Puroresu Pulse, issue 120: 2007 Year in Review

Awards, Columns

Somewhat unorthodox style in the responses, meaning that it’s more than just a random collection of lists. Keep in mind that these were written in December; I was delayed in posting this. Enjoy!

Puro Match of the Year

Clark: Minoru Vs Taguchi, 4/13. Best match I’ve seen as of this date.
Nagata Vs. Tanahashi, G-1 Final. Match most likely to pass my current choice.

Ditch: 1a. Kobashi’s return. Off-the-charts crowd heat, incredible emotion, tons of action, and honest-to-goodness psychology. The most important match by an order of magnitude.
1b. Tanahashi vs Nagata 4/13. This is the culmination of years of effort, first by New Japan in grooming Tanahashi, second by Nagata to return to championship form. It’s as good an IWGP title match as we’ve seen this decade, maybe Nagata’s best singles match ever, and it should age very nicely.
3. KENTA & Ishimori vs Marufuji & Ibushi. A companion to last year’s Marufuji vs KENTA match. As with Kobashi & Shiozaki vs Sasaki & Nakajima following Kobashi vs Sasaki, I prefer the tag. Best spotfesty juniors match Japan has seen in years.
Honorable mention: Sekimoto, Mammoth Sasaki & K. Inoue vs Nakanishi, Yujiro & Hirasawa, Big Japan 7/30. Heated interpromotional battle that isn’t on the mainstream (ie. Meltzer) radar, but should be. Simple and effective, it’s a match I believe any wrestling fan can enjoy.

Glazer: 1. Tanahashi vs. Nagata 4/13 – From atmosphere to quality, this match had it all. You could see the new ace being crowned as Tanahashi has developed to the point where the crowd is eating out of his hand with every maneuver and Nagata remains technical mastery. If Tana, Nakamura, and Goto (Should be Shibata!!) are the new Three Musketeers, then that leaves Nagata as the Choshu or Fujinami to put them over. He’s up to the task.
2. Kobashi and Takayama vs. Misawa and Akiyama
3. Kondo vs. Nakajima
4. Ishimori and KENTA vs. Marufuji and Ibushi
5. Nakajima vs. Sabin

Mulligan: I’m going to go slightly out of the box on this one. Most will probably end up voting for the Kobashi tag, but the match I want to focus on here is from a New Japan show that didn’t even air on TV. It’s from July 6th, and no, it’s not the Nagata vs. Makabe bloodbath, my vote goes to Minoru vs. Ryusuke Taguchi for the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship. These two had an awesome match with the rowdy Korakuen crowd completely behind the Funky Machine. And because of this intense crowd love, his comebacks and fighting spirit spots didn’t come off as hokey, they came off as incredible. The match builds to an absolute fever pitch, and when Taguchi finally gets the 3 count, the crowd explodes. Unfortunately, we can only hear them for one second due to copyright laws, but still. An awesome match, and my favorite of the year.

Wrestler of the Year

Clark: Yuji Nagata

Ditch: Tanahashi. Headlined every major show for his company and brought the goods each time, made the IWGP title continue to look like the top belt in Japan, elevated himself tremendously, and MADE Hirooki Goto. This was a weakfish year in the ‘Japan MVP’ category, but Tanahashi does deserve it. Other candidates like Misawa, CIMA, Nagata and Minoru Suzuki either didn’t do much to help their promotion, didn’t have the spotlight long, or didn’t produce in-ring.

Glazer: 1. Tanahashi
2. Nagata
3. Marufuji
4. Nakajima
5. Kojima

Mulligan: Hiroshi Tanahashi. He’s had great matches up and down the card with Nagata, Makabe, Goto, Nakamura, Kanemoto, Koshinaka, and everyone else, without squashing them or looking weak. It’s an easy pick, but the right one, in my opinion.

Best Promotion

Clark: New Japan.

Ditch: New Japan. Best heavyweight division, best juniors division, most new stars elevated and created, some great matches, and the most interesting booking by a lot. The move away from Inoki-ism might have cost them some headlines and shrunk the company, but their profitability and fanbase satisfaction are much improved.

Glazer: NJPW. Their booking was top notch, establishing new stars, keeping MMA far away, and pushing the right guys. Their Juniors and Heavyweight are both getting new guys over, while establishing they have the most in ring charisma in the world.

Mulligan: This one has to go to New Japan. NOAH had a really boring year until the 12/2 show in my opinion, with a few awesome standouts but little consistency. Dragon Gate drew real well, and also had some great shows, but a lot of stuff was fairly disappointing (World, I’m looking at you). I wasn’t as in to the BJW stuff as much as most were, to be honest, but if the deathmatch is your cup of tea, it seems to be must-see. AJPW was fun, but NJPW had so many great matches, and a basically untouchable main event. The way they built up there new stars, Tanahashi, Makabe, Nakamura, Taguchi, and all the rest, was great, as they mixed in wins and losses against more established competitors perfectly. NJ just had a great comeback this year, and I didn’t even consider anyone else for this award.

Best Show

Clark: NJPW 4/13 Osaka

Ditch: NOAH 7/1. Nothing that’s a top-of-the-year contender, but they pulled off four really good matches in a row, and in often-dead Differ Ariake no less.

Glazer: 1/4 NJPW. It held up the entire year. Kawada in a huge match with a young gun, TenKoji reunited to face Chono and Muto, Misu and Nagata in a battle of guys who would hold NJ and AJ’s titles for most of the year and an awesome Junior match with all of the biggest and best names. What more do you want in a show? Plus, I love Kawada.

