Urano got this off to a nice start with a series of good junior moves. His execution wasn't perfect, but at least we knew the show had begun. Hirai slowed it down a lot as expected, but he was executing well. He beat on the kid and stretched him out. Hirai never allowed Urano to appear to have a chance, and the match was much too short. It was good while it lasted, but while these guys aren't great, there's no reason they shouldn't have been able to provide 10 quality minutes. It was pretty good while it lasted, and there's a lot more they could have done well if Hirai didn't "have to" squash the K-DOJO upstart.

9:32

Rating:

Kazushi Miyamoto & Gran Naniwa & Ryuji Hijikata vs. Kaz Hayashi & Jimmy Yang & Hi69

The first half was so-so, but the second half was good. Hijikata came in fired up at 5:30. He doesn't do many moves, but he does them fast, smooth, and hard. He worked best with Yang, who also looked good. Miyamoto & Hi69 can't chain moves together and just looked deliberate and contrived when they tried. Hayashi is a fiery punk these days. He jumped off the middle rope with a nice corbata. Hayashi & Hi69 did stereo dives then Yang pinned Hijikata in his corkscrew body press called Yang time. It seemed like this match was going to last a few more minutes, and it definitely should have because they are capable of more. As it exists, it's more entertaining than good but there were enough highlights to give it a minimal recommendation.

10:30

Rating:

Hiroshi Hase & Hideki Hosaka vs. George Hines & Tomoaki Honma

They can't find anything better to do with Hase and Honma on a big show than this? Why not put Honma in the Asia tag match instead of spreading the rash? The match kept moving and had some pretty good well executed offense. Hase & Hosaka tagged frequently and worked as a team despite not being very familiar with one another. They trapped Honma in the ring, with Hines regularly getting riled up but never getting his chance. Hines finally made the hot tag at 10, only to tag Honma back at 11! If Hines had taken over it would have been a good match, but instead it was a short match that was never competitive. As usual Honma looked good, but was mainly the bump boy. Hase, who is still solid but lacks the fire and energy that made him so popular in his heyday, pinned Honma in his Northern Lights suplex.

11:56

Rating:

Sekai Junior Heavykyu Oza Ketteisen: Kendo Kashin vs. Kazushi Miyamoto

Fuchi is better as a small heavyweight than as a junior. Even 15 years ago his offense was dated and he no longer possesses whatever athleticism he had in those days. There will always be a few exceptions like Gran Hamada, but the junior division should be about a style of wrestling not a weight limit and that style is not one that's suited for many guys approaching the half century mark.

This was set up by Fuchi saving Miyamoto from Kashin on the previous PPV. That angle generated a lot of heat, none of which was present here. Instead we got a bunch of mat wrestling, which didn't work because Kashin is such a lousy indifferent seller. Fuchi's offense is questionable to begin with, but on Kashin it just looked like rest hold after rest hold. Normally Kashin is adequate on the mat then he gets into his plodding kick and forearm WWE stuff. He did that here, and there were no good sections around it to save the match. Normally Fuchi knows how to piss people off, so even if he's not doing anything difficult it's effective. He was the face here, which eliminated most of what he still does well.

The crowd was silent until Fuchi hit his backdrop at 14:30. In an incredibly illogical spot, Kashin kicked the ref down before he turned a backdrop into his dobitski udehishigigyakujujigatame finisher. Perhaps the idea was he could "injure" Fuchi since the ref wouldn't be able to break it up, but there was nothing that looked like a rivalry up to this point in the match, Fuchi had to reach his legs out for the ropes, and isn't the title supposed to be important? Anyway, by the time the ref got up Fuchi stopped taping because he'd made the ropes. Kashin wouldn't break, so the ref stomped him then Kashin pushed the ref. This at least livened things up, but they should have been able to generate this heat on their own simply by acting like they were still pissed at each other from the get go. Even though Fuchi was the face, if he was putting the boots to Kashin and doing his tricks with the bottom rope too teach Kashin a lesson, the fans would still have supported him. As it stands, livening the match up with the ref bump served no purpose because Kashin just hit the dobitski udehishigigyakujujigatame in the center of the ring for the win.

