Matches from NOAH 1/30/20

Akitoshi Saito/Masao Inoue vs. Mohammed Yone/Quiet Storm

ER: Silly little tag match, made sillier by the hilarious presence of Quiet Storm. At this point he looks  like he's playing the Danzig role in the Misfats, except he is somehow even shorter than Glenn Danzig. And it took me the entire match to figure out that unlike Masao Inoue's comedy offense, Quiet Storm's offense was actually supposed to look good. NOAH has always had comedy guys filling out their cards, but their comedy guys used to do some actual interesting stuff. Quiet Storm just does a bunch of weird smoker's cough "Come on baby!" as if gaijin warming up a Japanese crowd hasn't evolved one second past Jericho working WAR 25 years ago. His shoulderblocks don't look like they would budge a guy like Saito, he does one of the absolute worst drop toeholds I've ever seen, and he has all of these stupid flatliner variations (with the worst being a sliding one he delivers to a kneeling Inoue). Yone was a Batt guy but hasn't worked as a stiff Batt guy for years. Saito had some nice moments, with my favorite him buckling QS with a savage leg kick, and I always get a kick out of Inoue's foot stomps and sad sack persona. It took Inoue 18 seconds to get out of his t-shirt before the bell, and he's one of the few guys who can pull off Super Porky "cry while being hit" comedy without it being derivative. QS hit one very nice lariat down the stretch, but there was a lot of lame offense in this one.

Daisuke Harada vs. Hajime Ohara

ER: This is our first semifinal of the Global Junior League (I am more excited for the other semifinal) is a juniors main event epic with several matches to go until the main event. Harada was already doing dramatic swoons and holding his back 5 minutes into this match. I am not excited to see him in the main event, jerking and throwing his head back in a howl while selling like he's Kate Bush's Hounds of Love dance partner. Ohara doesn't throw great strikes, but I loved the way he attacked Harada's back. You want backbreaker variations? Ohara will give you backbreaker variations, all of them good. He rolls Harada from a fireman's carry into one, hits a pumphandle one, tilt a whirl, reverses a headscissors into one, drops a couple classic style in (while holding and pressing down on Harada's chin!), all cool. The problem is that Harada sells the first one exactly the same as he sells the 5th one, exactly the same as he sells the 10th one. He's already in agony, Ooooooooooomy baccccccckkkkkkkkkk, as he goes on to be not slowed down for one second in his offensive comebacks. Any of his offense that would have been done with a hunky dory back got done here, only here we had to put up with him showing all of his teeth after every move. Oooooooooit hurts my back when I do moooooooooooves! But I MUST do MOOOOOOVES! His has a lot of fruity cute  offense, stupid indy offense that needs to die, like making Ohara bunny hop into a fake armdrag that is actually a kneelift. When Harada isn't trying out for Godspell, he had a hard lariat that wrecked Ohara, and his running double knees looked like it should have absolutely shattered Ohara's jaw. That kind of brutality instead of bad acting would have really put the match ahead, but I thought the Harada drama was really bad.

Dick Togo vs. Yoshinari Ogawa

ER: This felt like a hot 1st act that segued directly into a hot final act. Both acts are really awesome, but it felt like a section was trimmed out of the middle. There pace was fast as hell throughout, so it didn't look like either was hurt or had an empty gas tank. It started with a bunch of snug fast arm twisting go behinds spun into headlock takeovers. Both guys rolling up bodies to jump from limbs to heads and back. I could have watched them work 15 minutes of just that kind of expert mat scrambling, felt more like tight World of Sport than the floaty mat stuff that started off Harada/Ohara earlier in the night. Togo works a nice surfboard and Ogawa works a killer figure 4 variation. Togo's selling in the figure 4 is really strong, as is Ogawa's in applying it. Ogawa was tightening it, occasionally kicking at it with his free boot, and when Togo finally reversed it he turned it into a nasty modified calf crusher. This is where the 2nd act should have been, but they quickly go into an energetic finishing sequence, with Togo's perfect standing dropkick, a missed senton, several close nearfalls on sunset flips and majistrals, and a battle over Togo's painful crossface. I was thinking the crossface would make a cool finish for the match, Ogawa working roll up counters to it while Togo rolled back to center them, but I was surprised the finish came relatively quickly. Maybe I was just loving this unseen pairing too much, two favorites matching up in the best way, and I just wanted even more. It's probably that.

