Lions, Pillars, and Arks: NOAH New Year's Navigation 2015

Pro Wrestling NOAH, a company that has worn a mantle of both fame and infamy over the years. Those who don't know the history of NOAH, I'll give the most barebones of it. In 2000, practically the entire All Japan locker room left that company to form their own, naming it after the biblical story of Noah and the Ark escaping the flood. Through a series of deaths, retirements, and the Yakuza (No, I'm not kidding) we find NOAH in 2015 not in the best of sorts. It's around this time that New Japan stepped in to help, for what ends I have no definite reason. But what means? Well, one of the major means was to send Jado to help with the booking. We'll see another major means at the end of this show, but for now we'll just go down the card.

Hitoshi Kumano vs. Yoshinari Ogawa
Hitoshi, a future member of the Back Breakers tag team, and Day One NOAH member Ogawa managed to get a little more than the usual out of each other. Kumano here either is full Young Boy, or just coming out of it, so the offense he got was limited. There was some brilliance out of the young man, but Ogawa stiffly ended it with a high angled back suplex.
*3/4

Jonah Rock (TMDK) vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
I love Sabre's work normally, and besides being shorter here than recent bouts it was very good. Jonah is a larger man, and watching Zack try and work submissions around someone his size was a fun change of pace. Between the size difference and Zack hurting his leg early, the Technical Wizard had to avoid anything close to a power move and somehow manage to work in holds. As good as Zack is though, Jonah's size and strength were too much, and he put Zack down with A Blade Runner/Sister Abigail.
**

Lions, Pillars, and Arks: New Japan Wrestle Kingdom 9

3, Koraku 1-chrome, Bunkyo, Tokyo Japan
The Home of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Yomiuri Giants
42,000 seats
The Big Egg
The Motherfucking Dome.
(I'll never get tired of that.)

This is a significant show for a lot of people, including me. It was the first time, I believe, that there was an English broadcast of a Wrestle Kingdom. It was my first ever Wrestle Kingdom, and my first New Japan show if you don't count the War of The Worlds tour from the previous year (I'll be getting to those some day). While I didn't have Jim Ross and Matt Striker this time, I was perfectly alright with the Japanese commentary this time around (You get used to the white noise, I promise). Every title in the company was on the line this night, and the single matches that didn't have a title per see still had consequences. So, does nostalgia cloud my memory of how good this night was? Or do the matches hold up to my memory? Let's find out.

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Title [1st Defense]
reDRagon (Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly) (c) vs. Forever Hooligans (Alex Koslov & Rocky Romero) (CHAOS) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) (Bullet Club) vs. Time Splitters (Alex Shelley & KUSHIDA)
This match is all action from bell to bell, and depending on your taste it was either great or just above alright. I'm stuck in the latter, not being that big a fan of a match that has more than four men in it to begin with, combined with being out of the loop of any stories that went into the formation of this match. I love ReDRagon well enough, but two of the teams here ceased to be shortly after this show, and the Bucks were right in the middle of Kliq parody heights. If all you want is to see insane action and pinfall breakups, look here. Koslov made the mistake of Chasing The Dragon, leading to Fish and O'Reilly successfully defending. I should go back and watch more Timesplitters and Forever Hooligans. They were very fun here.
** 3/4

Lions, Pillars, and Arks: All Japan New Years War 2015

It's 2017, on the eve of 2018. I've unofficially been a fan of  Japanese professional for a few years now. But there's still a lot I haven't really watched. I've exclusively watched New Japan for two of those three years, and even then it wasn't always consistent. Since then, I've found All Japan Pro Wrestling and Pro Wrestling NOAH, and those I've been very sparse on. So I decided to amend this problem, and here we are. I launched Falcon Arrow Emporium mostly as a vehicle to log my progress through the library before me. So join me, if you will, as I cut through 3 years of Japan's finest wrestling. 

All Japan Pro Wrestling, New Year's War 2015
The year is 2015! With The Triple Crown and the Junior Heavyweight Title held by Joe Doering and Atsushi Aoki, respectively, Evolution is on top of All Japan! However, the group XCeed is in the game as well; Go Shiozaki will challenge Joe on the second night of the wars, while Kotaro Suzuki and Kento Miyahara hold the All Asia Tag Belts. As the first shows in the new year, there's a lot hanging in the balance for the men of All Japan!



Night 1, January 2nd, 2015

Naoya Nomura vs. Yuma Aoyagi
This was a Young Boy match, and if you've seen one at any point in the past, then you've seen this one. The only really neat thing to mention is that these men would one day be All Asia Tag Champions together. Nomura won with, shockingly, a Boston Crab
*

Kotaro Suzuki (Xceed) and Ryuji Hijikata (not of XCeed) vs. Masanobu Fuchi vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru
Instead of a Yohei Nakajima match, which happened but we apparently skipped, we got this. I've heard of Kotaro Suzuki before, but looking at all the hardware he's had in his career tells an amazing story. Masanobu Fuchi took  the entire beating, then his fire up was composed of a single nose hook and the coldest hot tag ever. I don't want to surprise anyone, but Yoshinobu turned the match's pace around for the absolute better, making a great comeback. He and Suzuki clicked very well, and Hijikata wasn't an entire slouch. We had a string of La Magistrals from Suzuki until one actually worked, pinning Fuchi for the three.
*3/4