Yuma Aoyagi vs. Francesco Akira
You could do a lot worse than kicking off your show with these two fine young men. They had the efficient match you wanted them to have: Aoyagi cutting off Akira with his size advantage and feeding the Italian Warrior Child’s high-flying comebacks. They didn’t hit the level of Akira’s recent midcard match with Kento, but considering their spot on the card, it’s not like they needed to. PS – Aoyagi dropping those arm sleeves and going back to black hair is suuuch a wise cosmetic change. Really ties his whole color scheme together. **3/4
Shuji Ishikawa, Takao Omori & Black Menso-re vs. Shotaro Ashino, Kuma Arashi & Hokuto Omori
I can’t help but wonder if the AJPW booking team is purposefully trolling Puro Twitter with the Enfants Terrible inner turmoil story. That being said, I find it really well done so far. No matter where it goes, Ashino and Hokuto are both doing a great job selling this thing. Add a bunch solid wrestling to the Enfants tension and you have yourself a pretty satisfying midcard match. The Kuma/Big Shuj chemistry is as tasty as ever. Popped big time for Ishikawa nuking the bear chonk with a release Dragon on this random house show. **3/4
Jake Lee, TAJIRI & Ryuki Honda vs. Yoshitatsu, Ryouji Sai & Daimonji So
More fast-paced meat and potatoes wrasslin’ with everyone pitching in a decent amount. Always happy to see the Land’s End warriors bring their kickpads to the All Japan midcard party. Tatsu and Honda picked up where the Trial Series match from yesterday left off and worked a fine finish. Not much else to say? Jake Lee is brutally handsome. **1/4
Suwama, Hikaru Sato & Dan Tamura vs. Kento Miyahara, Atsuki Aoyagi & Rising HAYATO
Considering I now approach all Kento midcard tags with extreme caution, this overdelivered like crazy. Big Dan Tamura stepping up to the plate and replacing the departed Yusuke Okada as Evolution’s number one Kento Hater was pure magic. I firmly believe this is the key to getting the most out of Miyahara at this point. Young guys need to start getting in his face and force him to get serious. This is what happened here and it was a total blast. The other big highlight was acrobatic cutie pie Atsuki Aoyagi damn near stealing the show with his prematurely awesome high spots. This kid is breathing new life in these throwaway 6-man tags in the best possible way. Real fun times. ***1/4
Zeus & Izanagi © vs. Shigehiro Irie & UTAMARO – All-Asia Tag Team Titles
PURPLE HAZE COLLIDES! Both sides dropped any pretense of heelishness and had a hard fought back and forth. Not much in the way of story or wheel reinvention, but everyone had their working boots on. The only thing holding back the action was that no one in the building bought UTAMARO as having any chance against the Z-Man. He tried hard and put in one of his better performances in a while, but yeah. Guy’s a shlob. To no one surprise, the match peaked with Zeus and Irie ramming into each other enthusiastically. Really dug the spot where they took the time to remove the two other guys from the match to properly focus on lariat’ing the shit out of each other. ***1/4
Koji Iwamoto © vs. CIMA – AJPW Jr. Heavyweight Title
If you’re still into Big Match CIMA in 2021, this was pretty decent. I get that they wanted to close Koji’s reign on a somewhat ‘’epic’’ note, but the match would’ve benefitted from actually getting less time. They spent a big chunk of the action on a dueling neck work subplot that kept hovering between tedious and ‘’Oh this is actually pretty cool’’. None of it amounted to much in the grand scheme of things, but I’d be lying if I said I didn‘t pop for CIMA’s tricked out Stretch Muffler/necklock combo.
The match did get more exciting when both guys finally hit the gas pedal and started blasting each other with big movez and counters. At 43, CIMA was a surprisingly good fit for Iwamoto’s explosive bomb throwing. Could’ve done with a different ending though, because CIMA throwing out all of his biggest finishers and somehow pinning Koji on the weakest-looking one (Spartan Cut?) felt flat. ***1/4
