Puroresu Show Reviews

Golden Great League Semi Final: Magnitude Kishiwada VS KAGETORA
- I was surprised how one sided this match was with Kishiwada almost squashing KAGETORA here, save for a few hope spots. Kishiwada even pinned him arrogantly by standing over him with his hands on his chest for the win after a Last Ride. They were building up Kishiwada as a true monster as he got passed his block undefeated, even if he did cheat to beat Owashi, but seeing him give him a Last Ride was impressive.
Match Rating: *1/2

Golden Great League Semi Final: Touru Owashi VS Shuji Kondo
- Both of them have a score to settle with Kishiwada, and they went at it as almost equals, save for Owashi's size advantage. Kondo almost managed to pick up Owashi for The Original, but did manage to Jackhammer the big man for a near fall. Kondo survived a pair or running chokeslams and kicked out after two diving body presses, and finally put down the big man after a barrage of King Kong Lariats. The match was OK, but Kondo's lariats at the end didn't look like they had much impact.
Match Rating: **1/2

Ladder Match
- I don't know most of the people in this match, so I'm not even going to try to name them. This was one of the most bizzare matches I've ever seen. Right at the beginning of the match, one of the guys pulled down whatever it was they were supposed to be aiming for that was hanging above the ring, but the match continued anyway since everyone hadn't entered yet. Danshoku Dino comes out later and announces they are going to put whatever that is back up on the cable and the match and all it's whackiness continues until everyone was in and one of the Brahmans retrieve whatever it was on the cable. This match was very much like what you'd see in DDT with all the weird gimmicks and comedy spots.
Match Rating: **

Aagan Iisou VS Tokyo Gurentai: "brother" YASSHI, Sugawara & Shogo "Jet" Takagi VS NOSAWA Rongai, MAZADA & TAKEMURA
- Your standard Dragon Gate style six-man tag with a lot going on all at once. Jet makes his big return only to be pinned by a quick school-boy roll-up after hitting his trade mark Jet Punches. Why fans care so much for this guy is beyond me.
Match Rating: *

Golden Great League Finals: Magnitude Kishiwada VS Shuji Kondo
- I really hated that they had to make Kishiwada so dominant over Kondo, even with all the cheating he did. Kondo took a heck of a beating, being put through a table, sprayed with mist in the eyes, kicked out of a Last Ride, but was able to win with a pair of King Kong Lariats after Kishiwada accidentally gets black mist sprayed in his eyes by the one of the Brahmans. Really could have been a lot better.
Match Rating: **1/2

Labels: AJPW, DDT, Dragon Gate, El Dorado

Genba Hirayanagi VS KAGETORA
Clipped down quite a bit and we see the continued heel growth of Genba, matching up against the more experienced KAGETORA. Genba tries to steal the win, but the Shoryu-Genba and a straight up low blow both fail to get the job done. Genba has also added a nice version of a T-bone suplex to his arsenal. KAGETORA back with a big brainbuster followed by the John Woo and his Ikkitousen (fireman’s carry into an Emerald Frosion) finisher for the win.
Match Rating: *

Kikutaro & Akira Taue VS Namazu Man & Kuishinbo Kamen
A great injustice was done to this match since they clipped it down a lot! The first meeting of Kikutaro and Kuishinbo since their Osaka Pro days together, and the two clowns haven’t missed a step of their chemistry together! Didn’t get to see much of the newly beefed up Catfish Man, but Taue was fun and adapted to well to the comedy spots. Taue chokeslams his own partner and Catfish man pins him for the win.
Really would have preferred if they didn’t cut out so much.
Match Rating: *

Naomichi Marufuji, Taiji Ishimori & Ippei Ota VS Ultimo Dragon, Amigo Suzuki & Takeshi Minaminao
Part of the hype of this match was Marufuji and Ultimo having similar finishers, the Shiranui and the Asai DDT respectively, and the two had some good exchanges in there together which they could build for a future singles encounter between the two. The other story of the match was Taiji Ishimori going up against his mentor and he some solid exchanges with Minaminao as well before putting away Amigo with the Superstar Elbow. A match like this should lead to something down the line for the participants involved, but as per NOAH's booking style, NOTHING came of it.
Match Rating: *1/2

