NOAH Great Voyage in Tokyo vol. 2

Pro-Wrestling NOAH
Great Voyage in Tokyo vol. 2
5th July 2014, Ariake Colosseum, Tokyo

Whilst NOAH events aren't exactly easy to get hold of in the present market, if Ustream get their way then they're not much more hard to get hold of than New Japan events will be. As it goes I found that I really enjoyed the event I considered for the "Investigates" piece and felt that it wouldn't be too difficult to add NOAH's bigger shows to a regular reviews cycle. 

Navigation With Breeze seemed like a decent primer if you ignore the whole 'the biggest star is leaving' deal they hit us with in the penultimate match. That said, if you find me routinely proclaiming ignorance then let me apologise in advance. It's the good will that counts, right?

Tonight's main event: Uncle Yuji vs Sullen Goth Nephew (credit: Keeping The Spirit Alive)

I'm relatively familiar with the conceptual naming trends of NOAH supercards, reflecting the passing of the seasons and the 'journey' or 'voyage' or 'navigation' of the Ark. It's quite a nice idea and certainly beats the heck out of 'Extreme [word]' type titles. However, and this is just something you guys in the NOAH front office might want to chat about at your next meeting: running two unrelated supercards in a year called 'Great Voyage' is maximally annoying.

Anyway, in front of over 6000 (who remained relatively subdued for long stretches) at NOAH's spiritual home in the Ariake complex (often running smaller shows at its second venue, the Differ), comes a pretty full-looking card that sees all championships up for grabs and some appearances by the stars of some rival promotions.

Rocky Lobo

Jinzo and Rocky Lobo vs. Hitoshi Kumano and Mitsuhiro Kitamiya
A brief opener to tease the upcoming Jr. Tag League as tourists Rocky Lobo (nephew of Super Crazy and known to some from a spell in Dragon Gate) and the youthful DTU/AAA worker Jinzo manage to overrun the least experienced members of the full-time NOAH roster. Lobo scores the fall with a Moonsault Press in a match that showcases some smooth and fine stuff, with both victor and victim performing as expected throughout. **

Jinzo & Lobo d. Kumano & Kitamiya

Quiet Storm vs. Super Crazy vs. Hajime Ohara (Chokibo-gun)
NOAH have established a regular three-way dance format to help get their junior heavyweights a little time to shine with their spots. Here the format doesn't quite work, not least because Super Crazy is several kilograms past his junior heavyweight luchadore days, but because there's no real rub or mesh of styles. Crazy, true to his name, wipes himself out with a springboard moonsault attempt on the runway. Storm, who looked so imperious in pinning the Jr. Heavyweight Champion just two months earlier, ends up tapping out quickly to Ohara's Muy Bien Special after only five short minutes. *1/2

Ohara d. Storm & Crazy.

Yoshihiro Takayama: this face has seen it all

Yoshihiro Takayama and Genba Hirayinagi (No Mercy) vs. Daisuke Ikeda and Mohammed Yone
Genba kicks this short bout off with a large water pistol. The mechanism backfires and soon after is having his arse handed back to him. An uneventful encounter that didn't seem to serve much purpose, with the legendary Takayama lumbering about and delivering a few knees here and there and Yone re-establishing his toughness after losing a title shot. Ikeda's attire looks as dreadful as ever and his wrestling presence doesn't add much here, though he happens to be on the winning side as Yone hits the Muscle Buster on Genba as Takayama patrols the outside like a confused bear. **

Ikeda & Yone d. No Mercy  
  
GHC JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP

Yoshinari Ogawa and Zack Sabre Jr. (c) vs. Atsushi Kotoge and Taiji Ishimori (BRAVE)
There's no one on earth quite so good at evading a move as Yoshinari Ogawa. In an act honed in the shadow of mentor Mitsuharu Misawa through 14 years in both All Japan and NOAH, the 'Rat Boy' of wrestling has stacked up the championship runs (1 x GHC Heavy, 2 x GHC Tag Team, 2 x GHC Jr Tag Team, AJPW Tag Team, All Asia Tag Team, 3 x AJPW Jr Heavy) through a mixture of connections, sneakiness, cheating and a smattering of legitimate talent. Others may have counters and reversals, some may rely on direct execution and guts. Ogawa's method is simpler: see the move coming and avoid taking it.

