Puroresu Show Reviews

It Works Hard Now Here 5/31/2006

Hirotaka Yokoi VS Mitsuya Nagai
A short match with a whole lot of submission attempts from both guys, that is until Taichi Ishikari and Kazushi Miyamoto got involved and attacked Yokoi behind the referee’s back giving Nagai the chance to hit the Hyper Knee Kuga for the win. This was supposed to be part of the ongoing rivalry with King’s Road, but there really wasn’t much of interest here either.
Match Rating: DUD

Takuya Sugawara VS Yoshihito Sasaki
Talk about getting a raw deal. Sasaki pinned Sugawara in a six-man tag and earned a shot at Sugawara’s international junior title, but Ikuto Hidaka would score a win over Sugawara with his Shawn’s Capture submission hold, which “injured” Sugawara (he tapped out rather quickly too) and because he hadn’t healed up yet, this was declared a non-title match!
Sasaki of course attacks Sugawara’s knee and Sugawara is playing up the cowardly heel bit for all he’s worth. Than comes the kicker, Sugawara tries to make a run for it out into the audience and Sasaki gives chase and catches him. He tries to carry him back to the ring with an Argentine Backbreaker, but Sugawara slips out and gives him multiple low blows before dashing back to the ring and getting Sasaki counted out at just over 5 minutes into the match! Sugawara obviously faked the knee injury and taunted Sasaki after the match.
You could already tell a screw job was coming, and I’m surprised one of the officials with authority in Z1M didn’t do anything since he was sitting right at ringside and made the announcement that it was a non-title match due to Sugawara’s “injury”! Just a waste of Sasaki’s talent.
Match Rating: DUD

NWA United National Heavyweight Title: Kohei Sato [C] VS Daisuke Sekimoto
This was a welcomed relief after the two disappointments so far! This was billed as a battle of the German suplexes, as both men have really awesome German suplexes for their finishers. Sekimoto started off strong with his strength advantage, and even hit a big suicide dive through the ropes onto the Sato on the floor. Sekimoto tried to cheat a bit by removing a corner pad and whacked Sato over the head with it. Both men spiked each other homicidal German suplexes where they dropped each other on their heads, and Sakimoto scored a near-fall on the champion with a stiff lariat and his German suplex-hold! Sekimoto removing the corner pad earlier would come back to punish him, as he missed a corner charge on Sato and rammed his shoulder all the way into the exposed corner post, and Sato scored a near-fall on him with a big tiger suplex-hold! That was it for Sekimoto though, as Sato quickly went for and scored his high-angle German suplex-hold for the 3 count to retain his title. I think the only complaint I have was the match was a bit short.
Match Rating: **1/2

Manabu Nakanishi, Takashi Iizuka & Naofumi Yamamoto VS Takao Omori, Shiro Koshinaka & Ryouji Sai
This one was a bit sluggish in places, but still a solid match that furthered the NJPW / Z1M feud. It mostly focused on Omori/Nakanishi, as well as the Yamamoto/Sai feud. A lot of back and forth action with Nakanishi scoring the win for the New Japan team pinning Sai with the Mana Bauer German suplex-hold. Koshinaka was pissed off at Sai for the loss, and the respect between Nakanishi and Omori started from here as well.
Match Rating: **

Labels: NJPW, Zero-1 MAX