Kaito, The Agumon (Kaito Kiyomiya, Volume 1)

So I really like Pro Wrestling, but I haven't been watching a lot for it lately. Blame Grad School, blame work, blame the pit of despair and self loathing depression's sunken me into (but mostly that last one), but I just kinda stopped after the G1 this year. So I want to try and kick my ass into watching it again. So instead of trying and failing to cover big shows...I'm just gonna watch wrestling. Sometimes it'll be a single wrestler, other times a string of title defenses, and sometimes I'm just gonna watch random matches during the week. Fuck it, I don't have a format anymore.

Ask literally anyone who I'm friends with or have talked to for more than 5 minutes at a wrestling show, they'll tell you I love Pro Wrestling Noah. I don't know why. Maybe I like the little guys. Maybe it's the fanatical fan-base. I got in just as Suzuki-Gun and New Japan's booking influence was heading out, so a lot of my opinions on the company are skewed compared to contemporary fans. I never knew KENTA in NOAH, or Morishima, Kobashi, or Akiyama. I call Takashi Sugiura and Naomichi Marufuji "Uncle". I consider Junta Miyawaki, Yosiki Inamura, and Kinya Okada my Young Boy class (and occasionally think of myself as being in that class. If you tell me you've never even briefly fantasized about being a wrestler, you're lying). So I'm hoping to use my new style to watch literally as much NOAH as I can, as well as some good 90s All Japan to kind of grasp where NOAH's roots came from.

So, Kaito. I...I don't know how I feel about Kaito. My emotions are mixed. There's something about him I don't like, but everyone else loves him so I find myself grudgingly biting my tongue. I guess I'm hoping to use this and future entries on my blog to suss out what it is I don't like about him. So thanks for coming with me on this journey, for the three of you who didn't violently close the tab to this blog.

Vs. Minoru Suzuki, Great Voyage in Yokohama Vol. 2,10.26.16
Look at Kaito here. So tiny, so full of hope.

Suzuki's gonna crush him like an orange.

This match is from the first whole NOAH show I ever watched, the same show where Katsuyori Shibata and Go Shiozaki went 20+ minutes and Katsuhiko Nakajima won the GHC Heavyweight championship (Put a Big Ol' pin in this match, we'll be coming back to it and the following title reign one day.) I remember liking the whole card, but besides the two above mentioned matches, Suzuki vs. Kaito was the match I remembered the most vividly. Probably because I love any time Minoru (rocking his old theme here) takes apart Young Boys on a whim. The same proved true in this match, but Kaito honestly got more offense in than most trainees usually do against Suzuki. After a flurry of offense and trying his hardest to stand up to The King, Suzuki brutalized him with strikes for a good 30 second stretch, which includes Kaito being stood back up to take more by Suzuki more than. A great mauling.
**1/2