4 X 4 Survival Tag: Kenta Kobashi, KENTA, Akihiko Ito & Atsushi Aoki VS Kensuke Sasaki, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Takashi Okita & Kento Miyahara
Match #1: Takashi Okita & Kento Miyahara VS KENTA & Atsushi Aoki
- A hot start to the series with the NOAH team using some rather heelish tactics on the KO rookies. Okita has potential to be a good powerhouse grappler like Sugiura, but he'll be stuck in the junior heavyweight division since he lacks height! KENTA was taller than him! Miyahara had his arm brutalized by Aoki throughout the match, and that lead to him finally being eliminated by a keylock cross-armbreaker by the future NOAH Jr. star.
Match #2: Takashi Okita & Kensuke Sasaki VS KENTA & Atsushi Aoki
- Match two and KO send in it's biggest gun in Kensuke! KENTA gets right in his face and is actually able to stand toe-to-toe with the former IWGP/Triple Crown champion! Aoki even seems to get in some good shots on the big man, including hitting his Assault Point finisher for a near fall before Kensuke regains control slamming down with a powerbomb to counter an armbreaker, and making the rookie submit to the Boston Crab!
Match #3: Takashi Okita & Kensuke Sasaki VS KENTA & Akihiko Ito
- Ito got in a good amount of offense on Sasaki, including hitting a big Death Valley Driver and a frog splash for a near fall, but then Sasaki took his head off with a big lariat and pinned him!
Match #4: Takashi Okita & Kensuke Sasaki VS KENTA & Kenta Kobashi
- Okita now gets a chance to shine against a veteran as he takes it to Kobashi and even manages to hit a big Jackhammer for a 1 count! Kobashi quickly battles back with a superplex and a barrage of chops before putting Okita's lights out with a sleeper-hold! Very convincing sell of the sleeper by Okita!
Match #5: Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima VS KENTA & Kenta Kobashi
- This is where the awesomeness of the match goes into serious overdrive! All four men put in one heck of an effort to pull out one Hell of a back and forth battle where you know the first team to give in inch to the other could lose it all! This confrontation was also leagues better than the tag match at the Budokan that ended in a draw, and the shocking ending of Nakajima scoring the win over KENTA adds fuel to the fire of what would be one of the best feuds of the year!
- Nominated by many as a Match of the Year contender, I would whole-heartedly agree, and the final round could easily have been a MOTY in itself!
Match Rating: ****1/2

Labels: El Dorado, Kensuke Office, NOAH, SEM

Starts off with an interview with Ultimo Dragon, who’s wearing an interesting half-dragon, half-tiger mask, and is referred to as Tiger Dragon as he does commentary for the show. They run down the card before going to the intro talking about the history of T2P and the six-sided ring and how it’s being brought back for one night tonight.
Give them extra points for using the SpineShank song “Smothered” as the opening theme.
We than get an old school in ring introduction of the original T2P workers as they come out to the ring to thank the fans, which leads to the retirement ceremonies of Philip J. Fukumasa of the Royal Brothers and Gallardo of Los Carros Exoticos, who even unmasks to thank the fans before a 10-bell count is sounded to end their careers.
A quick rundown of the card again, and we’re on to our first match of the evening.

Lucha Preliminar En Clasica: Milanito Collection a.t. VS Jorge Rivera
Interesting rules for this match also, as you get penalized for using rope breaks, with a disqualification given if you use a maximum of five, kinda like Pancrase rules. There was even a yellow card-red card penalty rule in effect.
The match was billed as veteran vs. youngster, and Jorge totally schooled Milanito here as he carried him every step of the match! You could even catch him giving instructions here and there. It was interesting watching an aged veteran like Jorge move and flip around like he hasn’t lost a step, and the man was able to transition into some really interesting submission hold, forcing four rope breaks from Milanito!
I never really liked Milanito or any of the Toryumon minis as the gimmicks just screamed lack of originality. Like a cover band in the music business, it doesn’t matter how much you sound like the original, ‘cause you’re still just an imitation. Milanito really didn’t do anything outstanding, and it didn’t help for him to think he could finish off Jorge every time he was able to successfully counter a move without working over him some more. The guy never even thought to try and force Jorge to into a rope break with a submission or two. Milanito loss in the end when Jorge pinned him with a nice high-angle cradle.
I like this match just to see Jorge’s impressive submission hold and chain wrestling arsenal.
Match Rating: *1/2

Paradise for Maximo: Maximo & Mototsugu Shimizu VS Gamma & Kagetora
Maximo is a luchador from CMLL and uses a homosexual gimmick much like Dansyoku Dino of DDT. The guy also has a surprising big fan base in Dragondoor. It’s just too bad we didn’t get to see him do much in the ring other than some comedy spots. Most of the work for his team was done by Mototsugu Shimizu who took a lot of punishment from the heel team and didn’t get to show much offense of his own other than a good looking fisherman’s knee buster and countering a brainbuster from Kagetora into a sweet DDT.
Gamma was good at playing along to Maximo’s comedy spots, and works well with the powerhouse Kagetora, who won the match with a sick looking Emerald Frosion out of a fireman’s carry on Shimizu.
Match Rating: *

