NOAH NOAH's voyage #158 5/26/08 Navigation for Evolution '05 |
GHC Hardcore Openweight Title Match: Naomichi Marufuji vs. Mohammed Yone 12:36. A promising start with Marufuji taking Yone’s left knee apart quickly yielded to the typical underdeveloped undercard match. Once Yone made his comeback by propelling a leaping Marufuji into the ring post, there wasn’t time to expand the match, so they simply forgot about the knee injury and did highspots until the finish. Aside from some grazing kicks by both men, the action was good, but Yone added very little and the whole thing felt insubstantial. **3/4
Mitsuharu Misawa & Kotaro Suzuki vs. Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa 18:02. Extremely fast-paced all action match. It was theoretically a heavy and a junior vs. a heavy and a junior, but obviously the heavyweights were former juniors, and today they wrestled as if they’d never graduated from the division. Everyone was impressive, but for me Suzuki was the star with his speed, athleticism, and body control. He was not only the sparkplug but also the perfect compliment to his opposition, either taking the big bump to make them look better or coming up with the impressive and explosive athletic counter. His highlights included turning two of Takaiwa’s nadare shiki moves, the powerbomb and the splash mountain, into Frankensteiners off the top rope. Generally though, he seemed to be moving at least twice as fast as anyone else in the match, which was quite impressive given the other three were all motivated. Outside of a gamesmanship segment between Misawa & Otani after Otani & Suzuki did a hot junior opening highlighted by Suzuki’s corkscrew pescado, the match was essentially fireworks. The body consisted of Otani & Takaiwa taunting Misawa in between punking his overmatched youthful partner. The match really took off at 10 when Misawa made the hot tag, never slowing down and simply getting better and better. The fans were going nuts believing Suzuki would defeat Takaiwa with his blue destiny, but of course Suzuki wound up doing the job. ****
Jun Akiyama & Takeshi Morishima vs. Genichiru Tenryu & Minoru Suzuki 14:30. I assumed the first meeting between Akiyama and Tenryu would produce a quality match, especially given the high quality of Tenryu’s not too dissimilar tag in the same spot (semifinal) on the previous Budokan show. Morishima came out dressed similar to Tenryu’s most famous rival Jumbo Tsuruta, and raised his fist in the air after the backdrop, while Akiyama did the same Jumbo homage after his jumping knee. A measure of antics can help a match, but they just did a lazy American match where they used them to distract from the fact they were actually doing very little. NOAH is in trouble if Akiyama vs. Tenryu isn’t enough to excite the fans, but apparently they believed they needed Akira Hokuto & Shinobu Kandori to spice things up. Since Hokuto & Kandori were there, the wrestlers fought on the outside interminably to set up Hokuto preventing Akiyama from piledriving Tenryu, which of course brought Kandori over. The women were banished, but to make sure nobody paid attention to the finish where Tenryu polished off Morishima, they returned to separate Akiyama & Suzuki, who fought on the floor throughout the finishing sequence. *
