#87
TAKA Michinoku & D-Lo Brown & Buchanan vs. Arashi & Kaz Hayashi & Nobukazu Hirai
Keiji Muto vs. Taiyo Kea
#88 Kensuke Sasaki 20th Anniversary Commemorative
Michael Iwasa & Daniel Mishima & Kensuke Sasaki vs. Kikutaro & Masked Volcano & Space Lone Wolf
Winner Takes All Battle Royal
#89
Kensuke Sasaki Debut 20th Anniversary Commemorative Special Dream Tag Match: Kensuke Sasaki & Kenta Kobashi vs. Genichiro Tenryu & Katsuhiko Nakajima 26:36. Intense and brutal chopfest in the style Kobashi & Sasaki made famous. The rivals exchanged chops to warm up then shook hands and prepared to lay into the opposition. Nakajima tried to stand up to his mentor, but after a quick start, Sasaki simply countered his headlock by picking him up and tossing him. The heat here was on Tenryu vs. Kobashi, and although Tenryu tried to avoid getting sucked into a chop exchange, they were quickly going back and forth until Tenryu changed it up with a kneecap dropkick after actually getting beat bloody. Tenryu took it to the floor, and after he reentered Kobashi challenged him to come back out for more, but Tenryu held the ropes open for him only to double cross him with an elbow then follow with a tope suicida. Kobashi remembered this, taking it to the floor as soon as he had the chance, but Nakajima interjected, giving Tenryu the opening to chair Kobashi. Tenryu's chair caught Kobashi in the mouth, perhaps knocking a tooth out, but certainly busting him up so bad streams of blood dripped down his chest. The blood added to the aura of this totally badass match. Nakajima, of course, had to do most of the work for his team. He fought valiantly, trying to use his kicks to stand up to the heavyweight legends chops, of course predominantly taking a merciless beating. Nakajima was damn good though, providing all the diversity and much of the movement, even though he generally avoided finesse to keep the match in the realm of savagery. Tenryu helped him out a couple times, but generally allowed him to sink or swim on his own. Tenryu was into the sadism, and when he Tenryu finally made the hot tag, he directed his gu punches at Kobashi's bloody mouth. ****
#90
Junior Tag League highlights
Junior Tag League Match: Shuji Kondo & "brother" YASSHI vs. Kaz Hayashi & TAKA Michinoku 9:27 of 13:17. Effective, well structured match with diabolical Voodoo Murderers dominating through ignoring sportsmanship, but Hayashi was the only wrestler that was good. Hayashi & TAKA had a fast start, but sinister Kondo irrevocably altered the contest by bashing TAKA's broken finger with his staff, causing Hayashi to have to go alone while TAKA was attended to in the locker room. Not only was it now a handicap match, but Murderers constantly double teamed Hayashi, instilling a sense of urgency that he come up with something to end the match before he was too damaged. Hayashi had some explosive counters, but, of course, was mainly destroyed. A severely limited TAKA made it back to the ring when Hayashi finally made a comeback, his right hand and wrist so heavily taped he could do little more than clasp just facelock. TAKA set up a quebrada, but Kondo pulled him off the apron and once again slugged TAKA's hand with the staff, putting him out of commission for good and sealing Hayashi's fate. **1/2
Keiji Muto & Yutaka Yoshie vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima 17:27 of 24:00. Sasaki had pink hair and tights to make fun of Yoshie. Yoshie had good chop exchanges with Kensuke and took Nakajima's kicks. That may be the extent of his abilities, but irregardless, the match was much better when he was in because he allowed Sasaki & Nakajima to do their thing, and their match fits well into what little he can do. Muto was pretty much on offense the entire time. There was one good spot where he did his worn out knee routine to Sasaki, but Nakajima stopped the figure 4 with Muto's own shining wizard. **3/4
Kazunari Murakami & DJ Nira vs. Kikutaro & Stalker Ichikawa
Satoshi Kojima vs. Raimu Mishima
Kensuke Sasaki vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima 20:55. Fierce teacher vs. prize student battle pitting Sasaki's brute force against Nakajima's desire and fiestiness. Kensuke was just a bull, mauling Nakajima from the outset as if he were determined to incapacitate Nakajima within 5 minutes. The match was as stiff as you'd expect, but Nakajima showed more smarts than simply battling his much bigger and more decorated opponent in a slugfest. He got into the match by attacking Sasaki's right chop/lariat arm. Though Nakajima wasn't coming close to winning, he was repeatedly able to hurt Sasaki or allow Sasaki to simply hurt himself. Highlights of Sasaki hurting his arm included Sasaki blocking a spinning high kick off the 2nd and Nakajima stopping his lariat with a high kick. Sasaki ultimately just sucked it up and kept blasting away though, knocking Nakajima to the floor with an enzui lariat and nearly finishing him with a suplex on the outside but opting to break the count by dragging him back in at 19. Though you never really believed Nakajima would win, he was certainly more than competitive, crafty enough to actually be in control more often than not, especially after his rocky start, which allowed him to survive despite Kensuke's superior weight of shot. Sasaki kept it a little simpler than usual, not delving into his flashy spots he doesn't do that well, and the execution was great with everything looking ridiculously brutal. At this point Kensuke Office didn't have anything going for it beyond these two, but as long as they had opponents and were going to wrestle with this sort of motivation, people were definitely going to find it necessary viewing. ****
Kensuke Office in Fiji. Fan trip to the island.
