Section 1- Results
Dragon Gate: Doi & Yoshino won the tag tournament to get a shot at CIMA & Gamma. YAMATO beat CIMA, the biggest win of his career by a fair amount. Sugawara pinned Doi in a non-title three-way, though once again it was due to interference.
NOAH: Takayama & Sano won the tag league, beating Sugiura & Taniguchi in the final. Akiyama beat Marufuji with the standing necklock of doom that he used to beat Morishima in late ’08. Sano got a pin on Shiozaki in the tag tournament, so he seems to be set as Sugiura’s spring challenger.
Section 2- News
Dragon Gate: The tag title match is set for the 10th, though that is in jeopardy due to rib and knee injuries CIMA suffered in the US. YAMATO vs Sugawara (which YAMATO has a 99% chance of winning) in a #1 contenders match will also take place on the 10th, with the winner likely to face Doi at the 3/22 Sumo Hall show. There’s some bickering in Real Hazard, a prelude to the usual early-year alliance shifting. Question to you readers: do you want me to give Dragon Gate USA notes? I get the sense that it’s covered decently already.
New Japan: Milano Collection AT has retired due to an eye injury. Chono has become a freelancer, and will be taking some time off. Omori didn’t get a contract either, and will work on managing an inn he owns.
NOAH: Rikio & Yone vs Takayama & Sano for the tag titles has been added to the Budokan card. The junior tag titles have been held up due to Suzuki’s injury, and a four-team tournament to decide new champs will end on the 18th. Shiozaki is out for a bit with an arm injury. I expect Sugiura to be devoured by locusts any day now.
Section 2a- Meltzer News
All Japan: Doering looks to have signed with WWE, which will force All Japan to give a push to a new-look Renee Dupree.
New Japan: Tenzan wasn’t re-signed, but that’s just because it isn’t clear if he’ll be able to return to wrestling.
NOAH:
-When Kobashi went for surgery on his right elbow, the doctor determined that the right knee needed work, so that was also operated on.
-The company was able to afford the 2009 contracts only because of the big sales generated after Misawa died. They knew the money wouldn’t be there in 2010, so the trigger was pulled on letting people go. Shiga will work some shows at a reduced price because he owes the company money stemming from his long injury (2003-2005). Honda was the big surprise of the ‘released’ group, even more so given that Masao Inoue was kept. The cut wrestlers will still be brought in on occasion.
-Young wrestler Ito is also out hurt. Forget locusts, we’re into ‘rivers of blood’ territory at this point.
Other: Kawada will be doing some stage acting. Tenryu will start a promotion, which I’d expect to run just a couple times a year.
Section 3- The Perfect Shilleralis
A discussion of elitism in pro wrestling from the one person on IP with a weirder last name than me.
Section 4- Big in ’09, Big in ‘10
Last year, my picks were Akiyama, Doi & Yoshino, Mutoh & Muta, Kobashi OR Misawa, Kojima, Yuko Miyamoto, Nakamura, Shiozaki, Tanahashi and YAMATO, with ‘dark horse’ selections of Bernard, CIMA, Goto, Ohtani and Takayama. How’d that work out?
The obvious ‘hits’ were Tanahashi, Nakamura, Shiozaki, Miyamoto, Kojima, and the Doi/Yoshino tandem. All of them were company leaders with big show wins and title reigns. Mutoh/Muta was barely a hit, thanks to the big interpromotional tags in the fall. Kobashi OR Misawa was accurate in that Misawa had a huge impact with his death, and only then did Kobashi start to show up in big matches. YAMATO didn’t accomplish what I was expecting, but his Super Juniors and J Cup experience show that he’s still a top prospect. The FAIL of 2009 belongs to Akiyama for a dismal title win, a disappointing title defense, and then missing two big matches due to injury followed by almost immediate returns. Okay, maybe he’s not in his right mind and can’t take the pressure of big matches. Then why book himself in them?
Of the second tier candidates we had Takayama, who definitely had a big year with his Triple Crown reign; CIMA, who had several notable matches in Dragon Gate; Ohtani, who wrested the Zero-One title from Nagata and got an IWGP title shot at Sumo Hall; Goto, who won the NJ Cup and had several other high-profile bouts; and a lone FAIL for Bernard, who toils away as a jobber-to-the-stars. I’d say that’s a quality ‘dark horse’ stable.
