Yoshitatsu vs. Ryo Inoue
Every wrestling show should start with Yoshitatsu kicking the crap out of a poor young boy. Despite providing the world with a completely acceptable amount of 3-star wrestling matches during the Champion Carnival, Tatsu is still routinely disrespected on the Puro Twitter hellscape. Unacceptable. The WORLD FAMOUS One took out his Internet frustrations on purple boy Inoue and life was good. **1/2
Izanagi vs. Brute Issei vs. Black Menso-re – 3-Way Match
Freakin’ Brute Issei is back. A long-lost trainee from the Muto AJPW regime that fell off the face of the Earth around 2007. Like all good wrestlers, this man is 7 feet tall and wears some kind of prison jump suit. Izanagi and Menso-re introduced him to the complex artform known as the comedy 3-way match. Yes. *3/4
Hikaru Sato & Dan Tamura vs. Ryuki Honda & TAJIRI
Undercard wrestling, baby. Right on the intersection between ‘I should probably skip this’ and ‘You know what, these guys actually know what they’re doing’. Sunglasses enthusiast Ryuki Honda looked pretty beast-like during the finish, what with the vicious running lariat on Tamura. **1/4
Jake Lee vs. Takao Omori
Short and sweet – Omori’s old man energy colliding with Jake’s post-punk arm attacks for a whopping 3 minutes. After his losing effort in the Champ Carnival finals, Lee already seems on the rehabilitation track – making short work of undercard warriors while projecting dominant alpha-goth weirdo vibes. **1/4
Hokuto Omori & Yusuke Kodama © vs. Tomoya & Noriyuki Yoshida – All-Asia Tag Team Titles
In order to properly assess this wrestling match, I had to delve into various peer-reviewed academic databases and research papers. That’s right, I spent 30 seconds on Cage Match dot net. Turns out Hokkaido boys Tomoya and Yoshida have been around for a while, making sporadic appearances in such indie sleaze landmarks as WMF and Pro Wrestling FTO (?).
They matched with Total Eclipse really well – providing chop-heavy veteran structure to the champions’ surprise babyface performances. Hokuto also hails from Hokkaido, so he went full Hometown Boy and worked the crowd like a champ. Kodama brought the laughs as Gremlin in Peril and Omori came through with the hot tag. No complaints. ***1/4
Kento Miyahara & Rising HAYATO vs. Yuma Aoyagi & Atsuki Aoyagi
In the grand pantheon of matches that didn’t need to go 30 minutes, this would rank pretty close to the top. Very much the opposite of their recent Korakuen match, which was super compact/all action all the time. That being SAID, these guys are pretty good at wrestling, so if you stick through the 15 minutes of filler, there IS plenty of gold at the end of the rainbow.
Kento and Yuma previewed tomorrow’s Triple Crown battle adequately, but it was mostly the juniors who stole the show. Lots of tasty high-flying action from the Nextream sidekicks – Atsuki looking more and more like a can’t miss superstar every time he wrestles. Everything came together in spectacular fashion for the feverish last few minutes. Just wish they had gotten there a little quicker. ***1/2
Suwama & Shotaro Ashino © vs. Shuji Ishikawa & Kohei Sato – AJPW Tag Team Titles
Not a total SPREADSHEET DISRUPTOR, but a rock-solid wrasslin’ match to close the books on the Runaway Suplex title reign. In between the various beef-oriented segments, the story came across crystal clear: Ashino and The Wamster can no longer work together.
In terms of scientific appraisal (*cough*), I will tell you right now that the action peaked with that insane Ashino/Sato strike exchange. The rest of the match involved Suwama getting his ass kicked and growling like a wounded swamp beast. Which is undeniably great, but didn’t exactly reinvent the wheel.
Now the big question – what’s next for Shotaro Ashino? Will he become All Japan’s Hirooki Goto or will he become All Japan’s Hirooki Goto? Many options on the table… ***1/2
