How’s this for a month? Morishima to WWE! Morishima rejected for being fat! Morishima loses the title! Marufuji to wrestle in All Japan! New Japan & NOAH cooperation! Kobashi has emergency surgery and is probably out the rest of the year!
It hasn’t even been a month, that’s just the last three weeks.
Section 1- Results
All Japan: Mutoh beat Hirooki Goto to retain the IWGP title, while Suwama vs Kea went to a 60 minute draw. Hijikata retained the junior title over KAI, and TenKoji was victorious over Makabe & TARU. Attendance for the Sumo Hall show was around 8,000, an improvement over last year.
Dragon Gate: Doi & Yoshino, despite losing their first three matches, won the tag league. Shingo retained over Cyber Kong on the 31st, and Horiguchi retained over Shinobu. At the Dragon Gate show in LA, Saito & Yokosuka retained over the Jackson brothers, and Real Hazard retained the trios titles against World-1 (Hulk/Doi/Yoshino). Horiguchi made another title defense in Hawaii against Tanisaki.
New Japan: Makabe & Yano defended the tag titles against Nakamura & Goto. Also, NOAH head honchos Nakata and Misawa sent a video message for a New Japan show celebrating referee Unno, the first sign of cooperation between the companies in years. This was followed by more (see below).
NOAH: Sasaki beat Moishima to win the GHC title on Saturday. KENTA & Ishimori won the junior tag league, but needed to beat Kanemaru & Suzuki in two straight matches to do so. Budokan Hall was once again far from sold out.
Zero-One: Omori has left the company in conjunction with taking an extended leave from wrestling. Also, their last show at Korakuen drew only 500 people (per Meltzer) despite a Nagata vs Ohtani main event and a reasonably big undercard (Hidaka vs Taguchi, Sato vs Sekimoto, Omori’s Z-1 farewell). There’s a reason I don’t cover them more. In an odd note, apparently the PREMIUM mini-promotion has some support from First On Stage, long-time Z-1 backer.
Section 2- News
All Japan: It doesn’t get any more out-of-nowhere than this: Marufuji will challenge for Hijikata’s junior title on the 28th. They were one grade apart in high school, so perhaps that’s why. Also on that show will be Suwama defending the Triple Crown against Great Muta. Perhaps a semi-unification?
Dragon Gate: Doi & Yoshino get a tag title shot on the 26th. Taka Michinoku seems likely to be Shingo’s next challenger.
New Japan: Mutoh vs Makabe for the IWGP title and Tiger Mask vs Low Ki for the junior title were announced for the Kobe World Hall show on the 21st.
NOAH: Kobashi is out 2-6 months after surgery on his right arm; he complained of not being able to grip well with his hand. It’s said to have been lingering. Sasaki’s first defense will be on the 27th in Osaka Prefectural Gym. Against… Yone. Yeah. Also, Yujiro & Naito of New Japan, who are aiming at the junior tag titles, will be wrestling in a ‘dark’ match on the ROH/NOAH show on Sunday. They face Suzuki & Hirayanagi.
Section 3- Great, ANOTHER new guy to shill for
THE NEW GUY~. Will he outlast JMull?
Section 4- Navigation Through Choppy Waters
On Morishima/WWE: It baffles me that WWE management was offended by the blubber. It never ceases to amaze me how the company can be so well-run for the most part and yet have so little clue what’s going on at times. If they were interested to the point of setting up a deal with NOAH, wouldn’t they have, you know, WATCHED SOME FOOTAGE? Cryin’ out loud…
On Sasaki: Not a shock. Morishima didn’t cause a business decline or anything, for instance the Rikio defense didn’t draw but the undercard was weak and it was on a Friday, and his first defense was against Sugiura. That said, Sasaki creates much more interesting matchups. Sasaki vs Akiyama would draw way more than Morishima vs Akiyama; ditto any potential title shots for Misawa, Taue and Shiozaki. Morishima didn’t need more time for the title win to mean something. A 6 month reign and the victory over Misawa are enough to make him credible, certainly more than he was after his first two title shots. Will Sasaki be enough to sell out Budokan Hall? Oh no. Not by a long shot. But it’s a start.
On Kobashi: At the start of the year it was obvious that Kobashi’s ability to return to 100% (at least relative to 2006) would be the key to NOAH’s 2008, even more than pulling the trigger on Morishima. Within a couple tours the Kobashi 6-man tags were no longer a draw, and there was never an attempt to do anything more complex storyline-wise than a series of Budokan tags involving Takayama. Maybe, maybe they were going to give Kobashi & Honda a tag title shot after their “big†win at Saturday’s show, but that isn’t the kind of effect anyone had in mind last December. Now he’s injured again after wrestling less than a year with a low-impact style, and the injury isn’t even fresh. Meltzer speculated that Kobashi was more broken down than NOAH would admit to, and he’s being proven right. With no hope of some big Kobashi matches any time soon, NOAH needs something big to get the spotlight back.
On the end of isolationism: Hey, remember GPWA? Yeah, me neither. I’m willing to grant that NOAH has done a fair amount of crossover work with other companies, but it’s primarily been small-scale. As much as I enjoyed the junior tag title matches with Dragon Gate, that isn’t big time. With Zero-One on life support that leaves two companies worth hooking up with: New Japan and All Japan.
In the case of All Japan, I’m not sure if Marufuji is doing a one-time thing to help out a friend, or will wind up doing a long outsider title reign like Liger did in NOAH and DG, or if this is the start of a serious working agreement. In the case of New Japan, I’m not sure if Yujiro and Naito are just going to lose a junior tag title match and be gone, or if ties really have been re-established following the falling-out a few years back.
The bottom line is that with Kobashi out of action and little possibility of him returning in good enough shape to do the big rematch with Sasaki, NOAH needs something major to get out of its business slump. New Japan is doing better but could use a replacement for the Zero-One feud; All Japan still only draws 5000 people two or three times a year at most. There’s no time like the present to make things interesting. For NOAH’s sake it’s especially important, because they need their new stars to get established in the eyes of more than just the hardcore Tokyo fans. If Misawa and Nakata are smart they’ll swallow their pride and cooperate. If the recently announced crossovers are a one-time deal, expect more half-filled Budokan shows.
