Section 1- Results
All Japan: Nakajima got into the carnival by pinning both Honma and NOSAWA in a 3-way.
Dragon Gate: Shows over the weekend led to numerous developments. Yoshino won the Brave Gate tournament in a three-way final with Dragon Kid and Naoki Tanisaki. Naoki is moving more and more towards a heel turn. Susumu Yokosuka and CIMA faced off on Sunday for the right to challenge Ryo Saito, and Susumu came up on top there. Former Osaka Pro wrestler Gamma debuted as Magnitude’s replacement in Blood Generation.
New Japan: Lesnar defended the title against Akebono, though there were some ‘sports entertainment’-style shenanigans to stir up controversy. Chono & Tenzan held onto the tag titles over Nagata & Yamamoto, with the latter getting praise for his fighting spirit. Tanahashi downed Miyamoto as expected. Albert got some more momentum with a win over Scott Norton. The junior tag titles remained with Samurai & Taguchi.
NOAH: The debut of the offshoot SEM/Shem promotion was inauspicious, drawing just 400 in NOAH’s home arena of Differ Ariake. It was a fairly small show and might just be a way of getting the numerous young lions a chance to get more experience in public.
Section 2- News
All Japan: The Champions Carnival tour info was released. The semis and final will be on 4/20. Right now it appears the semifinals won’t do the mix-and-match between blocks, so that’s a change. It means we’re almost certain to have a Kojima vs Minoru Suzuki semifinal from the B block. A block is more competitive, with Mutoh, Sasaki, Yoshie, Kea and Suwama all having a shot at advancing.
Dragon Gate: 4/12 has a match of particular interest: Stalker Ichikawa facing the Florida Brothers in a gimmick vs gimmick match. Stalker never wins, while Florida never loses, but who knows if the trend might come to an abrupt halt. On 4/23 there will be two title matches. First, the already set Ryo Saito vs Susumu title match. Next, Yoshino’s first title defense, which will be against Jack Evans. Evans will be making a three month stop in Japan from April to July. The 4/23 show will be in Ota Ward Gym, which All Japan just used to run Kojima vs Muta.
New Japan: It’s now being reported that Simon Inoki is working with WWE on a join show for May. This is the sort of talk one often hears from Japanese promotions, however there is a chance due to WWE’s struggles in Japan of late. The April tour featuring the NJ Cup tournament will be long and have several mid-sized venues, with the final on 4/30 and more shows after that. It’s expected that the next title match will either be towards the end of the tour or on a big venue show in May after the tour. Jado & Gedo are once more moving into contention for the junior tag titles. First round matches for the tournament include Chono vs Tanahashi and Tenzan vs Scott Norton. Oddly enough the winners of those matches face off in round 2.
NOAH: Morishima & Yone are vocally demanding to defend the tag titles, and are targeting Kobashi. Isn’t it nice that the tag division gets so much booking support that the champs have to request title defenses?
Section 3- Shill
Keith Lipinski, internet radio personality, he of the disturbingly enthusiastic smile, somehow managed to land an interview with Akebono. Keith sent out an email asking for questions to ask and apparently my response was the best because my questions made up the bulk of the interview! Listen to the Hawaiian Hulk (and Christopher Daniels) here.
Section 4a- The business end of New Japan’s 3/19 show
When a Japanese wrestling promotion has a bit of a hard time packing ’em in for a big show, it’s accepted practice to deal out some free or heavily discounted or “buy X, get X free” tickets. New Japan made a deliberate decision NOT to do so with their show on Sunday due to the magnitude of Lesnar vs Akebono. The result was one of their most dismal Sumo Hall attendances ever. They announced 7500, only as much as they did for a smaller show in Aichi a week earlier, and there is word that the actual attendance might have been under 5000. This for a match with two months of hype and one that might be called a ‘dream match’ from an importance standpoint, plus other matches which were built to extensively on the tour.
The presence of the World Baseball tournament in Tokyo on the same day didn’t help business one bit. That said there’s simply no way to ignore what could be the lowest Sumo Hall attendance in the 139 times they’ve run there in the 34 year history of the company. The ‘under 7000’ mark was first reached a year ago, and was repeated for the penultimate night of last year’s G-1. Some discussion of the significance of the low attendance and whether New Japan should shift focus from Tokyo here. and here.