2:47

Giant Baba Hai Sodatsu 6 Man Tag Tournament Ikkaisen: Steve Williams & Mike Rotundo & Yoji Anjo vs. Mike Barton & Jim Steele & The Cedman

Steele was in for most of the first 10 minutes, which just buried the match. He has the most unbelievable comical expressions. I used to laugh at him the whole time, but at his point he's just incredibly irritating. He was mainly in with Williams, which I thought made things worse since they just no sold each other back and forth. Then Anjo came in and Steele oversold his jumping high kick in the corner to the point it was some of the worst cartoon crap I've ever seen. Anjo was a very minor factor here, and Barton was a not a factor at all, so there was no hope for this one. Cedman didn't help the match, but he didn't hurt it either. It was just way too long given who was in the match, but to make things worse it featured the wrong people. Williams pinned Cedman after his sashujin backdrop.

16:16

Rating:

Asia Tag Oza Ketteisen: Mitsuya Nagai & Shigeo Okumura vs. Arashi & Nobutaka Araya

Why have a guy that's 41-years-old and a terrible wrestler holding your minor tag titles? There are two purposes to having these titles. First and most important, showcase your future. The value of these titles is derived from the quality of the matches. Unless the matches are hot, no one will care about them. If the matches are hot, your up and comers will get over more and people will begin to take them seriously. In the days of Footloose vs. Can-Am Express, people looked forward to these title matches. Secondly, you can give a role to good workers that are "too small" to hold the more prominent titles. Dan Kroffat, Dynamite Kid (though he was on his last legs), Tsuyoshi Kikuchi, Masahito Kakihara, Norio Honaga are some examples of this, and you used to have Fantastics and Malenkos challenging. Given what constitutes young and up and coming these days, Araya & Okumura should have won the vacant titles on 9/8/01. Now that they were vacated again they brought Nagai into the picture, but since Araya is the worst and has the least upside of the three whose presence in the match can be justified, they put him with Arashi and give them the titles. It's so frustrating.

The match was better than I expected. Okumura is pretty inconsistent, but this was one of those days when he was not only contributing but adding. He's been in matches with Araya for a long time, and even though it's mostly been teaming up, they had good chemistry opposing each other and their stuff was quality. Of course, the match would die when Arashi came in. Nagai mainly worked with him. They had little chemistry and that meant Nagai was usually selling, which isn't his strong suit. Arashi can't even make a convincing save though, much less do something that requires average ability. They worked around him as much as they could though, not asking much of him beyond pulling off his couple of decent moves. The problem is Araya isn't a guy that's going to carry a team because he's rather limited and doesn't have impressive stamina. He's a guy that's good in bursts, but every time this team gets together he's going to be asked to produce consistent quality. It's not going to happen.

What saved the match is the final 10 minutes. They were able to turn it up for the finish, and that got the crowd into it. Expecting just a few more minutes combined with near finishes that were usually believable, it became exciting largely because you were surprised it was still going. As a whole the match was too long, but the good portion wouldn't have worked as well if the passable portion was shorter, so the length was acceptable. Araya pinned Okumura after his lariat.

23:27

Rating:

For pure wrestling this was better than what these two can do with Tenryu. It was well executed with Kojima making the Dragon screw and vertical suplex look as deadly as ever. However, it wasn't as good because it didn't have the direction or intensity Tenryu brings. It was what you'd expect from them individually, but they weren't able to combine their abilities to take it to the level they should be able to reach collectively. Kea vs. Nagai wasn't done as well from a nuts and bolts standpoint, but the structuring and build created drama and intensity that was sorely lacking here. This match was much more important being for the next title shot, but it felt much less.

