Puroresu Show Reviews

Show starts off with a pre-recorded interview with Naomichi Marufuji where he’s asked about the 4 new bloods of the company. We than go to the first match.

Ippei Ota VS SUWA
A change of name for Ota, but no change or advancement in his abilities. After seeing what SUWA did to Hirayanagi at the first SEM show, you’d think the rookies would be a little wary about stepping into the ring him. Well, SUWA didn’t break Ota’s jaw or made him bleed, but SUWA did give him a heck of a beating, even smacking him across the back a few times with a folding chair. Ota managed to get in his airplane spin and swinging bulldog, as well as putting up a spirited fight, but SUWA was just to much for him putting him away with a big diving elbow drop after a big backdrop and lariat.
Match Rating: 1/2*

Akihiko Ito VS Mohammed Yone
I think of all the rookies so far, Ito is the only one without any defining features to stand out. He put up a spirited fight like the others, but other than a jumping frankensteiner off the second turnbuckle and a German suplex, really didn’t show anything special. Yone didn’t do a whole lot either since he stuck to mostly throwing rather weak looking kicks and such before finishing off Ito with the Muscle Buster.
Match Rating: 1/2*

Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Charly Manson VS El Angel & Taiji Ishimori
Interesting to note that the ring announcer announced the minutes passed in both Japanese and Spanish for this one.
God, I thought the AAA luchadores were rather terrible here. Seems like they were moving really slowly just to not botch anything, but at the same time it made their offense looked really rehearsed and unrealistic. And note to Charly Manson: If you can’t do a good kip-up or backflip, you better just not do them at all! Manson might have a good running vertebreaker type move, but his version of the Canadian Destroyer is really sloppy and bad. But he did win the match with a rather interesting reverse figure-four move. I don’t think I saw anything good in Angel either, other than him probably being the first person I’ve ever seen do a handspring back-headbutt type move.
Luchadores may have been the ancestors to high-flying speedy action, but Kanemaru & Ishimori dominated it here in that department and really kept the pace up when the AAA guys were keeping it down. I’m not really looking forward to the AAA guys working the regular NOAH shows if the regular guys are gonna take a back seat to them after watching Angel and Manson here.
Match Rating: *

KENTA & Go Shiozaki VS Takeshi Morishima & Takashi Sugiura
It was great to see Shiozaki back in action, and all four men put on a solid tag match here which included another strong showing from Shiozaki in his continued development, as well some great exchanges between KENTA and Morishima! I hate to say despite Sugiura being one of my favs and having a solid showing here as well, seemed to be more of a second fiddle compared to watching Shiozaki and KENTA’s exchanges with Morishima.
I loved seeing Shiozaki get in some good offense on big Morishima, like a fisherman’s suplex as well as a German suplex. Heck, KENTA even managed to superplex Morishima’s massive frame off the top rope! Morishima was able to battle back and pick up the win after giving Shiozaki four hard lariats.
Match Rating: **

Bonus Match: TAKA Michinoku & Ricky Marvin VS Naomichi Marufuji & Atsushi Aoki
A solid bonus match to close out the show, this one was right up there with the junior tag matches you’d see on the main NOAH show cards. Aoki gave a good showing and again I see the potential in him, and he and Marufuji even came up with a cool tandem move where Marufuji hit Marvin with a tiger driver and then flipped Marvin over to Aoki who hit a beautiful German suplex for a near fall.
TAKA had some good exchanges with Marufuji too, and a singles match between them down the line would be a lot of fun. I especially loved the short superkick exchange they had, with TAKA winning out with his Super-K II kick. Seeing him with Marufuji in the Just Facelock on the corner apron was a good visual too as Marvin hit Aoki with a reverse spinning neckbreaker (roll the dice) before finishing off the youngster with Mike Modest’s California Roll finisher.
Match Rating: **1/2

We of course close out the show with a look at the fun goodies in the free DVD given out to fans who attended the event live at the Differ Ariake.
First we see Hirayanagi doing a weird dance followed by him sneaking around the dojo kitchen in the dark. He opens a container that’s filled with dirt, but when he shakes up the dirt a bit we see these HUGE sago-worms in it! The dojo students actually have to eat those?!? There were the size of Hirayanagi’s palm!!!
And closing it out is a fun look at Kikuchi and Izumuda on the road, and the funny antics they get up to while sightseeing. These two ring veterans sure enjoy their vanilla ice cream cones, as they seem to munch them down every chance they get, but the one thing I didn’t need to see was a bare shot of Izumuda’s ass as he stepped into a hot spring!

Labels: NOAH, SEM