Simon Inoki announced a goal of being strong enough in Tokyo by year’s end to justify running the Tokyo Dome on 1/4/07. That’s an uphill battle to say the least.
Section 4b- Brock Lesnar, the new and improved Ultimate Warrior
You remember, don’t you? Ultimate Warrior was going to be the next Hogan. He was younger, bursting with energy, getting huge pops everywhere he went, drawing money, selling merchandise, and so on. Then it all fell apart because of his ego and his quirks.
Brock Lesnar should have been absolutely huge. He’s got size, he’s a great athlete, he has personality, he has a legit amateur background, he was pushed to the moon upon his big league debut and after a few months got over as a main event caliber star. Brock was on pace to be another long-term megastar, and he could have easily had a bigger career than Angle since there’s no neck injury to cut short his career. You know what happened then: leaving WWE, flopping in the NFL for the 2004 and 2005 seasons, the 1/4/05 appearance in New Japan leading to lawsuits, and finally his debut in Japan last October when he won the title.
I fault New Japan for putting the title on Kaz Fujita (all three times), and Yasuda, and Sapp, and Nakamura. I don’t blame them for doing so with Lesnar. There was no MMA connection to ruin things, the WWE lawsuit moved slow enough to allow for contingency plans, Lesnar has everything that the Japanese public wants in a gaijin, and most importantly Lesnar would mark the first in-prime American main-eventer to go to Japan outside the influence of WWE or WCW in YEARS. Maybe they could have done things a little differently here or there, but this isn’t like All Japan feeding Kojima and Kea to Goldberg in fast squashes with no payoff. Even though it was yet another part-time champion Brock was the best option on hand.
What’s happened is baffling to me on two levels. First, Brock seems to have badly devolved as a wrestler. His 2003 was superb for a big man with just one year of TV under his belt, and even his rookie year had several highlights. His farewell match against Goldberg gave us no reason to believe that he’d worsened as a worker since it was under strained circumstances. His return matches in 2005, well okay, ring rust. 2006, well he’s in there with Akebono, so he can only do so much right? Yes and no.
Akebono is about as good as a 500 pound fat-man can be expected to be. Brock was often saddled with limited opponents in WWE, but *his* parts of the matches were usually fine. The Brock of 2003 would have had a MUCH better match with Nakamura. Simply put he hasn’t shown the athleticism, jaw-dropping strength and control, fundamental pro-wrestling smarts or the ‘Manster’ intensity which made him into a household name for wrestling fans around the world. Compare the track Lesnar is taking with that of Albert, who isn’t having five star matches but is at least living up to his full potential in the more opened-up style of Japan. Brock should be doing better, not worse, than when he was in WWE. He shouldn’t be a poor man’s Scott Norton, certainly not while the real one is right there.
The second thing that baffles me is the indifference to Brock on the part of the Japanese fans. His debut, which also had the successful Chono vs Fujita G-1 final to play off of, didn’t even draw a third-full house (and that’s after the usual freebie tickets). Weak undercard? I’ll grant that, but it still doesn’t explain the way his debut was tepidly received in the media and by the live crowd, and that in turn carried on to his following matches. Lesnar vs Akebono is a megamatch on paper, but now it seems that it would only have filled a mid-range venue. Perhaps that says as much about Akebono as Lesnar, but that’s another column. Bottom line is, for all the criticisms I’ve had of New Japan I honestly expected them to do significantly better with Brock than they have.
The build toward Brock’s future title matches remains good. Tanahashi and Albert have momentum, Akebono still has an issue, and perhaps a fourth person will emerge from the NJ cup. It’s good that New Japan has those options, because unless Lesnar moves to Japan in order to do full tours I see no reason for them to pay him big money when he’s delivering unspectacular matches and dismal gates, to say nothing of the still-looming WWE lawsuit. There is no ‘good’ alternative to the former Next Big Thing, but most of the men New Japan would consider putting the belt on seem to be better alternatives at this point in time.