PAS: The matwork in this was really cool, you don't see this kind of lucha maestros stuff much in Japan. This really felt like a good Primera Caida of an awesome match, but we never really get the other two falls. Both guys are killer on the mat, loved all of the work around the Indian deathlock, love that hold, it has always been a weak sister to the figure four, but it looks awesome and has a bunch of stuff you can do around it. I also loved the rolling around with the crossface, again just a nasty move with a bunch of opportunities to adjust and twist in and out. Still this felt like a bit of a tease, I wanted this to be longer and hit a couple of different notes, great appetizer, but I am still hungry.

28. Hideki Suzuki/Kazuyuki Fujita/Takashi Sugiura vs. Go Shiozaki/Katsuhiko Nakajima/Shuhei Taniguchi

ER: Take a look at Sugiura-gun! What a collection of goons, doing all of their pre-match stretching as  AXIZ is making their way out. These guys mean business, and this match was all about dishing out that business. Fujita is nearly 50, hasn't been fully involved in pro wrestling for two decades, and I like the old spry shooter for hire vibe he brings. He's lumpy, he's got that famous cinderblock dome, and he still has surprising speed. He also has no problem welting up every member of AXIZ. There is a lot of stand and trade in this match, and while that style isn't really my favorite, it's hard not to like a lot of what we get. Fujita throws deadly elbow strikes, and if you think his right hand slap hits hard, just wait until you feel the left directly after it. Shiozaki winds up with big red marks on his neck, looked like his head had been surgically reattached at the jawline. He stands with Fujita, but Fujita is pretty monstrous and just comes back with more elbows, more slaps, and gutbusting kneelifts. Down the stretch Sugiura-gun separates Taniguchi from the pack and treats him like they're jumping him into (or out of) their gang. I think it's tough to make the "guy being pinballed between strikes" look good, but I got really into watching these goons take turns trying to be the one to knock Taniguchi down. Taniguchi gets a great showdown with Fujita, where he throws some killer headbutts right into Fujita's collarbones. Taniguchi wasn't trained by any of the NOAH headbutters, but he keeps a favorite part of NOAH alive. My favorite section of the match was Suzuki vs. Nakajima, as Nakajima was the stiffest member of AXIZ, and I dug how he actually punished Suzuki. Suzuki is tough as hell, but Nakajima looked like a total badass kicking away at him, standing on his neck in the corner, and I dug the story that Suzuki was a killer in stacked attacks but kept getting wasted when separated from his pack (is the Suzuki/Nakajima TL draw a couple weeks later worth watching?). I thought this match did a great job setting up future singles matches and tags, all of which I am now interested in seeing.

PAS: This was a bunch of fun, a solid approximation of a 90s WAR six man tag. Suzuki wrestles primarily in slow burn matches with lots of matwork, but he is also great in these kind of wild brawls. Suzuki wasting Taniguchi with a spinning neckbreaker on the floor was the biggest spot of the match, as much of this was nasty kicks and punches. Shiozaki takes a big beating here, Fujita really tries to murder him, but he really needed to land something nastier then B- chops. Nakajima gets his head nearly kicked off at the finish and I love that Fujita has fully embraced crowbarhood in his old age.


7. Dick Togo vs. Daisuke Harada

ER: A fitting junior league final, and thankfully worked in a bubble. I was kind of dreading seeing Harada drama queen sell his way through his prior match back injury, but thankfully he went in as if nothing had been done to his back all evening. They work a cool juniors style, and Harada guided by Togo is so much better than Harada left to his own. Togo works a completely different match than he worked against Ogawa, and Harada really dominates him early. I like the idea that Togo and Ogawa went really aggressively at each other, and Harada runs at Dick right at the bell, nailing him with a dropkick and a fine German suplex, then crushing him into the guardrail with a great tope. Togo's selling really made it look like he pulled something in his back, just the difficulty in being dragged back to his feet alone made me feel for him, and then Harada puts an exclamation point on it with a double stomp as Togo is getting to his feet.

