Puro Fury: NOAH Genba Hirayanagi Retirement Show

NOAH Genba Hirayanagi Retirement Show

 

September 10 2016

 

Genba’s retirement announcement came a little out of left field. He’s not that old at 36 and hasn’t suffered any major injuries. Nor does he have the kind of style that might result in getting banged up. He mostly does comedy midcard stuff. Regardless of all this I will miss Genba. He’s been a consistent comedic force in NOAH’s midcards and, perhaps more importantly, he has a unique and diverse style that breaks up shows. As someone who watches hours and hours of wrestling every week, something different is a welcome relief.

 

Momo No Seishun Tag, Hajime Ohara & Kenou vs. Taiji Ishimori, Hitoshi Kumano, Kaiyo Kiyomiya & Shiro Tomoyose

This is perhaps the best match up on the entire card, on paper, which is a little worrying. Team Ishimori is on the young side although both Kiyomiya and Tomoyose are destined for stardom. The other team are solid gold. Harada, Kotoge, Ohara and Kenou. What a line up. If only they had people of comparable talent to work against…like say in NJPW? There’s a phenomenal, heated eight man tag to be had somewhere in this NOAH/NJPW crossover business. The match peaks when Ishimori is flipping around and trying to take on the entire of Team Momo by himself. Harada does get creative with the young boys and tries to stack them in the corner, to the sound of 800 people chuckling. Kotoge pins Tomoyose with the Killswitch in about eight minutes, which is extremely worrying. This was a decent opening match but on paper it looks like the best thing on the show.

Final Rating: ***

 

Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. El Desperado & Takashi Iizuka

And the parade of shit begins! Saito has no one to work strongstyle with. Ogawa has no one to get technical with. Desperado has no one who works his lucharesu style. Iizuka is a heap of shit. A legitimate contender for the worst professional wrestler in the world this year. Anything he’s involved in is a goddamn clumsy mess. I can’t decide if the worst part is that he’s occasionally dangerous or that the rest of the time he looks fake. As for Desperado, I can only assume he’s working this badly on purpose to fit in with the Suzuki-gun dynamic. Remember when he showed a tonne of promise on his return to NJPW a few years back? Nope, NOAH don’t either. This match gets eight minutes and they do next to nothing with it. Towards the finish Despy and Ogawa remember they can actually wrestle and do some of that, which is ruined by Iizuka and his fucking stupid iron glove. Ogawa then pins Desperado using the ropes, even though he’s the babyface. Fucking whatever, NOAH. Just stop booking this horseshit.

Final Rating: ½*

 

Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Masa Kitamiya

Davey won a “submission grappling” title recently, which makes him a legitimate shooter. Something the Japanese companies highly rate. His success in that field is not mirrored by his card position where he’s up against  Kitamiya. I still think of Kitamiya as a young boy but he’s definitely graduated from that spot. The match lasts four minutes and that asshole Sugiura runs in with a chair for the DQ. What company is this? What Japanese company runs a bullshit four minute DQ with a run in? This was some Attitude Era, WCW bullshit.

Final Rating: DUD

 

Katsuhiko Nakajima vs. Lance Archer

Nakajima is greeted like a conquering hero by the NOAH audience after his antics on the final night of the G1. Unfortunately he’s stuck wrestling Archer, the weak half of KES. Archer’s psychology seems to revolve around removing as much fun from a match as humanly possible, leaving a grapple-sized husk for Nakajima to try and create something in. Great though Nakajima is, he’s just wasted in this match. Archer is so boring that I can’t even process how he’s having such a bad match with such a good wrestler. Archer continually cuts Nakajima off during his comebacks and the match is a fucking chore to sit through. Keeping in mind Nakajima was a world beater in the G1 just a month before this, getting incredible heat and putting in top tier performances. That’s how bad Archer is in singles. The only good thing about this match is Nakajima’s selling. He takes some great bumps. Even the finish riles me though as Archer continues to pound Nakajima until he gets a fluke roll up for the win. Post match Archer finally does something useful, channelling Chuck Taylor, and makes a kid at ringside cry. His laughter and the, ever so slight, cheering of the front row makes for excellent imagery. That child is now scarred for life.