They didn't think, they just did a lot of lesser moves that didn't lead anywhere for the first 13:15. At that point they relied on the pop up then double sell to kick it into the final stage that's just big moves and near falls back and forth, which started the crowd reacting. This Kea no sell of the Michinoku driver II then hitting the shining wizard was an effective transition. Kojima popping up from the naminori suplex (cobra clutch suplex) at 15:00 and hitting a lariat was like throwing in another explosion, but it did get a big reaction. In between a few nice moves Kojima hit two more lariats for the win. Easily the best match of the night, but it should have smoked the Kea vs. Nagai from the previous PPV and I wouldn't even say it exceeded it.

17:13

Rating:

Enjoyment of Tenryu vs. Muto matches tends to depend more on expectations than anything else. When they are pimped as must see matches like the 7/31/98 & 6/8/01 it's just WTF material and they become really irritating, especially since that was at best the 4th best match of the '98 G-1 CLIMAX (Hashimoto vs. Tenryu, Kojima, & Yamazaki are all clearly better and an argument could be made for Koshinaka vs. Chono) and the second best match on the 6/8/01 show (Kawada vs. Tenzan). If you look at their matches as two old injured up guys that shouldn't be delivering much at this point, then you are pleasantly surprised. Though Tenryu has been Muto's best opponent during the last 5 years, I didn't expect much given how unsatisfactory Muto's previous big match with Kawada was and how little he's been doing since both knees became totally shot to the point he has enough trouble just walking.

This match was acceptable because Muto mixed things up. He used many of his famous moves instead of endless kneecap dropkicks, Dragon screws, and shining wizards. He did some stuff on the outside of the ring, a pescado, a shining wizard with Tenryu squatting against the security railing that seemed to aggravate Tenryu's knee legit because Muto had to land on it rather than flying over the opponent like he normally would, and the udehishigigyakujujigatame. Rather than just attacking the knee like Muto does every single time out, he mainly focused on Tenryu's arm. Muto's arm attack is even more limited than his knee attack, but the freshness made it less tedious. He did do one nice combination where he countered Tenryu's lariat with his Frankensteiner and transitioned right into the udehishigigyakujujigatame.

The big problem with the match was the selling. I never felt like these guys were in danger of losing. Tenryu was getting beat on almost the entire match, and though his arm and knee should have been in shambles, I never felt Muto was close to victory. Muto looked in great pain each of the three times he did his moonsault, which was good especially since he sold the one time he hit it. Otherwise, he was his usually generally indifferent self when the opponent was on offense.

Tenryu didn't do all that much in this match. That's fine with me since I'd rather Muto dominate than Muto make Tenryu look like a wimp. Tenryu didn't execute what he did all that well though. There was the lame spider German to diving elbow spot again, a lariat counter to Muto's space rolling elbow that grazed at best, and a shining wizard even more embarrassing than Muto's that hit Keiji in the back of the shoulder.

Tenryu vs. Muto has been about generating excitement. Their matches aren't the kind Tenryu has with anyone else, they are basically about the spots. This match certainly wasn't boring, and Muto's offense was actually more solid than it's been in most of their better matches, but there was just something missing. It didn't seem to have the juice of the past Tenryu vs. Muto matches, or even come off as a match for the Triple Crown much less when a new champ was definitely being crowned. I can't blame it on the selling because they haven't sold in the past. It just seemed like the combination of Kawada going down again, destroying the Champion Carnival and vacating the title in the process, and Tenryu vs. Muto fighting so many times in the last 5 years including Muto beating Tenryu just 12 days earlier made this less than special. It was a good match, absolutely, but as a follow up to a "MOTY" it left a lot to be desired. Muto was able to knee Tenryu to stop his suichoku rakka shiki no brainbuster the first time, but later on Tenryu hit it to begin his third reign with the Sankan Heavykyu Senshuken.

19:38

Rating:

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