Togo is on the ropes for the first several minutes, and that's when we get DICK out of mothballs, opportunistically hiptossing Harada over the top (and I love how it wasn't a clean spot. Togo wasn't overtly selling the back, but it wasn't a clean leap over the top, Togo almost not having enough strength to get him over), then wraps Harada's leg around a guardrail with a dragon screw, then continues to pick apart Harada's leg. Harada not putting full weight on a leg is much more palatable than Harada selling his back, and heel DICK really starts being mean with him, throwing punches (and I don't think a single punch was thrown in his match with Ogawa), then challenging Harada to hit him back, dodging, and kicking his leg out. He kicks his leg out at a couple of convenient spots, then uses submission work on the injured leg to set up strong attempts at the crossface. We get a fantastic DICK tope con hilo, and he starts splatting Harada with pedigrees on the floor and off the middle buckle.

Togo made me buy into Harada'a comeback, eats knees on a missed senton, and Harada gets to use a weapon that I like: his fakeout punch into a hard shoulder strike to the gut that takes Togo's wind. Harada builds to a couple of big German suplexes, not always able to bridge because of his leg (and impressively not being such a baby about his knee), and I loved the sequence of Togo flipping out of one, missing a lariat but getting run into the ropes chest first, and Harada using that momentum to absolutely toss DICK on his neck and shoulders. The nearfalls down the stretch were strong, and made this come off like a real torch passing match (even though Harada has somehow wrestled way more matches than Togo), and plays as a shining example of Dick Togo not having lost a single step into his 50s.

PAS: This was really good. Togo is obviously a master, but I thought Harada brought some cool stuff to the match. All of the Togo legwork was super nasty, reminded of the period right before Sasuke had knee surgery, where every match Kaientai would tear his leg apart. After Togo smashes him with the Shiryu flip dive (a nice shout out to his KDX homeboy) Dick takes over, and crushes him with a Pepsi plunge and a pedigree. I loved how Harada desperately clutched at Togo's ankle, delaying Dick enough for him to get his knees up on the Senton. A nice bit of strategy and selling. I also really dug how he kept countering those big windup Togo punches by forearming him in the ribs and guts, Harada's body shot forearms were way nastier then his forearms to the head and I loved how he kept going back to them to slow Togo down. Harada hits some pretty solid snap Germans and you can just see Togo's age catching up to him. Easily the best Togo I have seen since his return from retirement and up there with his great retirement tour stuff.


2020 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2019 Ongoing MOTY List: Suzuki vs. Shiozaki

50. Hideki Suzuki vs. Go Shiozaki NOAH 7/27

ER: With less free time than ever these days, I watch 2019 Japanese wrestling maybe slightly more than I did in 1997, when I had never seen one second of Japanese wrestling. But there are still guys I like, and I typically check out matches that are recommended to me. If someone says a Hideki Suzuki match will make our list, that's something I'll watch. This ends up going to a 30 minute draw, which isn't something I love in wrestling, but I'll say that it definitely didn't feel like 30 minutes. I was surprised when the bell sounded, not only because they hadn't really built to a big finish, but because the work was still at an engaging enough level to leave me wanting more. I'm not a big Shiozaki guy, and so I liked how this was mostly structured as Shiozaki showing moments of hanging with Suzuki, but mostly Suzuki wearing him down while Go survived. Suzuki's facials and bully nature, worked in a deliberate and sadistic pace, were the stars of this one. Go shone bright during one of the best corner chop sequences I've seen in a long time, really the moment that felt like overcoming Suzuki was possible. But Suzuki was a real meathead jerk here, working over ever joint in Shiozaki's body: loosening a knee cap with twisting, wrecking an elbow and shoulder by yanking it behind his body and locking in a hyperextending armbar, throwing out a back with a bearhug, tossing Go around by a cravate, really wearing him down and working through limbs like a game of Hangman. When Suzuki wore him down enough he started throwing him with brutal suplexes, and going after that taped up arm even more. I dig these kind of matches where the hero comes up against some unstoppable force, and gets ground down and only saved by the bell, and after the match the unstoppable opponent looks calm and cold. Shiozaki seems like he won by default, and that's a really cool way to work the first singles match. It feels like the first chapter, and I'm already wondering how Shiozaki is going to strategize, and he has not been a wrestler I typically think about.

PAS: I really enjoyed this, Suzuki is a really throwback guy strong, slow and violent. He is like an old school post player in today's space and pace NBA. Shozaki is a little dry, but was great as an underdog getting violently picked apart. I also liked the Misawa elbows felt like a cool tribute and also something organic. You have to love a guy coming in with a taped shoulder and having the whole match be about ripping apart said shoulder. I actually liked the draw finish as it came off like Suzuki's deliberate pace coming back to haunt him. He probably has Go beaten if he pushes the gas pedal, but that isn't how he is built.


