Yoshiki Inamura vs. Kinya Okada
These two are already so, so good. Pleasingly logical match pitting Okada’s technique against Inamura’s monstrous power advantage. While Big Yoshiki was winning the hearts of Internet wrestling nerds all over by consistently selling his injured leg, Okada was impressing one of the new female Abema commentators with his sharp kicks (‘’SUGOI SUGOI SUGOI!’’). Folks, a lot of points were scored in this match. **1/2
Katsuhiko Nakajima, Shuhei Taniguchi & Mohammed Yone vs. Hajime Ohara, Atsushi Kotoge, & Seiki Yoshioka
Shoutout to the sweet new NOAH CORNER CAM. Love to feel the pain and anguish of a human being getting squashed by a lariat in the corner. Maybe they were inspired by the recent Dragon Gate show at Korakuen? Anyway, Full Throttle fighting over who is the true leader is a cute angle. I also need to mention how mind blowing it is that the NOAH crew will still bring the utmost physicality to these random undercard 6-man tag matches. There’s no off switch on a lot of these guys. Katsu was looking ecstatic to be able to do his turnbuckle photoshoot stunt in front of people again, while Yoshioka nearly destroyed the announce table with a crazy ass Quebrada. Then the two of them kicked the shit out of each other and it was pretty great. No complaints. ***
Daisuke Harada, Tadasuke & YO-HEY vs. Kotaro Suzuki, Yoshinari Ogawa & HAYATA – Elimination Match
The year is 2030. NOAH are finally back in the Tokyo Dome. On the undercard, RATELS are still feuding with Stinger due to HAYATA turning on YO-HEY for the 75th time. There is no escaping this reality. Despite this feud completely overstaying its welcome, I was weirdly into this match? Really easy watch with a clever layout that made perfect sense from a story standpoint. The eliminations came fast and furious, HAYATA ending up in a 3 on 1 situation against former teammates hellbent on punishing him for his betrayal. Obviously, HAYATA ended up sneaking in some miracle comebacks, but it all played out in surprisingly logical fashion. There was also a Crazy MAX 3-way tree of woe dropkick at some point. Can’t go wrong there. Consider me RATEL’d. ***
Takashi Sugiura, Kazushi Sakuraba, Kendo Kashin, Kaz Hayashi & NOSAWA vs. Kenoh, Masa Kitamiya, Manabu Soya, Haoh & Nioh
The current version of Sugiura-Gun might be the weirdest thing in wrestling right now. On the one hand, there’s obvious comedy in real life Terminator Takashi Sugiura getting bossed around by Kendo Kashin and NOSAWA of all people. On the other hand, these guys have clearly checked out. NOSAWA couldn’t even bother taking a shoulderblock bump in this match. Hayashi showed that he could still go and I enjoy seeing Saku grapple with the NOAH boyz, but yeah – there’s a pretty low ceiling to these matches. My favorite part was the Haoh in peril segment that setup a cool super hero hot tag run from Kenoh.**1/4
Go Shiozaki & Kaito Kiyomiya vs. Keiji Muto & Naomichi Marufuji
Look at the green streaks on Kaito! He truly is the Billie Eilish of pro-wrestling. I love his father and son team with Go, as it’s always used wisely to build up future GHC title matches while keeping AXIZ as its own separate entity (See: Gokaito vs. Fujita/Sugiura). Young Kaito was particularly assertive against old man Muto here, which was impressive considering how shy he was not so long ago. Muto seemed fairly motivated to be working with the kid, even if the temptation to take a power nap on the outside seemed strong at some point. Meanwhile, I’m always down for Shiozaki and Marufuji chopping the shit out of each other, so bring on that title match. Nothing must see, but a solid match that got over the two stories it needed to get over. ***
