Puroresu Show Reviews

The show starts off with a 10-bell salute to the late AAA founder Antonio Pena, with Ricky Marvin in the ring holding his picture. We then see Jun Akiyama in the back with a big smile on his face as he points to his name on the event program as he’s in the opening match as part of his plan to rebuild himself from the bottom up after losing the GHC heavyweight title to Naomichi Marufuji the month prior.

Jun Akiyama & Atsushi Aoki VS Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Go Shiozaki
Interesting how Akiyama looks a lot younger when wearing his old blue tights and not coloring his hair? He didn’t even do any of his big move offense and had a fun elbow strike exchange with Kikuchi, which I think would have been better if Kikuchi won or switched to a headbutt to throw off Akiyama’s momentum during the exchange. Akiyama & Aoki in matching blue gear makes them look like a regular tag team too.
I’m not sure how it happened, but Aoki got busted open the hard way during an exchange with Shiozaki. Both youngsters looked great in there, with Shiozaki showing more moves added to his arsenal again and finally having someone he can have seniority over. I don’t know why also, but Kikuchi felt the need to yank up Aoki’s tights into a wedgie to half moon the crowd while shouting “Aoki-chan!” before giving him a pair of snap suplexes.
The ending came off as a bit anti-climatic too, as the crowd didn’t react to Kikuchi beating Aoki with the fireball-bomb. Maybe cause they didn’t give Aoki any hot kick outs?
Match Rating: *1/2

Makoto Hashi Return Match: Makoto Hashi, Tamon Honda & Mitsuo Momota VS Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Kentaro Shiga & SUWA
First off, Hashi looks really big compared to the last time I saw him. He’s even bigger than SUWA. He looked great in there though, and seems to be heating a rivalry with SUWA here. A lot of good back and forth action here, though nothing really memorable. Interestingly enough, Hashi lost his return match as expected, but it was Momota that dropped the fall to a school boy roll-up from Shiga.
Match Rating: *

Akira Taue & Takuma Sano VS Scorpio & Ares
This was mostly a comedy match, especially when Taue and Scorpio were in there doing things like giving each other a testicular claw! Ares probably had the best match of his career against Kobashi in Germany a few years back, and he fit the comedy bill here the way he kept stopping to adjust his tie. Taue even got in on it telling Ares to tuck in his shirt. Though he did botch a fisherman’s neckbreaker that probably wasn’t all his fault, Ares had a nice showing in the closing moments, hitting a forward flip senton on Sano for a near fall as well as countering a Northern Lights Bomb into an inside cradle for another near fall before Sano finally hit his move to take the win while Scorpio mooned the crowd due to Taue pulling his pants to prevent him from breaking the cover!
Match Rating: *1/2

Akitoshi Saito, Masao Inoue & Kishin Kawabata VS Takeshi Rikioh, Mohammed Yone & KENTA
A fun six man tag mostly due to KENTA being the little bastard that he is always trying to pick a fight in a big dog like Saito, and the fighting spirit of Kishin Kawabata as he again put on a good showing being the underdog that he is. It was fun seeing Kawabata add Giant Baba’s atomic drop-to-backdrop suplex combination to his arsenal, and he hit a pretty good Axe Bomber on Yone for a nearfall. The match broke down to a wild brawl all over the ring and Yone managed to score the fall on Kawabata with the muscle buster.
Match Rating: **1/2

Yoshinari Ogawa & Kotaro Suzuki VS Nigel McGuinness & Ricky Marvin
In one of those “What the heck was he thinking?!” moments, Marvin hit a huge dive over the top rope on Kotaro out on the floor and slammed his leg into the guardrail really early in the match (the very FIRST exchange!). The guy was obviously in a lot of pain as he slowly rolled back on the ring and to his corner to tag out to McGuinness before immediately being checked on by the ring seconds and officials. Marvin was able to continue after getting his leg heavily taped up, but it became an open target for Ogawa and Suzuki to attack for most of the match. Despite this though, Marvin put up a heck of a gutsy performance and almost won the match on several occasions! He was finally put away by Suzuki with a tombstone piledriver at the end.
I haven’t seen much of McGuinness, so it was good to see what his Tower of London finisher actual was, which is a hangman’s Ace Crusher. Interestingly enough, they even managed to pull out a pair of 4-way comedy spots, first with all four men giving each other ground headscissors, than the classic Osaka Pro spot where 3 guys lock each other in figure four headlocks, and the third guy does a Boston crab to the last guy in the line.
Overall, I’m not sure if the Marvin smashing his leg into the guardrail was part of the plan, but it made for telling a good underdog story in the ring as he fought through the pain to continue the match.
Match Rating: **

Mitsuharu Misawa, Takashi Sugiura & Ippei Ota VS Kazunari Murakami, Katsumi Usuda & Manabu Hara
Well this was rather disappointing! The only time Misawa and Murakami got it on was after Sugiura and Ota beat down Murakami, and Murakami quickly tagged out then too! So it was mostly just the younger guys getting it on, and Sugiura got to show a bit of his MMA side too. Wasn’t a whole lot to this one at the end either, as Murakami totally destroyed Ota and pinned him with a big left handed punch. The fans were obviously expecting more too.
Match Rating: *

Naomichi Marufuji & Takeshi Morishima VS Doug Williams & Murat Bosporus
Bosporus is a short pudgy guy, almost like Taz, and I think his gimmick is similar since he has suplexes drawn all over this tights and favored using several suplex variations, including a big second rope belly-to-belly on Morishima. He also hit an impressive looking Lo-Down/Mad Splash for a near fall, and that move even got the biggest pop of the match. He even managed to block Marufuji’s Shiranui twice, but with a little help from Morishima, Marufuji was able to hit the move on Bosporus from a standing position to get the win for his team.
Not really a lot to this match other than seeing what Bosporus could do in there. Everything else felt by the numbers.
Match Rating: *1/2

Tsutomu Hirayanagi VS Shuhei Taniguchi
Interestingly enough, they decided to end the show by airing a dark match from before the show began earlier in the day. It was a good showing for both rookies, with Hirayanagi grounding the bigger Taniguchi for the opening minutes before surviving a ton of punishment and scoring a few near falls on the big man before the 10-minute time limit ended and the match was declared a draw.
Match Rating: *

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