Final Rating: *

 

Quiet Storm vs. Toru Yano

Are NJPW just exiling people to NOAH that they don’t want to use anymore? Because I would be fine with that. If you’ve seen Yano’s work in recent years you know exactly how this match pans out. Water spit, cradles, “BRREEEEEAAAAAAAAK”, turnbuckle pad etc. Storm’s response is constant clubberin’. Perhaps this is Yano’s kryptonite because it’s mostly effective. Yano is used to aggression though, he feuded with MiSu for two fucking years, but somehow Storm gets by him with a lariat. This wasn’t very good but was it intended to be? Yano generally exists to fill space and make people laugh. Storm wasn’t convincing in winning but it’s Yano, he’s a goofball.

Final Rating: *3/4

 

Naomichi Marufuji vs. Mohammed Yone

Yone arrives in his time machine from the 70s, complete with insane afro and Saturday Night Fever poses. Forget what I said about the opener having the potential to be the best match on the card, Yone has stepped his game up. This is reasonably stiff, with Marufuji throwing those chops that every G1 competitor must now despise. Yone hangs with Marufuji but the match is glacially paced, making me think Marufuji requested thirty minutes or something equally ridiculous. The truth is thirteen minutes. Maybe Jado misheard the request and called an audible when they hit thirteen minutes. It is occasionally fun, which makes it better than the Archer match without much effort. Given his current look it’d be awesome if Yone changed his name to Elvis Travolta. Which would have the added bonus of me being able to say “yeah, I met Elvis Travolta, he’s a nice guy”. Elvis gets his chest excessively reddened by the meanness of Marufuji but he spars with Naomichi to a reasonable degree to the point where the crowd are on his side. Or maybe they just love that fucking afro as much as I do. Marufuji again misses his hook kick here but makes amends by landing an assortment of knees and the Shiranui for the win. I enjoyed this, making it MOTN so far with little effort.

Final Rating: ***1/4

 

Tangent: With the completion of that match we have an hour left on the TV block and one match remaining, Genba’s retirement match, and presumably some sort of ceremony.

 

Genba Hirayanagi, Go Shiozaki, Shuhei Taniguchi & Captain NOAH vs. Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki, Takashi Sugiura, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Taichi)

My biggest problem with NOAH over the last two years is that if you don’t like the Suzuki-gun bullshit there’s literally no escape. They’ve had them headline every show, hold every belt and be the focal point of every storyline. There’s literally nothing you can do, unless you just don’t watch the show at all. Genba gets a good reception for his eleven years of service. It’s still an odd decision, for me, as Genba is in his mid-30s, which is usually a great age for wrestlers and hasn’t had a long career. There may be injury concerns as his back is covered in compression tape. Genba has a good time on his way out, hitting dives, spending an age getting the crowd to clap along before hitting more dives and doing Steiner Bros poses with Cap NOAH. The match focuses on Genba as he takes a kicking off Suzuki-gun. The heel group show varying levels of interest in their dissection of the retiree. Genba gets to do some fun stuff in his last match, like stealing Taichi’s stripper trousers and working his overused cock. Genba should be careful touching that thing, it’s been around. Genba also gets to do strike duels with Minoru Suzuki, which MiSu is quite nice about considering how surly he usually is with anyone that tries shit. Suzuki draws the line at selling having his groin grabbed though and slaps Genba away. There is an issue when anyone other than Genba is in there for his team, which is why he takes the bulk of the match, and that’s the crowd’s indifference to all three of his partners. Nobody seems to give a shit about Go Shiozaki, especially as a babyface, in 2016. They missed a trick by not turning him and sticking him in with Suzuki-gun because the alternative, Sugiura, still makes no sense. This is especially evident when Sugiura is working Genba. It’s clear he’s working soft and doesn’t want to hurt his colleague of many years. Go would have been a certified shithead and recognised an opportunity to get a tonne of heat. Unfortunately Suzuki-gun insist on doing all their usual nonsense, which has been killing NOAH as a promotion for two years. My favourite thing about the match is Atsushi Kotoge, at ringside as part of the supporting cast, and he’s a massive Genba Hirayanagi fan! His reactions during the stretch are an absolute joy. Genba goes out on his back, courtesy of old friend Sugiura, and once again NOAH send their fans home miserable. Good job.

Final Rating: ***1/2

 

 

4.0

The final score: review Poor

The 411

The main event, and terrific final performance from Genba, almost salvaged this show. However the undercard is so routinely awful that I can’t, in good conscience, recommend sitting through it. To see this sheer number of bad matches on a card in 2016 is actually startling. The standard across wrestling has been raised up so high that you just don’t expect to see a show this poor from a major wrestling company. Maybe we’ll have to just stop referring to NOAH as a major company if this is going to be their standard. All the best for Genba in whatever he chooses to do with the rest of his life. He’s always entertained me.