2019 MOTY MASTER LIST

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2014 Ongoing Match of the Year...Or IS It!? YOU Decide!

So, Phil and I recently watched a 2014 pro wrestling match. I really enjoyed it. Phil enjoyed it, but (rightly) felt that one of the participants brought nothing to the table and the match as a whole wasn't good enough to make our 2014 MOTY list. I thought it should definitely be on our list. Since this is a partnership, we both have to turn our keys on a match for it to make it on the list. We don't often disagree on pro wrestling, so this situation hasn't come up much. So we spoke, and decided that we would let you, the readers, decide whether or not the following match is indeed worthy of inclusion on our 2014 MOTY list. Watch the match, read my fair review, leave a comment saying why you think I'm correct or why you think Phil is correct and how dare I step out of line by disagreeing with him. If you think it goes on, it will be our new gatekeeper at the bottom of the list. If you think it stinks, then at least we all got to watch an awesome fat guy performance. LET YOUR VOICE BE HEARD!


Akebono v. Go Shiozaki AJPW 2/23

I've been out of the puro scene for a couple years. Out of the All Japan scene. Out of the Triple Crown scene. If there was any sort of scene centered around this match, your author was not a part of it. But, I saw Akebono had won the Triple Crown at some point, and was interested. As an unabashed fan of giant wrestling fatsos, in additition to my equally unabashed love of wrestling sumos, my interest was piqued. I am a big fan of the 80s AJPW sumo-on-sumo singles and tags, a huge fan of WAR sumo alumni, even a fake sumo like Yokozuna was one of my favorite WWF wrestlers of the 90s. Sumos in pro wrestling are great. They're lumpy, grouchy, and have cool specific body strength that no other pro wrestlers have. And this ended up being a really cool match, and could have been a great match had Go Shizaki brought much of anything to the table. He wasn't bad, but turned in just about the most nondescript  performance I've seen in some time. Just a total 0 WAR (Wins Above Replacement or Tenryu's fed, you choose) performance out there. He could have been worse, as he was not bad. He ended up in the spots where he was supposed to end up, and was there to move the match along as the underdog.

But this was all about the Akebono show. Akebono was completely awesome here, showing nice vulnerability and eventually insurmountable power. The story was laid out nicely as Shiozaki already had an uphill battle against a larger, tougher opponent, but also eventually beat himself by getting too greedy. When he felled Akebono early and began working on his leg he finally started to make some headway, but he got so obsessed with trying to hit the Go Flasher that even when he finally did, it didn't matter. He had the blinders on and that wasn't going to be the way to beat Akebono. The damage he did by hitting it didn't come close to make up for the damage he took from trying the move multiple times and having Akebono squash him. I loved Akebono's offense in this, as he's mastered a fat guy move set that is so simple you wonder why you don't see it more often. When you're this large simply falling on a guy is enough to turn things in your favor, and here he falls on Shiozaki in plenty of cool ways. He has a cool splash and killer elbow drops, and turns a Go Flasher into a mean crossbody. But the sumo elements he incorporates were the best, using his awesome short range quickness to regularly beat Go to the punch. Instead of resorting to derivative "I forearm you, you forearm me" puro exchanges, Go would try to hit a forearm and Akebono would just slap him across the face before Go's strike could even reach him. Akebono's a man who spent 15 years constantly training how to shove and smack somebody around in a phone booth, so it's not a great plan to stay in his wheelhouse. His short range quickness was super impressive in this, and he also had that really cool sumo shoving strength, bullying Go into corners at will. Some people had complaints with the way he sold Go's legwork but I liked it. It was nice and subtle, as it should be. Sumos take more of a beating on their joints than most other sports, I don't need to see a giant 500 lb. sumo doing "Ohhhhhh my kneeeeeee!" type over-emoting. These guys are trained to work through intense pain, no reason for him to be gripping his knee and screaming after a Go kneebar. This was a really fun match, and a great one man performance.

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Rifling Through the Trash: The Unfinished Segunda Caida

We here at Segunda Caida all watch a lot of wrestling. We also start a lot of projects. More projects than we can ever ever possibly finish. We start watching something, write about it, don't finish writing about it, and there it sits. We have about 80 unfinished drafts dating back 4 years. Some of them may get finished some day (IWA-MS show reviews, WAR show reviews), others are kind of pointless to ever finish (old CMLL TV write-ups, reviews of WWE Superstars episodes). Still these write ups all took at least SOME time out of our schedules, and it's only fair that we get SOME use out of them. I literally forgot Go Shiozaki was a person.



