Views from the Hawke’s Nest: Hiroshi Tanahashi in NOAH Collection

 

Uprising Spirit
November 30, 2003

Hiroshi Tanahashi teamed with Yuji Nagata to take on Kenta Kobashi and Tamon Honda for the latter team’s GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. The NJPW team actually managed to win the match and the belts after Nagata hit Honda with a bridging backdrop driver. Unfortunately, the match was boring as heck because they went 35+ minutes with nothing remotely of value done in the match. The NJPW had control for a bit. The champs had control for a bit. They went back and forth forever. Nagata eventually pinned Honda. There was no reason to care unless you were blindly invested in who won. This set of matches is off to an ominous start. (1/2*)

Tanahashi and Nagata were attacked by Takeshi Morishima and whom I presume was Takeshi Rikio after the match.

 

Uprising Spirit
December 6, 2003

Naturally, Hiroshi Tanahashi and Yuji Nagata then defended the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Championship against Takeshi Morishima and Takeshi Rikio. This match was basically structured just like the first match where each team got a chance to be in control before they started going back and forth FOREVER. I hate this style of wrestling. This was even more frustrating because it started out fairly interesting with the NJPW team being the obvious heels and very hated as a result. Then it devolved into just another super-long tag match. Tanahashi and Nagata won when they Morishima submitted to the Nagata Lock III. (3/4*)

This very random set of matches that I found did not Tanahashi and Nagata dropping the belts to Misawa and Ogawa for whatever reason. I’ve had my fill for Tanahashi/Nagata tag matches.

 

Destiny
July 18, 2005

Hiroshi Tanahashi took on Takeshi Rikio for Rikio’s GHC Heavyweight Championship. Tanahashi was the IWGP U-30 Champion at the time. I got into this match quite a bit as they had the strong structure of Rikio dominating the majority of the match, but Tanahashi would keep it competitive just enough for you to believe he had a chance. Eventually, Rikio just strung together too much offense in a row, which allowed him to finish Tanahashi with Muso. I liked this match quite a bit. (***3/4)

 

Summer Navigation
July 10, 2010

Hiroshi Tanahashi took on Go Shiozaki in a match that made Go look like a barely-competent performer. He refused to sell the leg at all, despite the fact that Tanahashi worked it over for the majority of the match. He looked sloppy as hell at points and lost at other key moments. It was all the more frustrating because Tanahashi did solid work on the leg, and they told a good story. Tanahashi got the upperhand, and Go needed a key sequence of big movez at the end to stand a chance. He managed to make that sequence happen and win the match. The execution along the way on Go’s end was just too poor though. (**1/2)

 

Final Burning In Budokan
May 11, 2013

Hiroshi Tanahashi teamed up with Yuji Nagata and Satoshi Kojima took on Akitoshi Saito and BRAVE (Mohammed Yone & Takashi Sugiura). This was rather unspectacular, and it took me several tries to watch it all the way through. The NJPW team eventually won after Tanahashi hit Saito with a High Fly Flow. If you like the Japanese style of tag wrestling, you might like this more than I did.  (**1/4)

 

Watch Tanahashi for free!

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Mike Bennett [ROH/NJPW show]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Suwama [All Japan]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Yuji Nagata

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jun Akiyama [G1 Climax]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Yujiro Takahashi [G1 Climax]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Prince Devitt [G1 Climax]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Giant Bernard [G1 Climax]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Milano Collection AT [G1 Climax]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Toru Yano [G1 Climax]

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Hirooki Goto

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Masato Tanaka

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Prince Devitt

Tanahashi, Nakamura, & Shibata vs. Nagata, Tenzan, & Nakanishi

Tanahashi & Kanemoto vs. Chono & Nakamura

 

Click here for a meticulously organized list of all of my wrestling reviews.

4.0

The final score: review Poor

The 411

Despite liking the Rikio GHC title match, the rest of this set was a chore to get through. Unlike the Nakamura/NOAH compilation that I looked at recently, I did not feel like I gleaned much about Tanahashi as a performer from watching all of these matches. That is in part because it's heavy on tag team wrestling, and Japanese tag team wrestling bores the hell out of me the great majority of the time. Seek out the Rikio match and skip everything else.