KENSO vs SUSHI [*1/4]
This match didn't hold my interest. It was an opener that did its job in getting the crowd amped but nothing to make me care about the two combatants involved. The crowd loved both men, which was odd to me since KENSO is obviously supposed to be a heel. He even chokes SUSHI with a scarf in full view of the ref and still does not get a DQ. KENSO does the worst thing a wrestler can do in a match which is screw up the finish. KENSO slips off the top rope when, he recovers well enough and finished SUSHI off with an elbow off the top rope.
Junior Stars vs Andy Wu & Osamu Nishimura [*3/4]
Junior Stars are Koji Kanemoto and Minoru Tanaka. Andy Wu does not have a profile on CAGEMATCH which tells me he either sucks or is taking the fall in this one. Luckily for me this is the latter as he is in the ring for the lion's share of the short match and is competent enough to keep it together. This is little more than a squash as the result was not in doubt. Tanaka makes Wu sumbit to the Minoru Special.
Seiya Sanada & Yasufumi Nakanoue vs Turmeric Storm [**3/4]
Tumeric Storm brings the hate here and it is awesome. This match has an intensity that the rest of the undercard cannot match. Honma gets his team disqualified for using a chair on Sanada, but even without a finish this is worth checking out. Not a MOTYC by any means but a solid AJPW undercard match.
Last Revolution vs SMOP [**3/4]
I really liked this match, a definite solid outing by both teams. SMOP have an issue in their strategy, they use the big avalanche way too much and it. It is their version of a high risk top rope maneuver, when it misses it misses big. I am a fan of SMOP because they are fun to watch, especially with good opponents like Doering and Suwama. There is no major buildup to the win here but the ending is rather impressive. Doering hits Akebono with a Death Valley Driver and the crowd is quite impressed. Last Revolution will have a title shot in their future.
GURENTAI vs Kaz Hayashi, Kenji Muto & Masanobu Fuchi [***]
GURENTAI are awesome coming out to "I Need A Hero". We are in the midst of a Taiyo Kea retirement tour as he plans to go into business management. Muto was amazing in this, dispite his age and larger size he can still move. I think he can do everything he could in the 80s short of the handspring elbow. Fuchi brings comedy to the match and Hayashi doesn't do more than screw up a backbreaker almost dropping MAZADA on his cranium. This was a strong, well built match that ended with a schoolboy rollup from Fuchi on MAZADA. Worth a look.
Get Wild© vs Stack of Arms - AJPW World Tag Team Titles [***1/4]
We get all out action from the outset, not sure what happened in Soya's Big Japan singles match from the same day but this was in a different stratosphere. It is interesting what Japanese fans boo as wrestlers I thought would be heels got cheers tonight but when Soya's attempted suplex out of a hanging front facelock is broken up, the fans give major heel heat. Omori finishes the match with the awesome Axe Guillotine Driver. Very enjoyable match.
Hiroshi Yamato© vs Shuji Kondo© - AJPW World Jr Heavyweight Title/GHC Jr Heavyweight Title [**3/4]
I wasn't as big a fan of this as I was expecting to be. Yamato wrestled the match from so far underneath that I never took him to be a threat to win. As the match went on he got some desperation moves in but nothing that sucked me into believing he would take the GHC title. Kondo hits a couple of nice lariats to end the 143 day AJPW Jr Heavyweight Title reign of Yamato. Kondo become the 34th champion. This match was okay but I preferred the two that preceded it.
14 Man Battle Royal including Joe Doering, Kazushi Miyamoto, Kenji Muto, KENSO, Manabu Soya, Masayuki Kono, Osamu Nishimura, Royota Hama, Seiya Sanada, Suwama, Taiyo Kea, Takao Omori, Tomoaki Honma, and Yasufumi Nakanoue [**]
Going into this match I was trying to decide how a Japanese promotion would approach a battle royal since I had never seen one from Japan. No one in this match gave much of an effort and while there were some decent spots like KENSO hanging on for dear life, the 10 man chinlock and double crosses, but there just wasn't much here. The combatants made good use of pinfalls since they were legal and there were more than one double pin. Taiyo Kea won with the TKO and is as good of a choice to win this match as any.
OVERALL THOUGHTS: The middle portion of the event is good, but it ended in a bust for me.
No comments:
Post a Comment