Zeus vs. Giani Valletta – Champion Carnival (Block A)
One day, Uncle Jun called the top AJPW execs and convinced them that having a Stan Hansen lookalike on the roster wasn’t enough. In order to complete the full revitalisation of All Japan, they also needed a Bruiser Brody stand-in. Enter GIANI VALLETTA, a chain-wielding giant that looks a whole lot like Brody but seems to take his wrestling cues from 2018 Takashi Iizuka. Lotta’ biting spots and ref bumps in this match. Zeus bringing the fight and press slamming his way into the people’s hearts was obviously great, but in the end this was just a match. **1/4
Jake Lee vs. Daichi Hashimoto – Champion Carnival (Block B)
Jake Lee keeps scoring points with me by getting the best match out of Daichi so far in this tournament. Not an easy task. Both guys gelled pretty well and wove in a nice little subplot with Daichi trying to take out Jake’s leg to neutralize his kicks and knees. Jake is seriously great at this whole selling thing, putting over that first kneebar like white hot death and then just screaming in agony whenever Daichi would go back to the leg.
Jake’s stiff shots seemed to be a good wakeup call for Daichi who put in his more convincing performance yet. I was kinda shocked at Jake eating the pin again. Hopefully there’s some big wins ahead for him because he’s one of those guys that should be elevated to the next level by this tournament. Anyway, good match. ***1/4
Shuji Ishikawa vs. Ryouji Sai – Champion Carnival (Block A)
Glad to see Ryouji Sai has unlocked the last suit from the PS4 Spiderman game. That’s about the only nice thing to say I have about this match. These guys had no business going 30 and just couldn’t make this work. Right from the get go, something smelled fishy when SHUJI ISHIKAWA opened the match with very drawn-out arm wringer sequences. They just didn’t have enough material to fill the time and struggled to create the slightest bit of drama until the last 2 minutes. A real bummer because I’m sure these two could’ve had a fun 10 minute match together. **1/2
Joe Doering vs. Yoshitatsu – Champion Carnival (Block B)
Time is doing a number on poor Yoshitatsu and his thinning hair is starting to give me early 90’s Muto vibes. Can’t say this is a bad thing. Really wanted to like this one because I love Joe and Yoshitatsu amuses me, but it was pretty flat. Lots of perfectly competent wrestling: Joe working over Yoshi, Yoshi selling and bumping, but no real excitement of any kind.
Joe hit a bunch of Hansen-level elbowdrops and they did a Boston crab in the crowd, which was fun. That’s about it. Existential question #1: Should Yoshitatsu really be beating Joe Doering this decisively? Existential question #2: when did Kyohei Wada completely lose his mind and become so annoying as a referee? **3/4
