty good job of selling this (I saw him fake a knee injury as part of an APW political play during the King of the Indies tourney, so I knew he could sell), but still is able to throw around Misawa. He press slams him from the ring to the apron, which was a totally crazy bump, and also hits some really great shoulder blocks, including a tope from the ring floor over the rail onto a seated Misawa, easily the best I have ever seen Smith look. Still this was all about Misawa's selling. They tease two countouts, one after the press slam to the ramp, and one after the tope into the stairs, and both times Misawa just lies there untill the count gets to 15 or so, then he takes this deep breath, and rejoins the battle. He wants nothing more then to lay down his sword, but something keeps him going. I also loved the finish, Misawa is able to catch Smith and reverse him into a second rope Emerald Frosion (which was the only sequence in this match which didn't look good), and then he pounces, he has been conserving his energy for this moment, and he just pounds on a weakened Smith, until he finishes him with a nasty elbow to the back of his head. Misawa is still totally awesome, but I don't think that it will translate well to his ROH stuff. Although if Misawa can have a match this good with Bison Smith, Misawa v. Joe should be insane.


16. John Cena v. King Booker v. Bobby Lashley v. Mick Foley v. Randy Orton WWE 6/24

You X division cluster isn't really my style, but when you replace interchangeable Sonjay Duttish guys with big hard hitting over heavyweights it can be pretty damn fun. Cena is the wrestler of the year, but he works well in long matches where he can sell and build to big spots, this isn't that kind of match so he really was incidental. Lashley was a monster here, chucking people around, taking big bumps and delivering an absolutely spectacular tope. Foley takes a couple of nice bumps and is over enough to not do a ton, I did love him throwing socko to the crowd and grabbing a chair to waste people. Booker and Orton were the only heels here, and were just awesome, Booker was just recking people with knees, and was the guy in this match doing the lions share of the work. Orton may the best wrestler in the world at timing big spots, and his countering of the five knuckle shuffle into an RKO was perfect. Finishing run was great, as all four guys stuff is so over, that all the near falls were big.

17. Briscoes v. Murder City Machine Guns ROH 4/28

Briscoes are guys with a pretty set formula, the formula is what it is, and you will tend to get what you get from it. The PPV tag against Sydal/Claudio was a pretty basic example of the formula. Some time killish stuff at the beginning, leading into some big crazy spots at the end, about half the time the match ends on time, half the time it goes a bit too long. If the formula is hitting on cylinders it can be pretty entertaining, but it rarely moves into excellent. What separated this match from you standard Briscoes match, was a load of quality bullshit by the Murder City Machine Guns. The first part of the match which is often the Briscoes weak point, was filled with a Shelly and Sabin homage to every cheap heat heel stooge in the book. All of that stuff got me into the match, so when they start with their big finish (and it was a great finish run) it wasn't just a collection of cool looking stuff, but I actually cared.

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