Pro Wrestling NOAH Presents: Navigation for The Future 2018

2017 could definitely be called a year of rebuilding for Misawa'a company. With Suzuki-Gun and the last of New Japan's influence gone, the fate of the company was in question more than ever as the year began. But, these men persisted, and all things considered it's looking much better than they were last year. Coming into 2018 we have a new Champion figurehead, a returning Young Boy, and one of the most solid midcards in Japan right now. Will the Navigation for The Future set a great pace for 2018 to come? Or will it set us up for a year of limping? Let's find out.


Junta Miyawaki vs. Yoshinari Ogawa
Junta, being a Young Lion who makes stupid decisions like this, jumped Ogawa hard before the bell. Streamers were still in the ring. He showed great courage, like Jack Burton of old, but was killed with a back suplex out of nowhere. I chortled.
*

All Japan Pro Wrestling Presents: New Year's War, 2018

I don't want to surprise anyone, but Grad School while working full time eats up any decent gaps for wrestling.


But I will persist, because people need to know about All Japan Pro Wrestling! (And NOAH, but we'll get to that). New Year's War is the usual 2 day event that sets the tone for the year in a whole. We had most of the company's titles on the line (Sorry, All Asia Tag) and some of the undercard shows a good amount of promise. We're losing watching time for NOAH before New Japan's New Beginnings, so let's get rolling


Night One

Atsushi Maruyama, Dick Togo and Masanobu Fuchi vs. Osamu Nishimura, Ultimo Dragon and Yohei Nakajima
Fuchi is so, ridiculously not good. I'm sorry if I'm missing something here, if he was much better when he was younger, or if I just have a lack of nostalgia, but I will never complain about Manabu Nakanishi again. Opening comedy about closed fists between Fuchi and Dragon, and thank Shinya that things picked up after Dick Togo and Yohei came in to bring life to the whole thing. Togo puts on the greatest crossface of all time, Yohei bent in angles that shouldn't be possible in a submission like this, and tapped out.
*1/2

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.
**

Lemme Tell You About: Zero-1 Happy New Year

I'm trying really hard to expand my tastes and viewing in Japanese Pro Wrestling. Beside the New Japan that was already on my plate, I started watching All Japan and Pro Wrestling NOAH last year. I was richly rewarded with refreshing match up and wrestlers, and I walked out of it with a handful of new favorites to follow as they go on to other promotions, and maybe even come to New Japan. But, it's time to make the same, pointed effort to watch other companies. I've taken it, regardless of advice and warnings, to take a look at ZERO1 and Wrestle-1 throughout the year. Will I be left hurting, as such things as hotshot booking and Bob Sapp claim? Or am I going to have my curiosity rewarded? Only one way to find out.

Highlights of Ganseki Tanaka & Tsugutaka Sato vs. Shoji Fukushima & Towa Iwasaki
The two young ZERO1 men, Shoji Fukushima in red and Towa Iwasaki in black, want me to know their name. They threw themselves at their Wrestle-1 opponents (who were given no entrance on TV), and it doesn't go as well as they would hope. Towa was laid out with "A Judo throw that could kill a Bull Elephant" as I wrote, and Shoji was caught in the Boston Crab. He tapped out but showed great spirit.

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

New Japan Pro Wrestling Presents: Wrestle Kingdom 12

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.

The best day of the Puroresu year has passed us by. The most hardcore of fans watched it live, while the rest of us couldn't or decided not to use a vacation day and watched it on Thursday night. While you can't deny that the show was good, this may be the first Wrestle Kingdom I've seen where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Not to spoil my review going forward, but no match sticks out as a match of the year, or even as the definite best match on the card. That's not necessarily a bad attribute in the case of the latter, though. Each match on the show was unique, appealing in different ways, but all entertaining. It was for sure, however, a can't miss show from top to bottom.


IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles [1st Title Defense]
Roppongi 3K (SHO & YOH) (W/Rocky Romero) (CHAOS) (c) vs. Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) (Bullet Club)
It's only the first match, but I need to start with an aside. In 1994, Rick Rude's career effectively ended when he injured his back, on a dive to the outside of the ring, at a dome (specifically the dome in Fukuoka). When the crux of this match is that one member of each team has fucked up their back with falls, on a Dome show with a notoriously raised platform, I was on edge for the rest of the show.

That being said, Matt Jackson's selling was on point.
SHO and YOH needed to impress here, getting a hat-trick of victories to cement themselves as the next big things of the Junior Division. The Bucks, meanwhile, were coming off a string of well fought matches over the Junior Titles and ROH Tag Titles last year. They continued that trend here, working over YOH's back after one of the aforementioned falls. For the majority of his time in the ring, the defending champ was taking a lion's share of abuse to his back. SHO would try his best to get his team going after being tagged in, and for a while it seemed as if the young men would upset their challengers, but the injury was something that couldn't be overcome. A Meltzer Driver and a Sharpshooter made The Young Bucks a record-cementing seven time champions. A great way to start the night with a fast paced, hard hitting contest
****