Ogawa has managed to rope his tag team partner, the young Briton and technical master Zack Sabre Jr., into this feud by utilising some of those smarts on Taiji Ishimori. We see a video package of the pair stealing wins from one another with cute reversals and neat exchanges. Presumably some words were exchanged along with some vocal declarations of suspicion toward the talent of the opponent and here we are with the titles on the line.

Yoshinari Ogawa: former Rat King

After a great sequence between Sabre Jr. and Ishimori, much of the first half of the match sees the champions working Ishimori over, particularly the limbs which he utilises for so much flipping about. When I say working over, I'm talking at least eight consecutive tags in and out to perform a new sequence of moves that exclusively focus on Ishimori's golden arms.

Sabre Jr., much as he did on the Navigation show in May or either time I've seen him in real life, does the spadework to resurrect the excitement and spectacle in technical wrestling. He's always one step ahead of his opponents, though Ishimori deserves credit for having the savvy to work these kind of sequences: technical wrestling really does take two to tango, as my old friend Mad Man Pondo often laments.

Of course, Kotoge eventually barges into the fray and the match becomes much less cerebral and more of an open, exciting contest between four different but well-matched workers. Ishimori eventually shakes off his temporary injuries, Kotoge levels the champions with a pair of fluid superkicks and the home stretch appears in sight.

Zack Sabre Jr. (credit: Suplex Wrestling)

Once the match goes 'tornado', it's obvious that much of what happens constitutes 'spots' (there's even a confused bit where Ogawa realises he needed to be outside, so he sprints across the ring and throws himself out) but on the whole it fits together well. The challengers hit a couple of tasty-looking team manouvres (Ishimori hitting a 450 onto the back as Kotoge delivers the Killswitch) and eventually gain the victory and the new titles with a standard Killswitch on Sabre Jr. ***1/2

BRAVE (Kotoge & Ishimori) d. Ogawa & Sabre Jr. to become the new GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions.

GHC JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP

Daisuke Harada (No Mercy) (c) vs. Kenou (Chokibo-gun)

A striking difference between the present match style of the GHC Jr. Heavy titles and its counterpart in the IWGP is apparent: NOAH presently favours a more ground-based style not terribly dissimilar to the NEVER Openweight Championship, rather than a preponderance of flips and dives. Not that impressive-looking work befitting of high fliers is absent from this contest, just that it is rationed and compartmentalised.

Harada, on his third defence after downing Quiet Storm between this event and the Breeze event in May, is an impressively solid mat-worker who reminds me of a less carnivalesque version of Dean Malenko. Everything is so tidy and convincing and yet probably not the type of guy who will win everyone over immediately. His character right now appears to be 'good wrestler' and whilst that is not a bad character for a wrestler to have, I'd like to see a little more from the potential-laden chap.

Kenou: heel hair heat

In the opposite corner is the heelish Kenou, who sports one of the less-flattering haircuts of modern grappledom (a sub-culture populated with dreadful hair). Caught somewhere between Beatlemania and Bruce Lee, it is at once dated and futuristic and utilitarian. His hair garners him more legitimate heel heat than his attacking of Harada during the pre-match streamers or the midsection of the match in which Kenou's stablemate Hajime Ohara interferes. Ohara hands Kenou a shinai, though their dastardly beating is interrupted upon by No Mercy's Genba Hirayanagi, who restores parity and drags Ohara to the locker room.

Either side of this short sequence was a fine title bout with some impressive moves and sequences that nonetheless didn't quite catch on fire; Kenou at times seemed lacking in big stage intensity and never seemed like a dude who was going to walk out with the championship. Harada ended Kenou's day at the office with his incredibly aesthetically-pleasing Bridging German Suplex. No challenger pops up to spoil Harada's moment in the sun, as presumably Zack Sabre Jr. was too busy sulking after the prior match. ***1/2

Daisuke Harada d. Kenou

Katsuyori Shibata and Hirooki Goto (Meiyu Tag) vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima and Akitoshi Saito
The life of a professional wrestler seems quite a thrill. Sure, there are injuries and airports and traffic and fans and not sleeping and the internet and selling your merch while you need a shower and other wrestlers who pat you on the back as they try to steal your spot and a hundred other petty grievances. But it seems like a pretty cool life if you can handle travel and isolation, with an apparent lack of bureaucracy and paperwork.