Who did I miss altogether? Makabe for starters, since he won the G-1 and went on to beat Fire Festival winner Sai. Sugiura started off as obvious job fodder on the Tokyo Dome show, but developed into a company leader in the New Japan feud and capped things off with a big title win. Kanemoto won the Super Juniors tournament and headlined Dragon Gate’s Sumo Hall event. Devitt was a junior tag machine and made the finals of three singles tournaments. Ibushi was ubiquitous, and had the biggest spotlight on DDT’s shockingly successful Sumo Hall event.
You’ll notice that my predictions for 2010 aren’t wildly different.
-Nakamura, Tanahashi, Shiozaki, Kojima and Sugiura. Granted, Tanahashi and Shiozaki won’t be due for title shots for a while yet, but all four of them should be in main and semi-main bouts on their companies’ biggest stages for the foreseeable future. Nakamura’s title reign might end in the next few months but he won’t stop being a force, and Kojima’s reign might last well into the spring if not further.
-Kawada. He’s by far the biggest star in Zero-One, and I would be shocked if he doesn’t make his presence felt in New Japan or NOAH.
-Marufuji. Granted, he just lost to Akiyama. Granted, he’s still straddling the no-man’s-land between the junior and heavy divisions. That said, he’s got the IWGP junior title right now and is one of the favorites to unseat Sugiura for the GHC title.
Now for the equivocations!
-YAMATO *or* Shingo. I expect one of them to be the next ‘young’ champ after Doi in Dragon Gate. YAMATO especially is overdue for a title shot and would make more sense than Shingo, who already had a big reign.
-CIMA *or* Mochizuki. These two are the focus of the DG ‘old guard’ stable, and I expect one of them to either win the title by year’s end or be set for a win early next year.
-Suwama *or* Funaki. I just can’t picture any of All Japan’s heels taking the belt at the moment, nor do I anticipate yet another Mutoh run. That pretty much leaves these two as the likely suspects for knocking off Kojima. I expect just one Triple Crown change this year, and the one who doesn’t do it probably won’t get much of note.
Dark Horses: Devitt, who might knock off Marufuji and in any case is due for a big win. Goto and Makabe, who will continue to get at least small pushes in the #1 company. Takayama, who won’t be doing All Japan and could end up with a big role in NOAH by the time summer rolls around. And last but not least, Jun Kasai, who’s almost a lock to get the next Big Japan title shot and better than 50/50 to win the belt.
Section 5- Delayed thoughts on the January 4th Tokyo Dome event
From a booking perspective, it was solid and didn’t take needless risks. The big complaint is that Team 3D didn’t do the job, and New Japan never should have given them the belts without a guaranteed payoff. Other than that you had the right person winning in the big 5 singles matches, and some inoffensive all-star tags that probably wouldn’t have added to the gate if split into singles. Nagata vs Tajiri and Nakanishi vs Iizuka is not the sort of thing to set the world on fire, though bringing in Sasaki & Morishima for a tag match against two New Japan mainstays might have helped add spice to a largely bland supercard.
I’m not going to say that the show was bad from a wrestling standpoint, because it clearly wasn’t. The longest match was 20 minutes long, so nothing dragged on forever, and none of the big singles bouts was a bomb. Yet neither was it a standout effort, since there isn’t anything with the mass appeal of last year’s Misawa tag or a heavyweight ‘epic’. Based on reports from Japan and reviews from the English-speaking IWC, the big singles bouts generated reviews spanning from ‘very good’ to ‘mediocre’, with hardly any ‘MOTYC’ or ‘abysmal’. Certainly that’s an improvement from trainwrecks like the January 4th 2004 card, but “okay†is not what puro needs from the biggest event of the year.
Coming out of the 2009 card, you had Tanahashi’s fans excited about his unfolding title reign and general fans anticipating a hot New Japan vs NOAH feud. What’s going to be developed from January 4th 2010? Nakamura is so badly in need of challengers that Nakanishi was thrown out completely at random; the NJ vs NOAH rivalry will continue but can’t possibly match the star power of the four singles matches; Tanahashi is just two months removed from his last title shot. New Japan and puro as a whole only get the spotlight so often, and they really needed to blow the roof off the dome to add to the dwindling fanbase. ‘Decent’ shows weren’t anything to worry about in the ‘90s, but the new century is a fight for survival. Big shows need to match that urgency.