~Started (and not finished) by SLL on 6/1/08:

Takashi Sasaki, Abdullah Kobayashi, Shadow WX, & MASADA vs. MEN'S Teioh, Jun Kasai, Jaki Numazawa, & Yuko Miyamoto
BJPW - 1/2/2007 - Tokyo, Japan
Fluorescent Light Tubes Death Match

Oh God, this was painful. And not in the good "hot damn, Onita's dragging his back along barbed wire" kind of painful you want from death matches. This was more of the "hot damn, Zandig doesn't even know what a wrestling match is, does he?" kind of painful. Well, maybe not that bad, but still. I'd say something like "you know you're in trouble when MASADA is clearly the worker of the match" but....

1. I haven't seen a MASADA match since before he was in The Carnage Crew.
2. He was actually legit good here. In the midst of guys standing around to set up needlessly complex spots, odd patches of no-selling, and Abdullah Kobayashi throwing the shittiest strikes imaginable, MASADA actually comes off as a guy you want to see more of. Comes off as the guy you would actually need to be afraid of in a death match. He gets a lot of neat spots, including grabbing Miyamoto by the legs and dragging as back around on all the broken glass, and punching the seat out of a chair before using it as a weapon. I've written elsewhere about how the Finlay/JBL match from Mania was conceptually cool because they took the late-90's/early-00's "cookie sheets and garbage can lids" style of benign, mainstream hardcore wrestling, and made it look really hard and dangerous. Getting hit with just the seat of a crappy folding chair is about the same as getting hit with a garbage can lid (and the way Miyamoto no-sells it hammers that home) but the way MASADA sets it up by just punching the seat out of the chair makes it look like he's doing some seriously bad stuff. So there's MASADA's name next to the names of Finlay and JBL, for whatever that's worth.

Anyway, the rest of the match is pretty much ass. The post match with Miyamoto getting all up in Sasaki's mug and Sasaki beating the shit out of him, but Miyamoto refusing to back off, was kinda neat. Got me interested in their match later in the set. I didn't need to sit through Abdullah Kobayashi throwing punches that would make Rob Van Dam shake his head in disgust to get there, though.


~Snippets from TomK reviewing ROH "Take No Prisoners" (left unfinished by Phil on 6/23/08):


Tyler Black v. Delirious v Claudio Castagnoli v Go Shiozaki

TKG: This is a four way for a title shot at the end of the show. Not normally a fan of this type of spotfest four way and so came in with some trepidation. Shocked by how effective this was. Delirious who gets shit on a lot lately really looked like the best guy in this match and everything he did looked solid, but that was beside the point. Whole thing was aimed at getting Black over and no-one was trying to upstage him. Black had two big spectacular spots. The dropkick attempt landing on his feet was especially cool. Unlike most of the time with this match format, there wasn’t any excessive kickouts and match ended in a real satisfying way right when it felt like it should.

Notes for Phil: If you can’t come up with anything else leaving you to talk shit about the everyone stares into the mic and cuts a promo shit, or Nigel on commentary.

Kevin Steen v Roderick Strong

Notes for Phil: Them stealing your idea for how to ue Kevin Steen from DVDVR 166:

I haven't had much to say about the IWS guys before, and I have actively hated Steen, but he seems to have ditched most of his crap and just become a fat asskicker. With his bad skin and flabby body he does look like every single guy in the audiance though, I am guessing ROH books him for the same reason you book Pedro Morales in NYC, he is the regional babyface for fat wrestling dorks. With that I think this match was hurt a little by him working heel, you don't book Putski as a heel in Pittsburgh.


~Snippets from Eric reviewing random matches from 2009 (left unfinished 1/15/10): 


1. Roderick Strong vs. Necro Butcher (IWA-EC, 2/4/09)

I don't really know what the internet opinion is of Roderick Strong. I don't know if he gets talked about as "good" or "bad", or if I would actually trust the opinions of the people that would be calling him good or bad. I know he's blandish, but he's a guy I really don't mind. I can picture him walking down the street wearing khakis and a letterman jacket and some white sneakers, and not everybody can pull off something so clean cut All-American like that. Of course depending on what state you might be in, Necro is also a pretty accurate representation of American society. This isn't about all that, though, this is just two dudes hitting each other pretty darn hard for a good 20 minutes and I really can get behind that.

