Puro Fury: NOAH Autumn Navigation 2016

NOAH Autumn Navigation

 

October 8 2016

 

We’re in Korakuen Hall, Tokyo for a special event from NOAH. What makes it so special? Kazuchika Okada, the IWGP Champion, is on this show to further his angle with NOAH Ace Naomichi Marufuji. The result is a virtual sell-out crowd for NOAH. Which is a rarity these days. Watching NOAH live is extremely weird too. Imagine if we’d been able to watch NOAH live ten years ago when it was great? My memories of the promotion would be even better than they are and the current funk would seem even funkier.

 

Hitoshi Kumano, Kaito Kiyomiya & Shiro Tomoyose vs. Akitoshi Saito, Taiji Ishimori & Yoshinari Ogawa

The kids are teaming up against the veterans here. My first take of the show is that it’s a card relatively free of Suzuki-gun (MiSu himself is over in the UK where they pay better, along with his masked butler El Desperado). This is a good thing. Suzuki-gun is a terrible garbage cancer upon wrestling cards. I’d much rather see the youngsters battle the veterans. Although the crowd seems to care a lot less than they did when Suzuki-gun were in every match. Kumano is a guy I’ve been waiting to see improvement from for literally years. He’s taking these tiny baby steps. Meanwhile everyone they break into the business immediately goes past him. Kiyomiya is already better than he is and Tomoyose has huge potential. Kiyomiya doesn’t have the best of matches here though, doing random selling and taking his sweet time coming off the top leaving poor Ratboy Ogawa standing around like a fool. Luckily Kumano gets all fired up and he’s certainly added some power to his repertoire. Signs of improvement in Kumano? Whatever next? A Taichi match that isn’t total crap? Tomoyose finally gets in there and Ishimori squashes the poor guy with stamps and a 450 Splash. This was perfectly fine and the younger chaps all need matches like this to improve.

Final Rating: **

 

Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Taichi vs. Kenoh & Hajime Ohara

Three real big talents in this match and also Taichi. I’m convinced if he wasn’t such an unbearable shithead Taichi might actually have a good match every once in a while. The fucking asshole tries to wrestle in a cape here. He literally tags into the match wearing his entrance robe, which admittedly is very stylish. His gimmick in this match is refusing to wrestle. I am fine with this. Because it’s Taichi he can’t even do that right. The theme of this tour is Autumn, which is largely ignored by the grapplers apart from Ohara who dons adorable autumnal garb, drawing the sound of women swooning across the world (via purostream). The match is a grinding procession of Suzuki-gun heat, which is the same shit wrestling I’ve been putting up with from NOAH for two years. Taichi’s cheating is the laziest in all of wrestling. He may be the worst worker in the world at the moment. He actively drags other talent down to his level and refuses to let a match breathe. There are flashes of acceptable wrestling when Taichi is not in the match because Kanemaru is capable and both Kenoh and Ohara are brilliant. Kenoh at strikes and Ohara at technical stuff. Taichi gets in the one thing he can do properly; pull off his stripper trousers. Ohara rolls him up for the win and the match was as bad as can be imagined considering the talent of three of the workers. Taichi is the black hole of wrestling talent. There’s no escaping his cone of sucktitude. Like the kids around Bart Simpson in class whose grades deteriorate due to his tomfoolery.

Final Rating: *1/4

 

Mohammed Yone & Quiet Storm vs. Go Shiozaki & Shuhei Taniguchi

Yone now comes out to “Boogie Wonderland”, which enhances my love for his disco gimmick. Quiet Storm, five feet of pure meat, is a decent tag partner for him. Shiozaki is having a nightmare in 2016. He’s flopped as champion in two different promotions and now he’s stuck in the third match trying to rebuild his shattered reputation. It must be worrying for him, as he chops and spinning backfists away here to complete silence, that even someone with Yone’s sympathy can’t get him over. Go vs. Storm is actually pretty good because it’s a competition to see who’s stiffer on the chops. Taniguchi doesn’t want to be outdone and randomly headbutts Yone to prove his stern love of strong style. In the shoulder too! No point headbutting Yone in the head because his afro would absorb the impact. That’s fucking psychology, people. Go puts Quiet Storm away with a lariat because de-push or not he’s not jobbing in this match. This was fairly enjoyable, which is an improvement over the first two matches.