Kensuke Office Hometown Match 6/3/07 Kensuke Office Dojo
Numazuman & Kensuke Sasaki & Michiyoshi Ohara vs. AKIRA & Kikutaro & Katsuhiko Nakajima. They made the match by pulling names out of a box.
Dick Togo & Yasu Urano vs. Catfish Man I & Catfish Man II 19:19
Tatsushi Yamaguchi Debut Match: Kohei Suwama vs. Tatsushi Yamaguchi 10:55
The Hell Warriors (Power Warrior Kensuke Sasaki & Animal Warrior) vs. "brother" YASSHI & Shuji Kondo 6:11
ROH World Heavyweight Title Match: Takeshi Morishima vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima 20:56
Seiya Sanada vs. Kento Miyahara
Takeshi Minamino vs. Takashi Okita
Boso Boy Raito & Magnitude Kishiwada & Kikutaru vs. Catfish Man 1-3
Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Ryuji Yamagata
Kensuke Sasaki & Genichiro Tenryu & Yoshihiro Takayama & Minoru Suzuki vs. Toshiaki Kawada & Shinjiro Otani & Akitoshi Saito & Yutaka Yoshie 30:08
Yoshikawa to Saitama, Tobidase All Country!! ~The 1st Hakata Compilation~: Catfish Man & Catfish Man vs. Kikutaro & Mt. Aso
Hard Times!! Hakata Yamakasa Soul Pouring: Kento Miyahara vs. Ryota Chikuzen
Young Volcano Explosion: Ryuji Yamaguchi & Takashi Okita vs. Takeshi Minamino & Yuto Aijima
Dash The Volcano Road Vol. 1: Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Magnitude Kishiwada 17:25 of 18:36. I never expect anything of the first magnitude from Kishiwada, but this was probably the best singles match of his career. Nakajima not only gave an excellent performance, but more importantly figured out how to make the stale Kishiwada routine work dramatically, and thus feel as though it were different. The boy can structure a match and tell a story, and that's why he's the best wrestler of his generation. Nakajima started out working Kishiwada's left arm, but injured his knee missing a pescado. Kishiwada bashed the knee with chairs and continued to work it over throughout the course of the match, mixing his moonsault variations into roughing Nakajima up and busting his lip open. Nakajima finally got his knees up for a moonsault, but that hurt him as much as it did Kishiwada, but wasn't able to sustain a comeback. He had more luck countering lariats with kicks to the bad arm, but still he was getting dominated. Finally, Nakajima hit a dramatic huracanrana counter to Kishiwada's last ride finisher to pull off the dramatic victory. ***1/2
Kensuke Sasaki & Jun Akiyama vs. Minoru Suzuki & Yoshihiro Takayama
Daichi Kakimoto vs. Kento Miyahara
Manabu Hara vs. Gemba Hirayanagi
Kazushi Miyamoto vs. Ippei Ota
KENTA & Taiji Ishimori vs. Bear Fukuda & Takeshi Minamino
Katsuhiko Nakajima & Takeshi Okita vs. Naomichi Marufuji & Atsushi Aoki 19:58
Saitama Yoshikawa Object, Tobidase All Country!! ~Osaka Compilation~: TAKA Michinoku & Kikutaro vs. Catfish Man #1 & Catfish Man #2
SAVE THE OFFICE CRISIS: Tatsutoshi Goto & Michiyoshi Ohara vs. Takeshi Minamino & Takashi Okita
Kento Decisive Trial Match: Minoru Suzuki vs. Kento Miyahara
Dash The Volcano Road: KENTA vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima 27:35. This intense, energetic, all-out striking war was a great way to start off this classic series of matches. This may seem obvious because it was their first match, but it was clearly their most original match, with the rest of the series being minor variations of the style, ideas, and offense utilized here. Their matches that stayed under 30 minutes, this and March 1st, 2009 were full speed ahead aggressive battles, while their matches that were 30 minutes or more were elongated by necessity, and thus didn't benefit from it. They weren't as all in on striking and