YO-HEY, Hajime Ohara & Seiki Yoshioka vs. Junta Miyawaki, Seiya Morohashi & Kinya Okada
Stop the presses: Okada has a new lightning bolt up his butt. He shall now be known as Thunderbutt. Other than that, this was very much a NOAH juniors opener. Nothing that’s gonna change your life, but plenty of well-executed dropkicks and a fun high spot or two. I always worry about the mood whenever NOAH run pandemic shows outside of Korakuen Hall, so I’m happy so report that the Edion Arena turnout is looking good and the fine people of Osaka seem to be in a clapping mood. **1/2
Akitoshi Saito & Masao Inoue vs. Tadasuke & Nioh
A 9 minute match that felt about twice as long. Time moves a bit differently inside Masao World. Both the crowd and Jurina Matsui on commentary were fairly receptive to Masao’s shtick, which gives me great hope for the big main event. *3/4
Takashi Sugiura, Kazuyuki Fujita, Kazushi Sakuraba & Kendo Kashin vs. Kenoh, Masa Kitamiya, Manabu Soya & Yoshiki Inamura
These Sugiura-gun/Kongo tags never fail to bring the ass kicking. We haven’t seen Big King Kazzer since his Staredown of the Year Contender with Shiozaki in March and he seemed eager to bring the pain. His chemistry with young Inamura is undeniable and I had a blast watching these two charge at each other like a pair of angry bulldozers. That squash match they had together still feels like a missed opportunity – hopefully there’s a rematch on the horizon. Sugi-Gun working over Soya’s arm and Kendo Kashin being an asshole rounded up the action for this one and I dug all of it. ***
Yoshinari Ogawa & HAYATA © vs. Daisuke Harada & Atsushi Kotoge – GHC Jr. Tag Team Titles
If you open up a dictionary right now and look up ‘’Westling matches that didn’t need to go 25 minutes’’, you will most certainly find a picture of this match. Everyone put in a lot of effort here, but so many sections of the match felt like random moves filler. And as well performed as those moves were, only about 5% of them felt like they could end the match. Stinger going after Kotoge’s arm early on had some real drama to it, as did the Osaka Boyz double team comebacks during the ending stretch. Popped big time for that Kotoge drop toe-hold into Harada knee strike. The issue is that they could’ve hit all the same dramatic beats in about 15 minutes and made everything feel so much more exciting. Still, the outcome makes me happy and this Harada/Kotoge run could be fun if NOSAWA gets his match lengths under control (extremely wishful thinking). ***1/4
Kotaro Suzuki © vs. Haoh – GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title
Everything the last match did wrong, this one did right. All killer, no filler – with a compelling story and high-end action keeping you hooked from bell to bell. Kotaro tenderizing someone’s ribs is a guaranteed good time and little Haoh was the perfect foil for this type of match. The size difference and inspired selling made all the stomach forearm cutoffs look absolutely devastating. Completely babyfaced by the juicy ribs story, Haoh stepped up and delivered a bunch of great comebacks. Kotaro worked as a solid base for him and together they managed to pull off a wild Dragon Kid/SUWA-level diving hurricanrana, complete with last nano-second bump from Suzuki. They ran through the entire ending stretch with the utmost urgency and I bit on about 5 different expertly timed near-falls. You know you’re watching a quality match when Kotaro has to bust out some new GIF-ready murder death finisher. ***3/4
Go Shiozaki, Shuhei Taniguchi, Daiki Inaba & Mohammed Yone vs. Keiji Muto, Naomichi Marufuji, Masakatsu Funaki & Masaaki Mochizuki
During the Legends 6-man that semi main-evented last year N-1’s finals card, Taniguchi aggressively went after Jun Akiyama like some blood-thirsty psychopath and it led to a bunch of awesome angry wrestling. Big Shuhei tried to pull the same trick with old man Muto here and the result was more of a mixed bag. Considering the man’s inability to run, doing a bunch of guardrail-whip spots with him is never the greatest idea. Thankfully, the rest of the match was a pleasant time and Muto even got to redeem himself by working a swell sequence with Shiozaki. Inaba showed more fire than in any NOAH match I’ve seen from him and I hope his ring-side spat with Maru leads to something. ***
Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Kaito Kiyomiya – N-1 Victory (Finals)
I hate to crowd-blame during COVID times, but it felt like Edion Arena didn’t hold up their end of the bargain here. Even by clapping-era standards, this was cold. It’s a shame because Kaito and Nakajima wrestled their hearts out and put together something really solid. The heel/face dynamic was right on the money and Kaito provided a ton of enthralling character moments that showed the charisma gap between him and Katsu isn’t what it used to be.
Particularly loved the sequence where he kept getting back in Nakajima’s face after being thrown out of the ring multiple times, only to get destroyed by more soccer kicks. They leaned into this type of physicality and managed to force some reactions out of the crowd through sheer shock value. Kaito getting his entire face scraped off by Nakajima’s lethal feet and valiantly fighting back was the kind super hero moment the kid excels at.
Big Katsuhiko singles matches all come with a high level of stiffness, but the shots during the ending stretch of this one were on another level. The running kicks to the stomach, the face-exploding high kick, the unprotected punt kick – freakin’ brutal. They had all the ingredients for a memorable tournament final except the crowd reaction. ****
