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.
*
Cody Hall, Mitsuya Nagai and Yuko Miyamoto vs. Akitoshi Saito, Mohammad Yone and Quiet Storm
The tag champs here, Storm and Yone, were wearing matching bright blue gear that I loved. Yuko Miyamoto came out with two belts, ZERO1's Blast King Championship and the DDT Extreme Championship, so I'll probably be seeing more of him in the coming months. Nothing much, but it was good nothing much. Nagai pinned Quiet Storm with a jumping knee, setting him and a partner up for a tag title match.
*1/2
Hajime Ohara & Hitoshi Kumano, Hi69, Minoru Tanaka and Seiya Morohashi vs. Daisuke Harada, HAYATA, Tadasuke and YO-HEY (RATEL's) and LEONA
This was a highlight package, but it showed like two thirds of the match so I'm counting it. Hi69 came out to Shots and it was second only to Mohammad coming out to Boogie Wonderland . It's good (at least for this show) to be Ratel's, with a deathgrip on the Junior division in NOAH. I'm especially a huge fan of HAYATA, both as a singles wrestler and with YO-HEY. I think those two vs. Roppongi 3k are my current Juniors tag dream match. On the other side of the ring, Hajime Ohara is one of my favorite Juniors today. Not enough people talk about his time with the Junior Heavyweight title last year, and his exchange with Daisuke in this match was great. It got me excited for a future match between these two. Everything broke down, several pain trains left various stations, leaving Seiya and LEONA in the ring. The former used the third Kama Go-Ye of the week to lead into the second Crossface of the week for the submission.
***
Highlights of Jay Bradley vs. Takashi Sugiura
I haven't seen Jay Bradley in years, and I don't remember how he was back in Impact. He shows potential to be really good from what we're shown, which wasn't a lot. Olympic Qualifying Slam put Jay away.
Atsushi Kotoge and Go Shiozaki vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima and Masa Kitamiya
One of the advantages I feel that NOAH has on either other company I regularly watch (All and New Japan) is that the their tag team matches are usually a lot better. With New Japan, tag matches are primarily used as framing for future singles matches, and the Heavyweight Tag Division has been pretty uninspired since I've been watching. The All Japan tag division, although host to some really good matches, has had a cursed set of tag titles that injures everyone that touches it. But NOAH seems to consistently deliver good tag matches on most of their shows. Even here I found a lot to like. Both teams work really well together, and against each other we got four aets of great exchanges. This went only a little over 10 minutes, but I demand these four be given the finals of Tag League and it could be a fucking awesome time. Kotoge and Kitamiya were left alone in the ring, their partners trying to determine who the man with harder shins was, when Masa put on a kneeling Figure Four, and got the upset submission. And yet, neither of these teams is getting the next tag title shot.
***
Maybach Taniguchi (w/Mitsuya Nagai) vs. Naomichi Marufuji
I'll give Maybach this, he seems a lot more comfortable being the resident monster in NOAH. That's all I'm going to give him credit for, because this was a slow match. Marufuji did his best to bring life into it, using what are still some of my favorite kicks in wrestling today. The match was finally getting enough steam, with the crowd getting behind Marufuki more and more, until Mitsuya interfered, pulling the ref out of the ring and beating on Naomichi, for the disqualification. Kotoge and the tag champs came out for the save, before Nagai claimed Taniguchi was his partner against the champions. Waste of my time when I don't have a lot to waste.
**1/4
Impact X-Division Title Match
Taiji Ishimori (c) vs. Andrew Everett
Upset that we didn't get DJZ here, but Everett was a good enough replacement . Back in the mid 2000s, the X-Division was Young Adult Landon's jam. Here it was a great trip through nostalgia, and for the first few minutes were the two men trying to outflip each other while the crowd was set in awe. Like some of the matches before this, there were cuts here and there to the match. Thankfully it broke down into Everett getting the upperhand before it can reach parody. Andrew hits the Falcon Arrow, becoming the first gaijin to be recorded hitting the illustrious move on this blog. It was going to be a really great match once the comeback started, I was thinking. Until Taiji actually made the comeback, about 30 seconds long, and quickly hit the 450 spash to end the match before it could really get swinging hard. Left me wanting a more that I'll never have, with Ishimori losing the X-Division Title at the Impact Tapings.
***
Kenou (c) vs. Kaito Kiyomiya
Kaito looks wildly different here, then he did before going on excursion. Besides his hair and gear being different, obviously, he looks much more sure of himself here. But one has to wonder if NOAH brought him back from the United states too soon. We've seen the benefits Young boys get from prolonged excursions, the first men that jump clearly to mind are Hiromu Takahashi and Jay White. While Kiyomiya is good here, I'd like to imagine what he would be like if he had taken longer than half a year to learn and grow. Maybe it was a problem on NOAH's Office end, I can't say. Kenoh has become tremendous himself after winning the GHC heavyweight title. He carries himself with a renewed confidence and his attitude's been turned to 11, which is great. Early on in the match, he got tired of Kiyomiya being in the same ring as him and took him to town on the outside. Between a snapping German Suplex and several stiff kicks, Kiyomiya seemed lost in his cause to take the GHC Heavyweight title. To his credit, Kaito was able to fire back up and take it to the incumbant, scoring several high impact blows including a tiger suplex for 2.995. It was a really great story being told, with Kiyomiya simultaneously out of his league and trying to prove he could be in that league. But Kenoh didn't get the title by being soft on people. Kenoh used the 21 year old this night to make a statement, dimming his lights with several high roundhouses, forcing the ref to stop the whole thing. I wasn't sure how much I liked the match at first, but the more I thought about the story the more I liked it. Definitely up for review in July.
****
Thanks for reading! I'm glad that I can turn my passion for wrestling into something that so many people enjoy. If you want to get regular updates on when I release more reviews, you can follow me at Twitter at @LSWayne21. And if you're still looking for your fix on wrestling, check out Enuffa.com, where I got my start in reviewing and still contribute from time to time. You can find this, and more Japanese wrestling, at the RealHero Archive found here.
See you down the Road.
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