That said, I don't think I could handle the life of Akitoshi Saito, a 23-year veteran with numerous accolades (4 time GHC Tag Team Champion, two challenges for the GHC Heavyweight Championship) and plaudits in his storied career. You see, Saito is unfortunately the man who delivered the move that ended Mitsuharu Misawa's life. Of course, it was not Saito's fault and as far as I can tell, nobody has ever claimed that it was. Carrying the weight of such tragedy cannot have been easy for Saito, a solid and otherwise unremarkable veteran. Though he has maintained relations with NOAH, he officially left the company the year after Misawa's death.

Akitoshi Saito

Public shame and public forgiveness seem to hold a firm spot in the Japanese collective psyche, with pop star Minami Minegishi shaving her head to seek forgiveness for the dastardly act of having a boyfriend whilst part of a prominent girlband. After years traipsing the freelance circuit, company Vice President Naomichi Marufuji ended the 5th annual Misawa Memorial show by officially and publicly inviting Akitoshi Saito to rejoin the company. Saito cried in acceptance and I must admit that even reading the synopsis for myself, I felt a small weight lift off my own shoulders too.

I'm not entirely sure why New Japan's Shibata and Goto appeared on this show but the match that the two are involved in seems axiomatic enough to stand outside further explanation. The excellent Katsuhiko Nakajima is the kind of opponent I'd hand select for a Shibata match: not only has he taken on his mentor Kensuke Sasaki's ability to soak up pain, his kicks practically fizz as they find their range. The Nakajima-Shibata exchange during this match is pure electricity and it's a naughty tease to piece this together if they don't plan upon giving it to us at some point.

Saito, now much more glacial than the man who pushed Kenta Kobashi in 2004, carries an air of genuine menace despite being the most apparent pin candidate. This match is less a technical or well-constructed masterpiece and more a thermometer measuring heat in strike exchanges and flurries of violence. True to form, everybody gives as good as they get.

KENTA (top), Katsuyori Shibata (bottom): back in the day

The match, won by Shibata with a PK on Saito, doesn't quite sustain the intensity of the opening - very much the story with most Shibata/Goto tag team matches in 2014. However, the entertaining outing propels their storyline onward a little, ending with the suggestion of discord and a hasty handshake after a miscommunication. ***1/4

Meiyu Tag d. Saito & Nakajima

Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Maybach Taniguchi (Chokibo-gun)
Sekimoto, as previously discussed on this blog, is pretty awesome. NOAH management seem to think so too, mixing him in with some esteemed company on Misawa Memorial Night (Takayama, Yuji Nagata, Takashi Sugiura). For some reason, despite Sekimoto not being a regular star of the company, Maybach Taniguchi has taken a dislike to the man, intruding upon his last match to administer a classic heel beatdown.

In a short palate-cleansing brawl ahead of the title matches to come, Sekimoto displays a great deal of desire to right the wrongs of Taniguchi. There's a broad arena-wide house clearance sequence and an unsustained exchange of fire in the ring; unsustained as Taniguchi opts to further humiliate Sekimoto rather than vie for the clean win, reaching for his huge staff and utilising it in plain sight of the referee. The official calls for the bell, but no simple bell can stop Taniguchi and stablemate Hajime Ohara from wreaking further havoc. **1/4

Sekimoto d. Taniguchi (DQ)  

GHC TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP
Masato Tanaka and Takashi Sugiura (Dangan Yankees) (c) vs. Shane Haste and Mikey Nicholls (TMDK)
TMDK's strategy here seems a little unwise. Faced with two of Japan's most grizzled, gnarled and remorseless shitkickers (in a country not in short supply of said shitkickers), they opt to fight fire with fire from the opening bell. A video package teases the conflict, showing the Australian challengers refusing to back down and even scoring falls on their opponents.

Dangan Yankees (l-r: Tanaka, Sugiura): do not mess

This is a really good match contested between four fine and possibly overlooked wrestlers that I'd recommend anybody reading should seek out. Sugiura looks like he's just stepped out of the local ironworks and is ready to unleash stress through repeated and calculated lariat beatings, though he has disarming extras such as a Frankensteiner in his locker. Tanaka is just as wild as usual. Don't ever change, dude.

You keep waiting for the facade to crack with TMDK where they reveal themselves as just another mercenary overseas pair who don't quite work, but it never happens and eventually you just realise they're actually as good as anything out there at what they do. There's something for everyone here: a touch of that 80s NWA 'real men' walloping, some well-executed modern tag team combinations, the high drama of classic main-event tag team work of the 90s and that serious edge that ensures NOAH in 2014 appears either slightly ridiculous or at the vanguard of something sacred at the heart of Japanese wrestling.
 