Roderick takes Necro's corner "punch/chop" combo in the corner better than anybody I've seen. Instead of just flexing up his chest like he's taking Kobashi chops, he acts more like Ali on the ropes [match review just sorta...ends there]

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Embrace of the Backstroke: NOAH “Great Voyage in Tokyo ‘09″, 9/27/09

Consistency, uncertainty remain in Misawa's wake

I find NOAH to be one of the easiest promotions to watch: there’s a predictability to their format and booking that’s approachable (if frustrating to some), and their roster is deep. This may prove less the case in the months to come: it’s been speculated that without their flagship television, talent will be cut. Conspicuously absent from the card were Takuma Sano, Masao Inoue, and Ippei Ota. Solid hands Tamon Honda, Junji Izumida, Kentaro Shiga, and Kishin Kawabata were reduced to an untaped tag opener. In what some are calling the last time NOAH will ever sell out Budokan Hall, this first in a pair of Misawa memorial cards proved a mixed bag that signaled neither certain doom nor a turning point for the company. It was largely the same familiar NOAH that always goes down smooth. What can I tell you: sometimes grits are all you’re hungry for.

Akihiko Ito vs. Genba Hirayanagi

Genba is a sometimes fun version of Dick Togo still in search of motivation, not likely to ever find Togo’s breakneck pace or precision. Ito works so light that dropkicks which connect perfectly well still look like they’re rolling over Genba’s form like waves in Bermuda. They try the rudo spot of Genba grabbing the ref to avoid being taken to the mat before being bridged for a pin. It ended up looking like Ito playing hopscotch, which for those of you under 25 is kinda like Dance Dance Revolution on pavement. This is the first boring Hirayanagi match I can recall, one where his heel act of not giving a damn felt like legit apathy or laziness.

Atsushi Aoki vs. NOSAWA Rongai

Nosawa’s a hooligan character. When reading his name here I thought of him being dragged into an interrogation room.

“Who are you?”
“Rongai.”
“Yeah, that’s what they all say.”

Aoki’s entrance music is a Japanese pop-punk cover of “Hotel California”. The point of this match is to make Aoki look great by jobbing out a known, overconfident outsider. Preferably by tapping him with an armbar, which Aoki has successfully made NOAH’s first over submission. Instead this was worked as competitive, with a stilted momentum stemming from Nosawa’s comedy and lack of fluidity. Aoki gives Rongai most of the match, coughing up a lung when kicked and writhing in pain when “caught” in limp crossfaces. The inevitable deadweight section of modern Japanese juniors wrestling, in which two men play Triple H and hit a series of Irish whips that go nowhere, was here followed by something far better: believable nearfalls which did hype Aoki’s armbar as instant death. In a match against a guy who takes himself too seriously but is engaging to watch vs. a cad getting polite applause out of crowds, I’ll take Gary Sinise over Drew Carey. And I will stand by that half-baked analogy considering how much Rongai’s mugging resembles Carey’s.

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi/Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Ricky Marvin/Taiji Ishimori

Kikuchi has always had stubby crooked arms, but his entire physique has now become a knotted slab. His trot around the ring and perpetual shaking of cobwebs are reminiscent of Rick Steiner, his face equally canine. Ishimori hit several flashy psych-out non-moves that clearly weren't really going to be executed and thus psyched out no one but his opponent. Marvin in contrast is far better at telegraphing one move, and surprising a crowd by delaying, biding time, then hitting something different and more impactful, as he does with a tope to Kanemaru. What I said about juniors sharing Hunter’s Irish whip overkill does not apply to Marvin, who should be throwing them all the time after killing Kanemaru with one into the guardrail. The Kikuchi-as-dog phenomenon continues when he bites Marvin’s hand and is reprimanded by being swatted on the snout. This being a Sunday, any section of the paper would have fared better rapping against Kikuchi’s skull. Marvin’s rope running and flips were great as ever: he is too agile and precise in movement to have a bad match right now. I’m a sometime defender of Kanemaru, but he was the weak link throughout, hitting cross-bodies that looked like curtsies and no-selling so as to sneak in bad lariats. This was the first match on the card to feel like an actual Misawa tribute, or proxy tribute to King’s Road, as the story told was that of Kikuchi’s resilience, and willingness to take offense as stiff as Ishimori’s brainbuster. The vaudeville finish of dudes beating on each other while they literally ran offstage and crashed into the company logo worked.

