Puroresu Show Reviews

New Japan ran this show from the Nippon Budokan, and the Budokan is NOAH country!

El Samurai & Tiger Mask IV VS Pablo & Hi69
The only heat this match got was when the K-Dojo team’s valet, Ryoko, got involved and hit a swinging DDT on Samurai! The rest of the match was pretty bland and heatless.
Match Rating: **

Jado & Gedo VS Ikuto Hidaka & Curry Man
This was pretty good, though I wonder why the fans were laughing when Curry Man and Jado exchanged multiple near pinfalls near the end. Again, this match suffered abit due to lack of crowd heat.
Match Rating: **1/2

Wataru Inoue VS KENTA
They tore right into each other at the opening bell! This was a really great match between two rising Jr. heavyweights and Inoue showed a lot of guts challenging KENTA to hit him hard with his kicks. But the ending was also a bit of a surprise, questionable even.
Match Rating: ***1/4

Koji Kanemoto VS Makoto Hashi
This was a great match! Honestly, I have never enjoyed a Makoto Hashi match as much as I did here! Kanemoto played up the veteran bullying the junior, but did a heck of a job putting over and selling Hashi’s offense when he got fired up. Both men did a fantastic job in this one, and I’m sure it was MOTY material back then.
Match Rating: ****1/4

Masayuki Naruse VS Takehiro Murahama
If you ever wondered what U-Style was like, this would probably be the best example. Lots of heavy kicking and submission attempts. Murahama has a legit MMA/K-1 background compared to Naruse. This started off good, but after about 10-minutes, just seems to drag on with all the mat submission attempts. Even the heavy strikes can get boring to watch when they don’t have that put-away, match ending effect that it should have considering there were no rounds to rest in between exchanges. Still it had it’s good points if this is what your into.
Match Rating: ***

Giant Silva VS Giant Singh
Two huge 7ft+ monsters going at it! I was really looking forward to this, but then I would find they cut the match down from 10-minutes to just under 5-minutes! Needless to say this was never expected to be a five star mat classic, but these two giants did the best they could with each other and you could even tell they deliberately slowed down when being Irish-whipped to prevent themselves from flying over the top rope due to their height! Give Silva some credit for willing to take some big bumps here too, though there was one ugly scene when Singh tried to put him in a cobra twist but neither giant is flexible enough for that! I might have rated this just a bit higher if the match was in full.
Match Rating: **1/4

Shinsuke Nakamura VS Tadao Yasuda
Nakamura’s debut! Too bad he was paired with the hairless ape known as Tadao Yasuda. But due to it being Yasuda, the crowed was immediately backing Nakamura and popped big when he managed to take down the big man! I would have liked to have seen this go longer than 2 minutes though.
Match Rating: *

Kensuke Sasaki VS Minoru Fujita
This was a total squash, and even I don’t get why it was booked in the first place. If this was the payoff K-Dojo was getting for Shinya Makabe’s services down the line, then K-Dojo seriously got ripped off.
Match Rating: DUD

IWGP Jr Tag Team Titles
Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi VS Minoru Tanaka & Jushin Thunder Liger
This was just loads of fun and heavily heated! The NOAH team totally brutalized the champions early on, but they would retaliate back and brutalize veteran Kikuchi! I did think it was weird that the Jr. ace of Kobashi’s Burning squad was teaming up with the Jr. ace of Akiyama’s STERNESS squad, but the two got along great as they shared a common hatred for the NJPW Jrs! This was a great match overall, and should have been the show closer instead of what was to follow.
Match Rating: ****

NWF Title King of Gladiator Tournament Semi Finals
Yoshihiro Takayama VS Kazuyuki Fujita
This was hard to watch as these two big bulls worked a shoot-like match much like Naruse/Murahama earlier, just nowhere near as good and probably could have been a lot better. Maybe Fujita was "protecting" himself again for an upcoming MMA fight???
Match Rating: **

Overall: This was a great show overall! You DEFINITELY want to get this for the NOAH VS NJPW Jr wars, as the three matches totally rocked!

Labels: NJPW

This is probably the first NOAH show I watched that wasn't a super-card, if you don't count all the free episodes I've watched on the satellite TV. This was taped on 5/14/2003 during the Navigation With Breeze tour to hype the upcoming 6/6/2003 Budokan show where Kobashi & Honda challenged Akiyama & Saito for the GHC Tag Titles.
Only the last four matches were aired.

Naomichi Marufuji, Takeshi Rikioh & Takeshi Morishima VS Yoshihiro Takayama, Bison Smith & Doug Williams
My first look at Williams, and he looked OK. The main story here was the beatdown WILD II layed down on then IWGP/NWF champion Takayama! Takayama took a heck of a beating here! And Bison was his good old monster gaijin self and Marufuji was great as usual. Really fun match this!
Match Rating: ***1/2

Masao Inoue VS Yuji Nagata
Nagata's first match in a NOAH ring, and he and Inoue put on a real fun little bout here! Though it wasn't as heated as some of big matches Nagata would have later in the tour. Inoue showed some spunk here, and I actually thought maybe the match should have gone just a bit longer as it ended abruptly as things were just heating up. Inoue also got busted open the hard way and was bleeding above his right eye. To his credit, Inoue also escaped the Nagata Lock II and managed to lift up Nagata in his Argentine Backbreaker.
Match Rating: ***1/2

Jun Izumuda & Daisuke Ikeda VS Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa
Scorpio & Bison Smith interupt the opening of the bout. Not really sure why. This was one of those "lazy" Misawa matches. And the fact that Ikeda & Izumuda couldn't get along didn't help all that much either. Nothing really memorable here, though Ikeda did try hard.
Ending was weird too as Bison & Scorpio returned and a huge brawl erupted. But here's something I noticed that just isn't right: Scopio is out brawling Misawa, but Ogawa was outbrawling Bison?!? Can't he put SOMEONE over?!?!?
Match Rating: **

Captain's Fall Elimination Match
Akitoshi Saito (C), Jun Akiyama, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Makoto Hashi VS Tamon Honda (C), Kenta Kobashi, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & KENTA
I was really wondering who was gonna win this match, with the high chance of a Kobashi VS Akiyama final two, but then I found out Saito & Honda are the team captains, meaning the chances of Kobashi or Akiyama getting pinned where just reduced to ZERO. Honda was team captain here cause he was trying to prove his worthiness to Kobashi. The match itself was pretty good though, with lots of brawling into the crowd and big double team spots. Kikuchi's head was wrapped in bandages, so I'm guessing he wasn't 100% which is why they eliminated him just three minutes into the match. Overall, the match went a good 35+ minutes with everyone getting good ring time.
Match Rating: ***1/2

Overall: This was a pretty good house show. Definately fun to check out, though I'd try to look for a full version of the show. Main event was definately fun and added hype to the upcoming Budokan show.

Labels: NOAH