Seiya Morohashi & Hitoshi Kumano vs. Hajime Ohara & Kinya Okada
Solid opening match-type professional wrestling. Kinda non-descript at first but picked up big time once Ohara got in the ring and started breaking some backs. Wild chemistry between the former Backbreakerz, actually. Commentary acknowledging Kumano’s new blue gear as an Atsushi Aoki tribute was a nice touch. **1/4
Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue vs. Mohammed Yone & Tadasuke
Tadasuke trying to one-up Masao’s eyerakes by RAKING HIS ENTIRE BODY was certainly a power move. The usual Dark Agents midcard action with Masao being endearingly incompetent. Yone forever has the greatest legdrop in wrestling. Always in awe at that hang time. **
Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura vs. Daisuke Sekimoto & Ryuchi Kawakami
Good lead-in tag for the upcoming Strong Climb tournament: all the Inamura/Kawakami exchanges were pretty great. This isn’t a knock on Kitamiya really, but Inamura seems to already have a better monster presence than him, even if all he does is shoulderblocks and chest forearms. God bless the Ameba TV POWER LEVELS for acknowledging Sekimoto as some sort of unkillable deity. ***
Dragon Bane vs. Hijo De Canis Lupus
It blows my mind that these guys are still getting booked anywhere in Japan after incurring the wrath of worldwide number one hustler CIMA in Mexico. I’m not sure how to write about this match without sounding like a complete dick but I hated everything about it. Two athletically-gifted guys running through every trendy 2020 high spot without any rhyme or reason and delivering a backyard-level approximation of a super indie spotfest. Kenny, Ospreay, Dragon Lee, Hiromu, Rey and Psicosis all thrown into the world’s shittiest blender and coming out on the other side as flippy mush without any notion of selling, pacing or drama. Get rid of these two or have them re-learn the basics by working Masao Inoue for an entire year. Thanks. *3/4
Shuhei Taniguchi, Minoru Tanaka & Junta Miyawaki vs. Kenoh, Haoh & Nioh
Efficient tag team wrestling with Tanaka playing junior legend in peril in order to setup the chunky hot tag run of offense of Taniguchi body slams and chest headbutts. Yes, all of these things happened but it was, once again, the Kenoh/Junta exchanges that got most of my attention. Junta’s looking sharp as hell for his relatively low level of experience and he feels right at home working these closing stretches with NOAH’s moodiest moptop. That judo throw transition into the Fisherman’s buster was rad. **3/4
Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Hideki Suzuki
A great display of no non-sense pro-wrestling between two pros that excel at this sort of thing. The gritty mat wrestling opening hooked me right off the bat by making everything feel like a proper struggle while spotlighting both guys’ technique without ever being showy about it. Lots of juicy moments littered throughout the grappling: from the crafty headscissors reversals to Katsu aggressively driving Hideki’s head into the mat from a figure four necklock position like a complete asshole.
The shift from ground warfare to full on crowd bawl could’ve been jarring but they totally made it work and it ended up injecting a healthy dose of pure hatred in the match. Katsu’s brutal kicks clashing with Hideki’s deadly European uppercuts was obviously a great time, but my favorite part of the whole thing was Suzuki refusing to stay still for Nakajima’s annoying-as-fuck turnbuckle photoshoot spot and making him work for it. God bless.
Loved the escalation in suplex-based devastation that built towards the finish – both guys just destroying each other in the name of professional wrestling. Gotta say that Hideki popping right back up after kicking out of the Vertical Spike just to hit his double-arm suplex at the last minute left a bad taste in my mouth, but everything else was pretty much a homerun. Seek this one out if you’re in the mood for something different from the modern day wrestling epic. ****1/4
Yoshinari Ogawa, Kotaro Suzuki & Atsushi Kotoge vs. Daisuke Harada, HAYATA & YO-HEY
I liked the HAYATA injury angle and subsequent post-match beatdown to get some heel heat on STINGER, but the rest of the match didn’t do much for me. The crowd (except for a single brave female fan who screamed YO-HEY’s name for the entire match) was dead for the whole thing and it made for some absurdly flat professional wrestling. Can’t recall anything of note except some nice-looking dropkicks from YO-HEY. **1/4
Go Shiozaki & Kaito Kiyomiya vs. Takashi Sugiura & Kazuyuki Fujita
Strong tag team contest to heat up two big upcoming title matches. You can tell Kaito’s been hanging out with Kento Miyahara at a bunch of award ceremonies recently because his personality’s coming through like never before and I’m loving it. Him and Sugiura are always great together and Kiyomiya was the ideal babyface in peril for this match, taking a beating from the two bruisers while still coming off as a star in the process.
Meanwhile, I couldn’t be more excited for this Go/Fujita collision of death. Not only do both guys have top notch chemistry, but the whole thing feels extremely high stakes. Nothing less than NOAH vs. Inoki-ISM Twitter. I’ve been hot and cold on Kazzer Fujita in the past, but he seems to be taking to straight-up pro-wrestling nicely in these lead-in tags and I’m enjoying watching him do simple body slams, suplexes and irish-whip spots instead of the usual no-sell punt kick routine. Go has one of the best ‘’how dare you?’’ faces in wrestling right now and Fujita’s black chest is proof that if you’re across the ring from him, you don’t want to see him make that face. ***1/2