Keep on Grope: Syachihoko Machines III & IV VS Taiji Ishimori & Little Dragon
The Syachihoko Machines diss Ishimori and his musical exploits with the Sailor Boys earlier in his career, and proceed to stomp on a pair of CD singles before Ishimori jumps them. The Machines quickly unmask to reveal themselves as Ishimori’s ex-Sailor Boy partners, Kei Sato and Shu Sato!
The Sato brothers may have changed up their style to a more heelish, brawling style, but they still have some really good double team combination moves, with their target being Ishimori for most of the bout. Little Dragon looks like a blue colored Dragon Kid wearing a K-ness mask, and does a lot of the quick high-flying offense.
Other than the opening brawl into the audience, the crowd was really dead for this one. The Satos tandem offense kept things interesting for me, but there wasn’t much else, and it took interference from Kagetora hitting his Emerald Frosion move on Ishimori behind the referee’s back to bring this one to an end. Thankfully.
Match Rating: *

Another in ring segment with Livedoor blog representative thanking the fans for their support, and this leads to the dramatic return of Kinya Oyanegai (hope I spelled the name right?), who comes out in a tattered and torn suit as he’s fallen on hard times since leaving the business, but is now set on making a comeback to get back in the green financially. All I can say is I’ve only seen him work one match in the old Toryumon days, and it was an amazing display from him the way he balanced his mat prowness with reading a book in the ring! Can’t wait to see what he can do in there again.

Touru Owashi VS Toshiaki Kawada
I really liked the build up video for this one, as we’ve always seen Owashi dominate everyone smaller than him, but now he’s standing toe-to-toe with someone just as tough as he is, and he likes the challenge of it! Kawada himself is no stranger to Owashi after facing him in a tag match from a previous show, and adapted well to the style when he surprised everyone with a big plancha on Owashi then! They really built this up as something special, which is what it should be.
This was a really physical match! Both men laid it into each other without holding back and if they traded anymore chops their chests would have ended up like the Kobashi/Sasaki match at the Tokyo Dome in 2005! I also liked that they managed to keep the physicality up without resorting to make a big move spot fest like what we’d see in the bigger promotions.
Owashi had a plan going in, attacking Kawada’s eternal bad leg which helped the ex-sumo student get out of a jam every now and then, but it was still weird seeing Owashi get dominated like he did after seeing him being the dominant one after so many years. Come to think of it, I don’t think there was a clear moment in the match where Kawada looked like he was in any real danger as he was able to escape most of Owashi’s big moves, and managed to kick out of Owashi’s chokeslam. To Owashi’s credit, he managed to kick out Kawada’s trademark brainbuster before a stiff PK to the head put him out.
Match Rating: ***1/2

Former WWE superstar TAJIRI comes out and takes a seat at ringside for the main event.

They than show an interesting video on what happened to the top guys of T2P, with Shuji Kondo & “brother” YASSHI making it big in AJPW, and Milano making a name for himself in America working the independents like Ring of Honor.

Lucha Libre Clasica Best&Next: Milano Collection AT, Berlinetta Boxer & Iifushino (Ifushi Kota) VS Shuji Kondo, “brother” YASSHI & Takuya Sugawara
A reunion of Aagan Iisou and the Italian Connection, with Kota stepping for YOSHINO. The Italian Connection even did an old school group dance intro with the Milano girls and Milanito joined in as well. Good times.
Surprisingly this one didn’t start out with a wild brawl considering the history between the two sides. The Aagan team actually warranted 2 yellow cards (for YASSHI ripping off Boxer’s mask and Sugawara hitting Milano with the Black Box) and 3 rope breaks, meaning another infraction would have caused the match to be ruled a TKO in the ItaCon’s favor. The match eventually spilled out into a multi-man spotfest, with tons of counters and big moves all over the place, and Milano eventually getting the win over YASSHI with the IRII.
Personally, I didn’t think much of this one and Shogo “Jet” Takagi still sucks.
Match Rating: ***

The show ends with a really long in ring segment that I guess means Kenzo Suzuki and TAJIRI will be on the next show or something.

Overall: Definitely worth watching just for the Owashi/Kawada match.

Labels: Dragon Gate, Dragondoor, El Dorado