Bison Smith vs. Shuhei Tanaguchi

Smith is a fine photocopy of a boardwalk caricature of Vader. He’ll likely never have a match as good as Misawa’s GHC defense against him. Tanaguchi is a petrified goober, Mike Graham with a bleached mushroom cut. Bison quickly press slams him from the ring to the ramp, powerbombing him back into it, on and on in a series of moderately impressive displays. Watching Smith, this seems a new world order, in which the monster gaijin is no longer the menacing foreign invader: this audience’s grandparents are dead, and this Coloradan Caucasian wears both the American and Japanese flag on his trunks. In fact, Smith gets the biggest round of applause thus far off his running shoulder tackle tope from ramp to ring. They go through the motions of a comeback, but all we learn is that Tanaguchi is presently a third-rate Sugiura who can lift heavyweights up for timid backdrops. Smith tires of this and hits an impressive lariat from his knees. That he then wins with a Styles Clash feels meager and out of place, like Sherlock Holmes ruminating over a bubble gum cigarette.

Jun Akiyama/Minoru Suzuki/Takashi Sugiura vs. KENTA/Takeshi Rikio/Mohammed Yone

If you’ve seen Sugiura and/or Yone wrestle tags in the last few years, you know how this starts: rope running from both, leg drops from Yone, and frenzied swing-and-miss Yakuza kicks from Sugiura. This doesn’t get going until several minutes in when Suzuki and KENTA square off. Both fake hatred well: Suzuki in particular has built this autumn of his career on getting into a Sheriff of Nottingham-level quantity of slap fights. The story told throughout the match of Suzuki taking the piss out of Akiyama fizzles, even if Akiyama gets that someone has to play the rube for the bit to succeed. Rikio has gotten an unfairly bad rap in the past, but his face is too soft to play ringleader of the motocross gang, or whatever gimmick they’ve got him penciled in for. Your heel Cena can’t look like Lou Albano. His ring work is equally uninspired and brings the match to a halt. KENTA on the other hand shines no brighter than in tags, this one no exception. Even Suzuki and Akiyama failed to match his viciousness. Were Marufuji a better face-in-peril, the two would today make a premier team. This slogged to the finish line, with everyone killing time and looking out of position, none moreso than the ref who glaringly ignored Rikio’s rope break, presumably thinking they were going to the Sugiura tap out victory earlier than they were.

Kensuke Sasaki/Takeshi Morishima/Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Genichiro Tenryu/Yoshinari Ogawa/Kotaro Suzuki

From the outset Sasaki surprises: he asserts his size advantage over Suzuki on the mat and throws a series of quality chops. Tenryu takes some bumps from Morishima, drawing less crowd sympathy and humor from his begging off than expected. But the interplay of Tenryu as Nakajima’s drunk, berating uncle pays off: when they finally tussle, Tenryu’s chops and lariats blister. Nakajima sells Tenryu’s double chicken wing for lack of anything else to do: he is stuck. Later, Ogawa’s eccentricity is apparent in a shot of Tenryu on the apron that pans shortly to Ogawa chewing tape off his fist. Sasaki and Tenryu have a chop battle here that can stand toe-to-toe or higher (ankle-to-ankle) with every other time that bit’s been done in NOAH. The difference is Tenryu’s expressive bracing of himself with each chop, the tense willing of himself to press on. He hulks up at least three times here, each better than the last. The finish is disengaged routine, but the Tenryu vs. KO clashes are too deep to not name this fight of the night.

