Puroresu Pulse, issue 155: A look at the title scenes

Columns

Section 1- Results

All Japan: Takayama and Hayashi both retained at Sumo Hall. Mutoh & Funaki beat Chono & Suzuki. Akebono & Hama won the All Asia tag titles on Wednesday.

Dragon Gate: Tanizaki won the lightweight title on 8/30, beating Kagetora in the tournament final. Shingo & YAMATO won the tag titles on the 17th.

New Japan: Taguchi & Devitt retained the junior tag titles over MCMG on the 13th.

NOAH: Kanemaru & Suzuki retained the junior tag titles over Nakajima & Miyahara on the 12th. KENTA retained over Aoki, while Sasaki & Morishima won the tag titles from Saito & Smith. Saito beat Morishima in a lead-in singles match.

Zero-One: Makabe beat Sai, as expected.

Section 2- News

All Japan: Three big matches are set for the tour-ender on Saturday in Yokohama. Takayama defends against Kojima, Hayashi defends against Super Crazy, and Suzuki faces off with Funaki.

Dragon Gate: Tanizaki’s first defense will be on 10/4 against his former mentor Horiguchi. Doi’s next defense will be on 10/25 against Yokosuka. There was a press conference earlier in the month regarding the monkey scandal, and there was lots of shaved heads and apologizing. The main impact is CIMA essentially losing a month’s pay.

New Japan: Main event of the 10/12 Chono show is Chono, Mutoh & Kobashi vs Nakanishi, Kojima & Akiyama. The IWGP title will be on the line, as Ohtani challenges the winner of Nakamura vs Makabe.

NOAH: Main event of Sunday’s Budokan show is Kobashi & Takayama vs Mutoh & Taue. Tenryu and Minoru Suzuki will be in 6-man tags. Shiozaki vs Saito is the only title bout. 10/3 in Osaka is headlined by Kawada & Taue vs Akiyama & KENTA. Underneath it will be Takayama vs Sugiura; Shiozaki, Kobashi & Chono vs Rikio, Yone & Saito; and Kanemaru & Suzuki defending the junior tag titles against Jado & Gedo. The following tour will wrap up at JCB Hall, and will be centered on a junior singles tournament.

Section 2a- Meltzer News

All Japan: Their Sumo Hall show wasn’t a sellout, but it did draw 9900, which is their best showing in a while.

DDT: Meltzer said that their drawing so many people legit for the Sumo Hall show is the most impressive attendance figure in wrestling for the year, especially compared to IGF and HUSTLE having much bigger stars and not doing nearly as well.

Hase: Hiroshi Hase had a hard time returning to the Japanese legislature, as he lost the election for his seat in Ishikawa Prefecture. He had to get in through the ‘party list’, which was a dicey proposition because his party was routed in the election. Zach Arnold of Fightopinion reported that Hase had lost, leading Meltzer to write (without using Zach’s name) that he was wrong and Hase had won. Dave wasn’t given a proper explanation of Hase’s situation by his Japanese contacts, leading him to misunderstand how Hase was able to stay in the legislature. The bottom line: parliamentary elections taking place in a country that uses non-Roman characters can be very confusing.

HUSTLE: They will change things up a bit and try to be more serious. Meltzer doesn’t go into detail, but I’d guess having expensive shows that draw heavily papered crowds of people who aren’t serious wrestling fans probably isn’t profitable. If they draw more wrestling fans who actually pay for tickets, it might work. Also, they had a 6-man tag with Liger and Kawada, and that marks the first time they’ve interacted since they wrestled each other in high school (Kawada won).

NOAH: They are likely to do an annual singles tournament starting next year. Dave didn’t go into it, but the sense I got from when NOAH was stronger is that they avoided tournaments in order to not seem like every other promotion.

Section 3- 25th Anniversary Destructive Shill

Glazer on a welcome reunion.

Section 4- Media Corner

Best of 2000

Kawada vs Tenryu, Triple Crown decision match, All Japan October 28th 2000.

Tenryu is one of the best Japanese wrestlers of all time. Sadly he spent most of the ‘90s with the inferior talent pool of SWS and WAR, so relative to his talent he didn’t have much in the way of MOTYCs after leaving All Japan. His return to All Japan? MOTYC. His first big singles match after returning to All Japan? MOTYC. People stateside only took notice a few months later when Tenryu faced Mutoh (I’ll get to that one soon enough), but really Tenryu’s run of grumpy greatness started in 2000.

Oh right, the match. Well, let me see: first they beat the crap out of each other. Then they beat the piss out of each other. Then they beat the hell out of each other. There’s a few wasted minutes in the middle but other than that it’s a heavyweight slugfest that anyone can enjoy. For my money, the best Tenryu match since his June ’89 classic with Tsuruta.

2009 Ongoing

Beer Garden Digest, DDT August.

A block of concentrated DDT. Warning: do not attempt to drive immediately after watching Beer Garden Digest.

HARASHIMA vs Ibushi, DDT Title.

The main event of DDT’s biggest show ever. I clipped out the early stuff so you can go directly to the hot hot action.

Section 5- Episode 2009: A New Hope?

All Japan, DDT and New Japan all did better than expected at Sumo Hall within a few weeks of each other. NOAH has a good chance of selling out Budokan Hall for the Misawa Memorial show, and at the very least they’ll have their best gate in a while. This is a string of good news the likes of which puroresu hasn’t seen in some time. The promotions generally have a good relationship with one another, there isn’t any Inoki-level bad decisions being made, and there is a string of big cards yet to come. However, Japan’s economy is still struggling and there are no big TV deals on the horizon. If those two factors don’t change it will be nearly impossible to have sustained growth. Here’s a look at where I see each promotion’s main title going, and the company as a whole.

