Section 1- Results
Dragon Gate: Muscle Outlaw’z retained the trios titles and as a result PoS Hearts must disband. Sydal retained the lightweight title in ROH over Aries. Shingo Takagi & Naruki Doi won the ROH tag titles in the UK from the Briscoes.
NOAH: Morishima vs KENTA won fan voting to be the main event, and Morishima retained the ROH title in under 10 minutes. Underneath, Misawa beat Sugiura, Akiyama beat Yone, Doug Williams beat Ogawa, and Sano pinned Taue in a tag. Show was far from a sellout. In Zero-One, Takaiwa retained the junior title against Ishimori.
Section 2- News
All Japan: They’ve booked Aichi Prefectural Gym for 4/30, a big risk considering their lack of strength outside Tokyo. I expect a Minoru Suzuki title defense against the carnival winner to headline. And if he wins the tournament then I just have no idea. Nakajima will defend there as well.
Dragon Gate: Liger will challenge Fujii on the 25th. Also on that show will be Sydal defending against Horiguchi. CIMA & Yokosuka have formed a new stable along with Ryo Saito, Dragon Kid and Mori called Typhoon. The next trios title defense will be on the 13th as Saito, Kid & Mori challenge for the belts. Also on the 13th is CIMA & Yokosuka vs Jado & Gedo for the WAR junior tag belts.
New Japan: Negro Casas will be the next challenger to Tiger Mask’s NWA junior title.
NOAH: Sano, having pinned Suigura and Taue at the last two Budokan shows, is now Misawa’s challenger at the 4/28 Budokan show. The tag titles finally get defended next tour, and Akiyama & Rikio will be the challengers.
Section 3- Hey it’s Botter!
Section 4- The All Japan ‘90s Project
I’ve started a massive project where the end result will be a vote on the 50 best matches in the ‘90s from All Japan. Several people have stepped up to vidcap matches, meaning a huge volume of new goodness on a site you really should bookmark. If you’d like to participate, most of the action is here, plus also at Smarkschoice and Strong Style Spirit. Don’t worry about being an “expertâ€Â, all you need to do is watch the nominated matches and vote. This will take place over several months.
Section 5- NOAH. Where do I even start with NOAH.
They take Takayama and put him primarily in meaningless tags. They take Sugiura, fresh off losses in his two recent high-profile singles bout, and put him against Misawa, which means no GHC title match on the Budokan show despite recent inability to sell it out. They make Morishima vs KENTA the most attractive match among the set fans could choose from for the main event, at a time when Morishima is out most of the tour (for ROH), and during the tour KENTA drops a fall in a tag match rather than get a push. Oh, and at the Budokan itself, Misawa vs Sugiura gets 25 minutes while Akiyama vs Yone and Morishima vs KENTA put together get about half that. Oh, and now Sano, with questionable momentum and very little crowd support, is headlining the next show. I mistyped ‘headlining’ as ‘deadlining’ at first maybe that’s more appropriate.
I accept that NOAH’s big shows have lots of meaningless tag matches. Sometimes they result in some unexpected goodness, which was the case on this show. At the same time, NOAH absolutely has to have an interesting set of matches on top in order to even get close to selling out, and what’s more, they need to make proper use of established stars like Misawa, Takayama and Akiyama in order to do for the current generation of young stars what Jumbo did for Misawa’s generation.
Putting Misawa in a long match against someone with no momentum and no hope of winning (Sugiura) accomplishes zilch, all the more so because Misawa’s selling has gone downhill dramatically. He took Suigura’s Olympic slam finisher three times in a row, kicked out, and a few seconds later he popped up and took control for the rest of the match. Jumbo didn’t even take so much as a single tiger driver or tiger suplex yet he almost single-handedly got Misawa over as a top star. To then put Misawa in a match that three and a half years ago was a nice third-from-the-top match, and today is less attractive, is brain-dead. Sano isn’t winning the title (I hope), is not even a little bit of a draw, and is over the hill. Misawa doesn’t have much left in the tank and what’s there absolutely needs to be focused on the future.
Morishima vs KENTA was a good ten-minute match, but it does nothing for them going forward. Morishima had to use his full arsenal, including three backdrops, to win. KENTA is established as a tough junior but he always chokes against heavyweights. Even five minutes longer, with the extra time spent having them tee off on one another and really get the crowd into it, would make the match seem like a proper main event (and accordingly, make them seem like proper main-eventers).
I liked more matches on this Budokan show than any NOAH show in several months, but I liked them on a level that isn’t exactly full-throated enthusiasm. Given the fan and press reaction I’m not alone. I don’t know if the current plan is to coast along until Kobashi returns, but if it is, they need to realize that no wrestling promotion in Japan has the luxury of coasting anymore. And if this is their idea of top-notch booking, then the ark is in serious need of repairs.
Meanwhile it’s hard to deny that the winner in all of this is ROH. Their title match was on top, voted in by fans, and was alone in the spotlight. It’s clear to me that ROH has their stuff together a lot more despite having many more problems to deal with.