Kenta Kobashi/Yoshihiro Takayama vs. Keiji Mutoh/Akira Taue

Kobashi sporting a shiner was weird, as if one’s senile grandfather took a spill. This isn’t much until Kobashi and Mutoh lock up, and even then the awe isn’t there. Mutoh’s offense is too loose and sloppy for this setting, especially considering he dwarfs Kobashi in height and mass, a surprise even when considering Kobashi’s cancer. Kobashi’s selling of these moves is admirable, but can’t hide Mutoh hitting shining wizards and bulldogs with the wobbly tentativeness of a modern Mick Foley. The timing of tags throughout feels arbitrary. Takayama and Mutoh have had two exciting, violent singles this year. Yet when they lock up here, Mutoh settles for sitting in a weak STF. The crowd is up for this match but is given little to applaud: these are broken men performing an act too hobbled to be drama, and too humorless to be comedy. The highlight is Kobashi’s selling while stuck in Mutoh’s figure four: a testament to his expressiveness that’s been at times lost or taken for granted in recent years, but which now seems his greatest asset entering this pseudo-Baba phase of his career. The hold is broken in an illogical moment of Kobashi reversing the figure-four, and Mutoh reversing a second time, yet for some reason going for a rope break, even though it should be he who then has the leverage over Kobashi. Taue improves as the match progresses, getting a huge pop for his Shining Wizard and taking an insane Kobashi rana from the top rope perfectly. Like Kobashi, his selling made this all that it was. The ending is weak and too sudden, ironic given how overwrought NOAH finishes can be. While it may seem naïve to expect more from four wrecked workers, an excess of workrate or brutal head drops is not what’s missing, but a lack of storytelling, as if it was thought that simply putting these cogs together several years too late would suffice.

Go Shiozaki vs. Akitoshi Saito (GHC Title)

It’d be easy to give this one high marks for sentiment, but initially it really does click on several unexpected cylinders. Saito’s kicks are very stiff, and the backdrop driver is teased appropriately as a big deal. Even the test of strength works well. Shiozaki’s execution is still lacking, and for a presumed ace his size, his strikes still lack fire. The story early on is of Saito working over Shiozaki’s arm for several minutes. When Saito is on offense, Go sells. When Go is on offense, he does not.

One misunderstanding in the ongoing debate regarding selling in Japanese wrestling is the idea that if someone sells, they’re doing all that can be asked of them. Yet like any aspect of any emotive performance, selling can be convincing or unconvincing, effective or ineffective. Shiozaki recognizes that he is supposed to be selling, and makes a sporadic effort to do so, but like a goon actor whose crocodile tears we don’t buy in a romantic comedy, continues to chop with the right arm at full blast. If anything the strikes are stronger after the arm has taken a thorough mauling. The logistical flaws to such un-selling are often dismissed with the false ideas that a) Japanese audiences don’t care about selling, b) because they don’t, neither should anyone else watching and/or critiquing the match, and c) that wrestling is like a sport, and in sports, athletes play through pain thanks to grand intangibles such as “heart” and “adrenaline”. Option C is not a terrible story to tell in professional wrestling. Yet it seems obvious that the telling of that story would be more engaging were the worker persevering through pain visibly express that anguish, as Kobashi, Tenryu, and Kikuchi all did earlier on this card. It would ring false for me to criticize any of them for making will-powered comebacks given that all expressed how brutal the ass kicking they had taken was. For Shiozaki to use the arm as if nothing has happened negates the work Saito has put into clobbering it: from a kayfabe perspective, Shiozaki’s weapon is his right arm, and Saito aims to neutralize it. Good selling achieves two apparent, crucial goals: it gets over the offense of one’s opponent, and in turn gets over one’s self for being able to endure what is being dramatized as devastating. The issue isn’t that Shiozaki uses his arm to win with a proverbial Hail Mary: it’s that he uses the arm crucially in nearly every single move he hits through the remainder of the match, and after a minute or so of selling gives no indication that the arm has been damaged.

That said, Shiozaki does take a true beating, and the middle section of this isn’t bad. Modern Japanese wrestling is often dragged down by the compulsion to have a long-as-fuck epic, and in doing so fill the middle of the match with a bunch of wind sucking and lollygagging. Saito is capable enough to know that if you’re gonna catch your breath, it helps to break up the monotony with a vicious lariat or two. In what can be taken as a tribute to Misawa in itself, Shiozaki’s elbow smashes are the best strike he throws, something he should add to his arsenal. Using your destroyed arm to hit a handful of quick, nicely executed elbows also seems less glaring than using it to hit a half dozen lariats in succession. And while the victor of the match is never in doubt, Saito’s last stand is well executed, hitting a great suplex and as stiff a scissor kick as I’ve ever seen. His performance was not merely one those sympathetic to woe he’s expressed over hitting Misawa’s deathblow could pat him on the back for. This was an inspired performance by one who NOAH would do well to depend on as a maestro guiding the next generation for whatever time the promotion has left.

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