All Japan: I would be absolutely shocked if Kojima doesn’t beat Takayama. That was the matchup I’ve been anticipating since Takayama won the Triple Crown, and at this point there’s nowhere else to go unless they have Masa Funaki win it. That would somewhat bury the promotion and ruin the ‘outsider with the championship’ booking, so I doubt we’ll see that. With Kojima regaining the title they’ll be able to do Kojima vs Mutoh (last seen in 2005), Kojima vs Funaki (once Funaki has a few tours under his belt), perhaps Kojima vs Doering (who is currently the only Voodoo Murders member with credibility), and that would easily get them through the Carnival where someone else would be established. Kojima, like the other “3rd Generation” members (Akiyama, Nagata, Tenzan, Nakanishi, Omori) isn’t going to become a megastar, but he can do just fine anchoring the Triple Crown while Mutoh and/or Funaki do dream matches to help bolster ticket sales. All Japan has been steady business-wise for the last few years and with Funaki on board that should continue.

DDT: The Sumo Hall show was nice, and the success could help them attract advertisers, but I don’t think it changes anything month-to-month. They’re still going to have ‘big’ shows at Korakuen, and there are no hints of even mid-sized venues being used between now and next year’s Sumo Hall event. One thing we can be sure of: DDT is here to stay.

Dragon Gate: I would be very surprised if Yokosuka beats Doi, if for no other reason than the match is taking place at a non-major venue. I’ve been anticipating a title shot for YAMATO for some time, and the longer they wait the more sure I am that he’ll win when it finally comes. Shingo losing a non-title match on the DGUSA debut likely means he won’t get a rematch, and other potential challengers (Saito, Cyber Kong, Mochizuki, Fujii) seem unlikely to be the next champ. Dragon Gate does have the luxury of having plenty of ‘spare’ challengers to use as filler until they’re ready to do the title change, but with the next title match likely to be November 23rd at Osaka Prefectural Gym I doubt they’ll use ‘filler’. Adding to the uncertainty is the probable year-end King of Gate tournament, which would set up another challenger. Will YAMATO win the tournament and then beat Doi after that, or perhaps YAMATO wins in November and the KoG winner would be his first challenger? The possibilities are almost endless. And that’s part of why Dragon Gate’s formula, as with its fellow Gaora TV promotion All Japan, is in such good shape.

More than any other promotion, Dragon Gate has young stars viewed as on par with older ones. Guys like YAMATO and Shingo have just as much credibility and popularity as any non-CIMA Toryumon-era product, and the promotion is already younger than average to begin with. They’re in by far the best shape of any major promotion in Japan, with half the roster being a potential contender on any given tour and a loyal fanbase that mostly isn’t shared with other promotions. Just a few years ago I never would have imagined Doi as someone who they could push as the centerpiece of an entire year, but they pulled it off better than longer-term heavyweight pushes in other companies. Whether you love or hate the actual product it’s impossible to deny the success of Dragon Gate as a business. And unless there’s a split I don’t see anything stopping them.

New Japan: Makabe beating Nakamura might seem like a re-hash of the G-1 final, but historically when a G-1 final and an IWGP match happen close together we wind up with the same result. Makabe makes even more sense with Ohtani as the first title defense; why have an outsider who will probably be a heel go up against top heel Nakamura? Ohtani has at best a 1% chance of winning, so the first ‘real’ defense will be at the November 8th Sumo Hall show. Either there or at the Tokyo Dome show, I suspect we’ll get Chono’s last title shot if that’s ever going to happen. Considering that it isn’t happening at the Chono 25th event there’s certainly a chance he doesn’t feel up to a title match. However, he was willing to do a singles match for DDT and I doubt he’d do less for New Japan. Take Chono out of the mix and the only other healthy challenger I can see is Nagata, who hasn’t had a shot since dropping the belt two years ago. I can’t imagine Nagata getting a shot at the Tokyo Dome, so that would leave 11/8 at Sumo Hall or 12/5 at Aichi Prefectural Gym (if there will even be a title match there). Tanahashi is sure to get a shot when he gets back, but who knows when he’ll be up for it.

The more I look at it the more I expect New Japan to bring in a big-name outsider for a title shot within the next few months. Bigger than Ohtani, that is. They had things set for Tanahashi vs Tajiri, vs Makabe and vs Nakamura after the G-1, and with those plans out the window I think they might be scrambling for options. Ohtani certainly doesn’t strike me as a ‘first choice’ title challenger next month, even if the title match isn’t needed for that show to draw. For the life of me I can’t figure out who would be good to use and would be politically feasible. Lots of question marks here. But not nearly as many as…

NOAH: Shiozaki has to beat Saito. Please. I don’t even want to discuss the ‘Saito wins’ scenario.

With the following tour ending at JCB Hall with the junior tournament finals, I expect only one more GHC defense this year. Which is good, because NOAH is very low on options. Sasaki? Just lost the title in March. Bison or Rikio? Already beaten by Shiozaki this year. Akiyama? Might not be up for it. There are rumors of Kobashi vs Akiyama for the openweight joke title, which would signal that Akiyama isn’t up for a 25 minute epic. Sugiura just failed in an IWGP challenge, Taue doesn’t seem up for a title bout, Morishima is in horrible shape, and Marufuji won’t be ready for a title match until spring at the earliest. And… that’s everyone on the roster. Maybe Kawada will agree to come back and put over Shiozaki, but that’s more of a fantasy scenario than a likelihood. Which leaves them needing to get someone from another promotion, even more than New Japan. And New Japan doesn’t exactly have title challengers to spare as I already detailed.

Consolidation: now more than ever. Please.

Next time: A lot of results, the last of the Y2K match pimping, and either that long-delayed interview or more Misawa. And it won’t be 4 weeks this time.