realism as in their subsequent matches, doing more of a junior style striking oriented match where they utilized a wider variety of kicks here, more flashy, athletic and flying kicks including solebutts, missile kicks, running front kicks, and question mark kicks from Nakajima than we saw in their future bouts. It was their most junior style match, with more more running and jumping than the previous matches, and less focus on "realistic" offense, but also less time watching and waiting. This match was designed to get the less experienced 20-year-old Nakajima up to the level of 27-year-old KENTA, and they did it by having him match KENTA at every turn. This match never felt long. Though there were some ebbs and flows in the intensity, they always seemed to be doing something useful, and knew how to get away with leaving the striking battles then going back to them, so they were able to find a good balance that kept us wanting more without getting burned out. They were shot out of a cannon, immediately drawing us in with a great exchange of front kicks until Nakajima tried to leapfrog only to get knocked out of the air with a jumping front kick. The early portion was all parity, and they continued to match each other's kicks until Nakajima hit his sankakugiri. KENTA gained the initial advantages because he was the first to change things up in the exchanges, but Nakajima began attacking the knee after catching a kick, and took over with a knee breaker on the guardrail. Nakajima got too ambitious though, charging at KENTA on the outside, only to get leg tripped into the guardrail and fireman's carried onto it to set up KENTA's rib work. The submissions they threw in allowed them to keep going all out in stand-up, but because they were targeted to the weakened body parts, and were reasonably wrenched on, they didn't come off as rest holds the way they did in some of their lesser matches. That being said, the match wasn't particularly focused, it was more about beating each other at their own game since the two are so similar. They would take what was available, but they wanted to knock each other out one way or another. The match built up well, and just kept getting more interesting as they answered each other so well, increasingly working more and more big moves into the mix. Nakajima tried another sankakugiri, but was pushed to the floor, where he was ultimately Death Valley bombed. Nakajima was on the ascendancy after knocking KENTA off the top rope with his death roll, but KENTA landed on his feet for a German suplex. They wound up exchanging Tiger suplexes then did a double knock down spot charging into each other with front kicks. KENTA got a near fall with an avalanche falcon driver. Nakajima slipped out of the go 2 sleep, and hit his death roll into a German suplex for a near fall. They could have used an actual transition to the finish rather than KENTA just answering with a series of high kicks until Nakajima was out on his knees, then hitting the go to sleep for the win. This is their 2nd best match. ****1/4
Take The Dream in OSAKA: Kensuke Sasaki vs. Naomichi Marufuji 27:35
SEMex Opening Match: KAGETORA vs.Genba Hirayanagi 9:40
Saitama Yoshikawa Object ~Kuishinbo Banzai~: Kuishinbo Kamen & Catfish Man vs. Akira Taue & Kikutaro 8:49
Lucha Mania in KORAKUEN: Naomichi Marufuji & Taiji Ishimori & Ippei Ota vs. Ultimo Dragon & Takeshi Minamino & Amigo Suzuki 17:40
Kensuke Office vs. NOAH 4 vs. 4 Survival Tag Match: Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima & Takashi Okita & Kento Miyahara vs. Kenta Kobashi & KENTA & Atsushi Aoki & Akihiko Ito 55:30