Section 1- Results
All Japan: Minoru Suzuki beat Taiyo Kea to win the Triple Crown on Sunday.
New Japan: Vader made his return to Japan on the latest WRESTLELAND (HUSTLE-esque sideproject) show. He isn’t his old self but it’s still Vader.
NOAH: Shiga beat Scorpio for the openweight title on Sunday.
Section 2- News
All Japan: Minoru Suzuki will make his first title defense on 10/29, with leading candidates for the opponent being Mutoh and Kojima.
New Japan: Tanahashi vs Kanemoto has been booked for the 9/24 show, marking a rare time when the junior champ takes on the heavyweight champ (non-title of course).
Section 3- Der shillenhaufer
Some guy is crazy enough to do an English fan-site for a promotion that draws 200 people for a title change. I don’t know if Osaka Pro even has one in Japanese. But hey, more power to ya!
This column by the fabulous Mr. Botter makes a nice link between last week’s feature section and this week’s. Botter equals must-read, period.
Section 4- Scattershot
On Kurt Angle: I don’t like to change my mind. It makes me feel as though my past self was either under-informed or stupid, like the time I thought recent Keiji Mutoh was a better mat wrestler than Ian Rotten simply because I hadn’t seen any of the latter, or the time I thought the first TLC match deserved the same rating as the best matches ever. Oh well, live and learn, and read Botter to get the latter half of the equation.
The Angle situation is muddy, as any of you who’ve followed it know. What’s a shoot? What’s a work? Who’s working who? Botter’s column made me radically re-think my perspective on the situation. If Botter is anywhere near accurate then Angle has a very good chance to show up in Japan, because if he’s on the outs with WWE then Japan only has to compete with TNA for his services. And even if he signs with TNA it would be easy to book him for big weekend shows that don’t conflict with TNA tapings or PPVs. In the case of Sting or even Samoa Joe such booking wouldn’t make sense, but given Angle’s cost-to-benefit ratio it would make plenty of sense for all involved.
I reiterate that Angle will not tour with a Japanese promotion, and I very much doubt he gets it all handed to him from the start like Lesnar did. What’s changed is that Kurt might not wait for the guaranteed WWE cash that will be there as soon as he’s healthy enough to compete without serious medication. You can be sure that no promoter in Japan gives a rat’s ass as long as he doesn’t get caught with the dreaded Mary Jane.
On All Japan’s Heavyweights: There’s no way to spin the fact that the title match between the company’s two most-hyped heavyweights of the year drew a claimed 1,750. Ignoring the potential of that number having been padded, that’s deplorable. I’ll grant that it took place in the far north Sapporo area, which is on the small side and hasn’t produced a big wrestling crowd in years. I’ll grant that it comes on the heels of the thunder-stealing Hase retirement show. I’ll grant that they were realistic enough to use the smallish Media Park Spica venue. I’ll grant that the undercard was underwhelming.
That still doesn’t account for the fact that the match was booked too close to Kea vs Kawada, or that the show clearly wasn’t promoted well enough to ensure good attendance for an important match. This isn’t like All Japan in May 1996 booking Misawa vs Taue at a venue twice as large in Sapporo, then going to the Budokan two weeks later for Taue vs Kawada. The company had no shortage of matchups to intrigue the public and didn’t have to worry about ‘wasting’ one on a now-closed 5000-seat venue. With the dearth, and dare I say paucity of credible heavyweights in the company today, the various worthwhile Triple Crown match combinations need to be used carefully. That means as much build as possible, spacing them out, and making sure a title change isn’t in front of a Korakuen-sized audience. NOAH’s show on the same night with a weak card at Aichi Prefectural Gym drew a 30% full house, yet that still had about twice the attendance.
Hopefully, the strength of Minoru Suzuki’s charisma can lead to the first effective heel champ Japan has seen in some time. All Japan needs all the help it can get.
On NOAH’s booking: Misawa is ‘the man’ as far as the company, but Kobashi and Akiyama head up the creative end of things. Between the three of them there were no doubt many high-fives leading in to the successful 7/18/05 Dome show, and no doubt they spend a significant amount of time pondering how to dig out of the hole that opened up afterwards. Kawada is blacklisted, Tenryu has stopped being used, Sasaki is a rarity, K-1 fell through so there goes Sapp and Akebono, Kobashi got cancer, Makoto Hashi got hurt, Go Shiozaki got hurt, Shiga returned only able to do schtick, the new rookie class hasn’t made much impact, the Rikio reign ended with a thud, and so on.
That doesn’t explain some of the inexplicable booking decisions, though. When the Sapp deal fell through they should have re-thought Main Event Masao (Inoue), rather than going through with it and seeing the worst Budokan attendance ever under Misawa’s watch. When Kobashi got cancer it was time to either bring in a credible replacement for the September defense (ie. Sasaki, Rikio) or elevate Morishima by way of giving him a Budokan main event. But wait, Morishima’s last big singles encounter was a loss to Misawa in March. Hmmm. Perhaps a rematch where the big guy goes over? Oh, it’s NOAH, rematches among regulars happen once in a blue moon if ever. Let’s not get into the fact that Marufuji had a singles match with Masao Inoue two weeks ago and came out looking like the lesser man.
They have no momentum in any division. Akiyama has faced a slate of challengers who stood no chance of winning; the tag titles are in limbo due to Kobashi’s illness; the junior division is lost amid KENTA and Marufuji mixing it up with the big boys. I’ll grant that they don’t have access to, say, a 1993 All Japan level of roster depth. Yet it wouldn’t kill them to book more high-profile singles matches, to put more effort into tour continuity so that the Budokan undercards mean something, and to put a lot more effort into the title divisions for tour-to-tour continuity. NOAH running Budokan shows on the cheap can be nice for the short term, but in the long haul they need to make the most of the roster they have in order to build interest for the Morishima generation. Misawa and Kobashi won’t be around forever.
On NOAH’s 8/13 show: One last note from my trip to Japan. On the 13th, I visited the Rainbow Bridge. We were told to walk at a brisk pace because the walkways would be shut down so that they could set up a fireworks display. In my case I should have been brisker because of the 3 PM start to the G-1 Climax, which was missed by about half an hour. Anyway, if you happen to get hold of the TV broadcast version of the show, you’ll see a gigantic fireworks display surrounding the junior tag title main event. One look and you’ll understand why they needed several hours to set up.
Next Column: NOAH Budokan results. Maybe some other stuff. FEAR THE APATHY~!