Final Rating: **1/2

 

GHC Junior Tag Team Championship

Momo no Seishun Tag (c) vs. Gedo & Jado

This is one of the biggest draws on the card because it features two NJPW wrestlers, although Jado secretly wrestles in NOAH as Captain NOAH (shhh, don’t tell anyone). Jado manages to get better crowd reactions than anyone else on the show by doing Ric Flair chops and encouraging the crowd to “woo” along. The biggest problem they have here is that Harada & Kotoge are workrate freaks and Gedo & Jado don’t have the capacity to keep up with that. Out of respect for the veterans (and bookers) they end up doing a brawl heavy contest, which is ok but Momo no Seishun are far better than that. Poor Kotoge has to spend the entire match taking chops, because Jado has nothing else in his locker. The state of his chest is like something out of a Marufuji match. The veterans take it really easy in this, it being a long match, and it’s left to Kotoge to take heat and Harada to save the match. It’s a really long match and it’s a bit of a grind, although at least there’s some semblance of heat, which is better than the undercard. It does start to fire up, eventually, with Kotoge looking to survive a lengthy beating from Jado. Then the champs mince Jado with knee strikes. It might take twenty minutes to get the blood flowing but the match is now fully erect. The fiery final third is where the Viagra properly kicks in…and then Jado books himself to win with the crossface. Even though Kotoge’s feet were under the ropes. Holy shit. Easily the best match on the show, even if it was too long and the wrong team won. Unless you’re pushing Harada and Kotoge hard in singles, because let’s face it NOAH don’t have a mass of main event prospects. Kenoh & Ohara come out afterwards to confront the new champs and I’m sure that match will be fine.

Final Rating: ***1/4

 

Katsuhiko Nakajima & Masa Kitamiya vs. Takashi Sugiura & Takashi Iizuka

I take back what I said about Taichi earlier, Iizuka is the worst worker in the world at the moment. He could probably take down every single worker in the world and just have horrible matches with them. He could probably get a DUD out of AJ Styles. It’s a special fucking talent to be that bad. The only thing worse than Iizuka is the refereeing. Sugiura uses a chair and shoves the ref over and the match carries on. Did Jado wave DQ’s in NOAH when I wasn’t paying attention? It’s like Suzuki-gun care so little about being effective heels that cheating is not worth hiding. Then if the rules are relaxed there’s no point to having disqualifications at all. Just make every NOAH match no DQ because they clearly don’t give a fuck about rules anyway. Samurai TV handily remind me during this match that Nakajima is challenging Sugiura for the GHC title. Which would be great if a) I’d not forgotten who the GHC champion was and b) the focus of the match wasn’t on Iizuka and the constant pain that he inflicts upon the viewer. Kitamiya seems to enjoy himself regardless of the horrors surrounding him. Nakajima finally get some alone time with Sugiura and, by God, he busts out the Marty Scurll “superkick, just kidding” spot. One can only hope for Nakajima to win the title and defend it exclusively in New Japan to stop the Suzuki-gun horror from continuing. At least Nakajima wins here, downing the useless Iizuka with a brainbuster. This show is draining my will to live, let alone follow professional wrestling in NOAH.

Final Rating: ½*

 

GHC Tag Team Championship

Naomichi Marufuji & Toru Yano (c) vs. Kazuchika Okada & YOSHI-HASHI

If Marufuji can’t sense an issue with him tagging with a CHAOS guy against two CHAOS guys with titles on the line then he’s a dumbass. I hope he gets triple teamed all match and pinned with a Rainmaker. Of course the actual issue is the IWGP title of Okada’s, which Marufuji is challenging for in two days time. This is merely a match to hype that. Because it’s taking place in NOAH it’s really slowly paced too. Although every now and again Okada and Marufuji push the pace a little to show how great their match would be if it was sub-ten minutes. This being NOAH we get everyone in there for long drawn out sequences. Including Yano having to actually wrestle extended periods instead of just goofing around and getting his act done in five minutes before going home. Having Yano just wrestle a regular match is the worst use of Yano imaginable. If he could work that style he’d have gotten pushed six years ago. He stinks, that’s why NJPW turned him into a comedy wrestler and that’s how he got over. Even Okada seems less important here in NOAH. They don’t pull the camera on his pose and honestly almost anyone in this promotion would cease to be over in six months. Marufuji vs. YOSHI-HASHI ends up being the most interesting aspect of the match. To the point where I figure Tacos could get himself over in the green ring, as long as they kept him clear of Suzuki-gun. The teases of YOSHI-HASHI almost beating Marufuji are easily the best parts of the match. Which probably makes me worry about Okada-Marufuji, except that match is taking place in New Japan so it should be fine. Okada gives no fucks about NOAH and barely puts any effort in. Marufuji eventually gets the pin on YOSHI-HASHI and Okada is left staring from the floor. This started painfully slowly but the last few minutes were a demonstration of how much fun YOSHI-HASHI is as a worker.

Final Rating: ***

 

 

4.5

The final score: review Poor

The 411

NOAH is a terrible promotion. It has been for some considerable time. The only reason I keep turning up is in the hope that they’ll someday recapture the glory days, when the promotion was one of the most exciting in the world. The disappointing undercard and slightly lacklustre main just about sum up the promotion in 2016. The decision to have the bookers win the junior tag titles is highly suspect and some of the wrestling on this show was the pits. Continue to avoid NOAH until they sort their shit out.