Mulligan: I’m going to go a bit out of the box on this one too. My favorite overall show out of any company this year would be Dragon Gate’s offering from 9/22. On this show, we had a really fun lightweight title match with Masato Yoshino and Yasushi Kanda, an incredible tag titles match with Saito/Susumu vs. Arai/Iwasa that, in my opinion, set up Arai/Iwasa as two of the biggest fan favorites in the promotion, then a really great, regular DG style trios match with the veteran team of Mochizuki, Fujii, and K-ness taking on the new guard of Shingo Takagi, Cyber Kong, and Kota Ibushi. Then, the main event was the best CIMA singles match I’ve seen this year, as he and Naruki Doi took it to each other in a really great match. This show had a bunch of different styles, there’s also some quick stuff and fun comedy on the show, so it’s my pick for show of the year.

Breakout Star

Clark: Rysuke Taguchi

Ditch: Hirooki Goto. I’ll go on record as saying that his match with Tanahashi is overrated, but my goodness he certainly has blossomed. Two years ago he seemed to be the heir to Ohtani in the juniors division, and now he’s a bona-fide heavyweight who can be a cornerstone of the division for the next decade. Good look, good presence, charisma, and he’s still got plenty of time to develop further.

Glazer: 1. Nakajima. He’s 19 and he was in two of my top 5 matches this year. He can literally do it all and now he’s bulking up to heavyweight. He might be the future Ace of Japan.

2. Morishima – He’s defeated Akiyama and dominated, main eventing a major show vs. KENTA. He’d be number one, but I’m saving that for next year when he wins the GHC Title.

3. Hirooki Goto- Where the fuck did that come from?

4. Go Shiozaki – Mini-Kobashi has established himself as a great wrestler who is just awaiting a push worthy of his talent.

Mulligan: This was a tough one. I’m going to go with Hirooki Goto. He didn’t make a full impact all year, but from his return in August to now he’s been super over, got booked into a title match that many will vote MOTY, and has a match with Great Muta coming up on the Dome Show (a huge deal, indeed). I would be shocked to not see Goto with the belt within two years, and his work in the past 4 months solidified that.

Best Gaijin

Clark: Chris Sabin & Alex Shelley

Ditch: Giant Bernard. Not as good as last year but not much competition.

Glazer: 1. Giant Bernard and I don’t think there’s another viable star Gaijin that’s close.
2. Marvin is one of the flashiest and best juniors around, a rare combination.

Mulligan: Hard not to go with Giant Bernard here. His tag team domination with Tomko is well noted. They have dominated NJ, holding the tag belts for a long reign, and winning the G1 Tag League. With Bernard being ranked over Tomko, I ghave to go with him as best gaijin.

Top News Story

Clark: TNA/New Japan partnership

Ditch: Kobashi’s return. There were rumors that this would be like when Jumbo Tsuruta returned in a very limited role for undercard matches due to not being able to take the physical toll of main events any longer. Though we have yet to see whether Kobashi can return full-time, he certainly appears to be back in form. The top name in puro overcoming cancer is huge not just for NOAH, but for the industry as a whole.

Mulligan: Gonna go with the obvious on this one, Kenta Kobashi returns. It gave NOAH their biggest gate and hottest crowd in years, and could lead to a long term resurgence for them, so there you go.

Who to keep an eye on in 2008

Clark: Hirooki Goto & Wataru Inoue

Ditch: Kobashi, but that goes without saying. In the sense of younger talent, I’ll say Hirooki Goto.

Glazer: Nakajima if he can bulk up. Go Shiozaki with a major push if not.

Mulligan: Katsuhiko Nakajima. I know we’ve been “keeping an eye on him” forever, and he is a true phenom already. But with him supposedly bulking up to heavyweight, and with Kensuke restarting his relationship with NOAH, I think by the end of the year we could see a heavyweight Nakajima making an impact in both All-Japan and NOAH as a freelancer.

’Worst’ of 2007

Clark: More Inoki Madness

Ditch: Inoki is the worst of the worst. Misawa was disappointing, All Japan was almost entirely missable, Dragon Gate was frustrating, but nothing was as actively bad as Inoki Genome Force. Shows with no card announced in advanced, match teases that never happened, no sense of cohesion or purpose, and to top it off, exploiting Tadao Yasuda’s suicide attempt. I can’t even begin to imagine how much money it loses every show.

Mulligan: NOAH’s Battlebowl and forgetful booking. I want hot feuds, fun rivalries, and all that jazz. Instead, we had the Budokan crowd react hotly to DG, and CIMA challenge Marufuji to a match, then nothing. We saw Murakami bloody Marufuji and he still isn’t back (I heard he’s injured, if he’s still out, I apologize). We saw the infamous “build ’em up, break ’em down” booking with stuff like Bison Smith beating Marufuji clean in 9 minutes so he can lose to Misawa and never get high up on the card again. And just recently we’ve seen a super-hot Morishima vs. Marufuji feud kick up, and I juts saw they’re teaming on an upcoming card. Now, they’re may be a DG vs. NOAH juniors feud brewing (could be great for both companies) and hopefully, the Kobashi return will give them a renewed focus. We’ll see.

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Thanks to Phil, Jake and Aaron for their input!

Next time: I break down New Japan’s status and why it’s vulnerable despite good booking.