Section 1- Results
All Japan: Sunday’s show at Sumo Hall was far from a sellout, but that didn’t stop the main event from becoming the second-longest Triple Crown title change ever (behind Misawa vs Kobashi 10/98 and one second ahead of Misawa vs Kobashi 1/97). Kensuke Sasaki beat Minoru Suzuki with a flurry of lariats. Kojima & Taru won the tag titles from Kawada & Kea. Nakajima retained the junior title against Sabin. And, last but not least, Muta & Tajiri beat Scott Steiner & Suwama.
Dragon Gate: CIMA retained over Iwasa on the 11th. This month’s tour was dominated by a 10-team round-robin tag tournament, and was won by Doi & Yoshino. The Kanda vs Rivera title match had no finish due to a Horiguchi run-in.
New Japan: Tanahashi beat Nagata in the G-1 final. In the semis, Tanahashi beat Makabe and Nagata beat Nakamura after an injury. Relevant results from previous days included Nakanishi over Tanahashi, Chono over Nagata, Tenzan over Makabe, Akebono over Tenzan, Nagata over Bernard and Makabe over Chono.
NOAH: Rikio suffered a spinal injury and had to forfeit his contendership tournament matches. That pretty much assures Marufuji a spot in the finals.
Section 2- News
Dragon Gate: Kanda vs Horiguchi will happen once again on 9/8. Also on that show will be Doi vs Fujii, with the winner to get CIMA on 9/22. Yoshino gets the winner of Kanda vs Horiguchi on that date as well. 9/9 will have two different tag title matches, as Muscle Outlaw’z defend the trios belts against Mochizuki, Fujii and K-Ness, while Saito & Yokosuka defend the WAR junior tag titles against Shingo and Cyber Kong. There will likely be another WAR titles defense against Iwasa & Arai, and after THAT match the winners will face Doi & Yoshino to crown the first Dragon Gate two-man tag champs.
IGF: There’s a lot of turmoil, again, in regards to the next show. Angle is supposed to appear but he’s got three title matches a day later on TNA’s PPV. Lesnar is supposed to appear but hasn’t confirmed anything. No matches are announced, very weird names so far, and we’re about a week away from the show. INOKI-ISM 4 LYFE~
New Japan: Several items of interest. First, it seems that there’s some thawing of relations between NJ and Muga. I’d attribute that to Muga not doing so well. Second, two title matches are set for the next tour, both on 9/24: Taguchi vs Tiger Mask and Bernard & Tomko vs Nagata & Nakanishi. Lastly, a massive amount of stable shuffling has gone on in the last few weeks. Jado & Gedo turned on Liger in order to join GBH. CTU had their farewell show shortly thereafter, and member Hirooki Goto returned from Mexico at long last for it. Goto, Minoru Tanaka, Milano and Devitt will join a faction to be led by Nakamura; Goto is moving up to the heavyweight ranks to balance the unit between weight divisions. Most importantly, a ‘legends’ stable made up of Chono, Choshu, Liger, Koshinaka and Super Strong Machine formed at the next-to-last G-1 show. Finally, it looks like Nakamura will be out the rest of the year and then some with a shoulder injury suffered against Nagata. I’d wager that he was supposed to win the tournament
NOAH: With all the heavyweight tournament matches on this tour, I failed to notice that Suzuki & Marvin vs KENTA & Ishimori for the junior tag titles will take place on Friday.
Section 3- A triangle gate of shilling?
Participate in watching and voting for the Best Matches vote for the All Japan ‘90s. This is your opportunity to take part in what should be a very big poll when all is said and done, and it’s a good excuse to watch great wrestling.
Phil & Mike look at NOAH’s seven year tenure.
Phil covers a big ol’ weekend. It really was huge; just in Tokyo on the 26th you had like 4 or 5 important shows.
Shilling doesn’t get any purer than this folks.
Section 4- Looking forward for the former (current?) Big Two of puro
Three years ago, Yuji Nagata was supposed to win a one-night IWGP title tournament. He would then drop the title to Sasaki the next month to follow up on their match at the 1/4/04 dome show. Instead, Tenzan knocked him out with a moonsault (knee to the head) and they had to put the belt on Tenzan. Stuff happens. Now, the company is in a position where the exact same match will headline three out of four Sumo Hall shows, since Tanahashi will get an IWGP shot in October for winning G-1. I can’t see New Japan wanting that to be the case, which is why I’m positive that Nakamura was supposed to beat Nagata and Tanahashi to win the tournament.
What New Japan has going for it is that the G-1 final was satisfying, and the April title match was downright excellent, so it should be a good match. The downside is that Tanahashi has almost no shot of winning, and it isn’t a very compelling matchup. Tanahashi beating Nagata in the G-1 final isn’t any sort of shock because IWGP champs had only won two of the first sixteen G-1 tournaments, and further the IWGP vs G-1 match in October was already announced. Nagata vs Nakamura for the title would be a toss-up. New Japan is going to have to make due with the October title match and hope that they can build up another solid challenger while Nakamura heals up.
An interesting contrast is the situation with All Japan. I was very puzzled by how they booked Kojima’s heel turn on Sasaki just before the announcement of Suzuki vs Sasaki, but now I can see a fairly obvious direction for the company over the coming months. Sasaki and Nakajima, holding both singles belts and never having lost the All Asia tag titles, go up against heel tag champs Kojima & Taru. This plays up both a ‘champions vs champions’ theme and the original Kojima vs Sasaki feud. A tag title match could feasibly be the top match of the September tour, since there aren’t any big venues scheduled, and they can then do Sasaki vs Kojima at the biggest show they have left this year (I don’t know offhand what it is). Heck, I have a feeling they could even do a shmozz finish or semi-screwjob and then a rematch next year. Extending the feud is a better option than rotating in deadwood like Kea and Suwama for token losses.
One last thing: Nagata is just about a mortal lock for ‘puroresu MVP’ this year. IWGP win and probable puro MOTY; G-1 final; appearance at the big Dragon Gate show in Kobe; best representative/ace by far. Interesting to see how he bounced between either vital or forgettable over the course of the last six years with very little in-between. That’s a big problem with his generation (Nagata, Tenzan, Kojima, Akiyama): they get red-hot and then drop off the map completely.