Close but no cigar: (l-r: Mikey Nicholls, Shane Haste)

In context with the title matches gone by on this card, having two teams just wanting to straight up go for the win without resorting to cheating or sneakiness is incredibly refreshing. Matches like these would end up getting dry if that's all that we were served, but their inclusion ensures everybody gets to look good, win or lose. In this instance, the challengers come up short but ensure that the champions are pushed all the way. ****
 
Dangan Yankees d. TMDK.

GHC HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP
Yuji Nagata (NJPW) (c) vs. Naomichi Marufuji (BRAVE)
Blue Justice has done a pretty selfless thing in stabilising NOAH's upper echelon in the disturbance caused by KENTA's slow extraction from his contract. On a decent salary as part of New Japan's firmament, it would have been quite easy for the self-proclaimed Anti-Ageing Icon to continue to pad through multi-man tags and coast through the G1 Climax once a year and still retire an accomplished legend. But that's never been the Yuji Nagata way.

Yuji Nagata

Maybe Nagata didn't invent the role of lifelong 'tweener, but he certainly helped crystallise its potency in modern wrestling. His legendary status, avuncular popularity and in-ring skills have helped bring crowds back to NOAH events, but he's never been a man to let acclaim go to his head. Yes, he defeated Morishima, Sugiura, KENTA, Taniguchi and Yone, NOAH stalwarts all, but this is a torch-passing exercise and Nagata knows it.

Over the last six months, company Vice-President Marufuji has been helping to reshape NOAH underneath Nagata's capable hands in the main event. With all divisions flourishing and a set of promising juniors emerging, Marufuji, sensing the dawning of a stable era, emerged to challenge Nagata.

A video package to this effect plays. Drawing on the history of NOAH and linking Marufuji to its most vital DNA strand: Misawa. Marufuji acted as ring attendant and Young Lion to the master in its earliest days. Marufuji is rebuilding the company in the image of the master and to this effect, Nagata is no longer the stablising force but the possessor of NOAH's best symbol of self-sufficiency: the GHC Heavyweight Championship. Who better to retrieve it?

Nagata and Marufuji: FACEDOWN

The match, like the event on which it occurs, is a confident assertion of NOAH's identity facing the future. Nagata works heel, which isn't difficult in the chorus of MARU-FU-JI! chants being directed ringwards. It feels like the main event of an important company, with every action seemingly counting double in the way it is charged by the atmosphere.

And, to be frank, it's a pleasure to see two excellent and technically-capable wrestlers dole out this kind of punishment to one another. The big spot of the match comes when Marufuji attempts to hit his Shiranui DDT along the apron to the outside. Wily Uncle Yuji sees it coming and reverses into a brutal Wrist Clutch Exploder that sees Marufuji half hit the apron and bounce onto the floor. Nagata's face, revelling in the joy, is a picture.

Powered by the raft of future NOAH big-leaguers at ringside spurring him on, Marufuji avoids getting counted out despite being clearly winded. Nagata won't let Marufuji rest as we surge to the home stretch, one which sees all manner of bombs thrown and reversed, all kinds of antes upped and every single opportunity to put the other man down taken.

"This next one is for all you lovers out there...1-2-3-4...."

Eventually, through a metric ton of peril and pain, NOAH reclaims its self-identity as Marufuji finally drops Nagata with his own version of Misawa's Emerald Fusion. Nagata looks wistfully back at the ring, his chest ablaze from the furious knife-edge chops. Marufuji celebrates and soaks up the applause, before being challenged by stablemate Katsuhiko Nakajima. OHHHH SHIIIITT! Take my money! ****1/4

Naomichi Marufuji d. Yuji Nagata to become new GHC Heavyweight Champion.

A pretty good show all told by NOAH. There are a lot of reasons to be hopeful looking forward, not least the prospect of Nakajima vs. Marufuji for the title. One thing I didn't cover was the announcement of the signature of Mitsuyoshi Nakai during the interval. Relatively tall with a brief MMA background, it was a bold step to announce a new guy in such a 'big deal' kind of way, indicative of faith and potential. This sort of felt like the end of NOAH's 'soft reboot': where they go from here is something that I look forward to immensely.