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.
**


Mohammed Yone & Taiji Ishimori (BRAVE) vs. Daisuke Sekimoto & Yuji Okabayashi
This match wasn't good in the sense of your typical Puro match. However, if you want to see a mugging where each man has a second, this is for you. More than two thirds of this match was Daisuke killing Taiji, and the latter refusing to die. The whole time, Yuji and Mohammed (who was not yet Funky) brawled on the outside, and the crowd ate it all up tremendously like any Gladiatorial crowd would enjoy prisoners killed by lions. Sekimoto had enough of his opponent, and German Suplexed the soul out of the BRAVE man's body. Again, not too good as a match, but a great killing.
***

Hajime Ohara, Kenou and Maybach Taniguchi (Cho Kibou-Gun) vs. Akitoshi Saito, Genba Hirayanagi & Yoshihiro Takayama (No Mercy)
I asked who the heels were here, but it turns out everybody's the heels here. The most important takeaway here is that, like Kento Miyahara at the New Year's War, you can see the potential bleeding out of Kenoh. It's untapped still, but you can see how much he has to offer for himself and the company. Cho Kibou-Gun kept good control of Genba, until he uppercutted Maybach in the dick and tagged Takayama in. Takayama running briefly wild was the last highlight before the match broke down. Nothing to see here besides how great Kenoh and Hajime are as motherfuckers, before Hajime ate a Lariat from Genba for the fall.
**1/4

Atsushi Kotoge & Katsuhiko Nakajima (BRAVE) vs. Daisuke Harada (No Mercy) and Quiet Storm

You know how I just said I could tell Kenoh had something to him here? The same is not with Nakajima. For someone who would be burdened with great purpose in two years, and wore that burden spectacularly, he was very unassuming here. This match was a simple backdrop for a Junior Heavyweight title match between champion Kotoge and Harada, and did a good job at getting me excited for a defense that happened two years ago. I think that Atsushi has a lot of potential to be a major player in the modern day, new era of NOAH, but I hope he takes those nauseating headbutts out of the arsenal. The finish came as out of nowhere as you can in a match like this; champion and future challenger were going back and forth after the match had broken down, when Harada slipped out of a lift, School Boy'd Kotoge, and pinned him. It showed that the challenger could pin the champion, but didn't hurt Atsushi at all. I'm very excited for their future match.
**1/2

Mitsuhiro Kityamiya Fortitude Bokutotsu Five Match Series Match
Mitsuhiro Kitamiya vs. Takeshi Morishima (Cho Kibou-Gun)

Kitamiya had faced, and lost to, four other men in this trial series leading up to Morishima. He worked the whole match trying to German Suplex his foe, which he finally did before Morishima had enough of these petty games. Three head shaking lariats and a Backdrop Driver ended the non-competition. After, Mitsuhiro implored Morishima to be let into his faction, which the former champion benevolently agreed to. Even with Maybach in this group, who has gotten exponentially better leading up to today, this is already my favorite group in 2015 NOAH.
**

GHC Tag Team Title Match [5th Defense]
Masato Tanaka and Takashi Sugiura (No Mercy) (c) vs. Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste (TMDK)
I really can't get away from Masato Tanaka so far this year. This is the best kind of tag match, where it started slow and became awesome. Shane got beat down for a few minutes, before tagging out and making this thing all out war. Shane came back in to fight Masato, at one point making the mistake of turning his back on the most dangerous man in Japan, paying for it. Haste also hit the Falcon Arrow, but since he gave it to Masato it did nothing to stop the beating. Both members of No Mercy were put in the top turnbuckle and Shane, clearly the more suicidal of the two Australians, got up to superplex both men, with assistance from his partner. You'd think by "assistance" I mean that Mikey got up there with his friend, but instead he just powerbombed his teammate, which hit the superplex in a wonderful chain reaction. This was not the end of the match. No Mercy took control back stiffing some top rope shenanigans. Deciding Mikey was too dangerous to live, Sugiura and Tanaka attempted to cave his skull in with elbows. The crowd was into this match all the way, even towards the end. Tanaka goes for the Sliding D, but gets pulled out of the ring and powerbombed onto the apron. Since this is Masato Tanaka, he got back into the ring to break up a pinfall two minute later. Despite having a demi-God as a partner Takashi is only mortal, falling to a Thunder Valley (Double Gorilla Press) for the pin and the title change. I may not have been able to coherently express this fact, but this match ruled.
****1/4

GHC Heavyweight Championship [5th Defense]
Naomichi Marufuji (BRAVE) (c) vs. Satoshi Kojima
Nothing against this one, but there was little short of a spectacular performance that would be putting it above the semi-main event. Although I will give it this, seeing Kojima not be the automatic hero was very weird. I'm so used to happy, Bread Club dad that seeing him booed here was a shock to the system. The match was built around a simple premise: knee or lariat, which is stronger? Uncle Koji was able to bust out some unique uses of his go-to, using a lariat to cut the leg from under Marufuji while he was on the apron, and taking him off the top turnbuckle to the floor with with it as well. NOAH's Ace, to his credit, survived all of this to come back. While not using his legs as often early, he used them when he needed to the most. The most badass moment of the match was when the two strikes met in the middle of the ring, Marufuji gaining advantage by being the first to react after being taken aback by the impact. From here, his knee landed true twice, and were followed by a Fisherman's variant on the Emerald Flowsion. A very solid match, if not poorly placed on the card.
***3/4

While in some aspects unspectacular, this wasn't a bad show. I'd don't know if it would be a good show to start watching NOAH on, in general, but if you know some of these guys already, or my review sways you to wanting to watch it, I say go ahead. I'm already having a lot of fun doing this project, and if the first few entries into Lions, Pillars, and Arks are an indicator, it's gonna keep getting bet-

Well...Shit.

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See you down the (Bushi)Road.