The Navigation Log 12.28.08: Blowout Bonanza Twenty-Aught-Eight

Did everyone have a good holiday? Get anything nice? I got exactly what I wanted, which was money. I don’t like having my family buy me gifts because they have no idea how to shop for me, so I just ask for money. Thus, I have no worries about lousy movies or clothes that don’t/are very ugly. So far I’ve gotten myself a new external hard drive and a copy of Burn After Reading, which was one of my favorite movies this year. And no, I did not get any wrestling gifts, mainly because I haven’t decided which ones to get. Though I’m thinking of investing in a few All Japan shows from this past year.

Onto the Navigation Log!

Puro News
I don’t necessarily want to focus all on news this week, but there are some points that need to be addressed, as well as the results of NOAH’s big Christmas shows.

First, I disappointed some by not talking about this last week. I apologize, but to be perfectly honest I wasn’t really paying attention to anything business related in Japan last week.

I’m speaking now about NOAH being dropped off television by NTV. This is a huge blow for the Green Mat, who has not been having a good second half of 2008. With their attendance at Budokan shows plummeting and just a lack of general interest in their product, the company is definitely feeling the pinch. There’s a good deal of this that could be blamed on the lagging worldwide economy. The entire professional wrestling industry is feeling it, but it seems that in Japan NOAH is the first of the Big Three to become a casualty of it. As stated before, their Budokan shows have been doing poorly over the last few months and little seems to have been helping to raise the level of interest in the product.

The year started out fairly strong for NOAH. Kobashi had just made his glorious return, Takeshi Morishima was finally the GHC Champion, and young guys like Atsushi Aoki and Shuhei Taniguchi were getting a good amount of the spotlight. Even an unlikely team of Akitoshi Saito & Bison Smith were drawing attention for the company after their upset wins for the GHC Tag Team Titles. It only seemed like things could get better when Kensuke Sasaki and his Kensuke Office wrestlers became regular performers. Sasaki would eventually win the title from Morishima and become the first man to hold all three major heavyweight titles in Japan from NOAH, New Japan, and All Japan. But it was around this time that things began to slide. Many fans were disappointed with Morishima’s first title run. The potential money match between Kobashi and Sasaki for the title collapsed when Kobashi was shelved again after suffering nerve damage in his arms. After that, what NOAH was doing ended up feeling weak compared to All Japan or New Japan. Not even Marufuji vs. KENTA was enough to boost ticket sales for the Budokan. And empty seats were just even more convincing evidence for NTV to drop them from programming.

Now I don’t think that NOAH losing television is as big a deal in Japan as it would be if say WWE went off the air. Japanese companies are more interested in getting fans into seats at these huge events and paying for PPV than they are in television time. NOAH is not quite the episodic television show that you get with Raw or Impact. It appears like more of a sports show than a sports entertainment show. Also, only a few shows per tour are taped for television. So yes, they’re losing some exposure from television, but their main need is to get people into seats. There’s no one way to do that other than just to keep plugging away until they hit on something that captures fans’ imaginations again. NOAH can survive without a major TV deal. If All Japan can do it, so can NOAH.

In slightly more positive news for NOAH, their Christmas show tournament apparently went off with little to no hitches. The field was too huge for me to do a match-by-match breakdown of the brackets, but what I can tell you is that after all was said and done, Akitoshi Saito came out as the winner of The Tournament 2008 after winning by unanimous judges’ decision in the final round against Masao Inoue. The hook for this tournament was that every match was only 10 minutes long and any time limit draws would go to the judges. This allowed for some upsets of younger guys over bigger names and is pretty much the reason Inoue made it to the finals. There have been complaints already from Western fans about The Tournament not meaning much and not actually elevating anyone. Except that… well these are the Christmas shows. That isn’t to say that nothing important has ever happened on them. In 2006 I believe Tatsuhito Takaiwa beat Takashi Sugiura for the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title. However, when you consider the utter madness of last year’s you get the impression that these shows are meant to be for fun and to give something entertaining back to the fans. So I’m not overly concerned about who won the tournament or who beat who to advance, unless NOAH gives me reason to think otherwise. The one result I am interested in was on the 24th, where a battle royale was held between all of the losers from the previous night. Dojo boy Ippei Ota finally got a big pin fall as he won the entire match, pinning Naomichi Marufuji last. Again, it may be nothing or it may be a sign of a bigger push for the guy. It’s just hard not to notice when a guy like Ota, who was probably the lowest on the card of NOAH’s students, pins a guy like Marufuji.

Enough of this though. 2008 is about to be behind us, so that’s more than enough of a reason to look back on the year and pick out my personal favorite matches from Japan from the past year. This is all opinion on my part and no, I haven’t seen every match from Japan over the past year. But I have watched a whole freakin’ lot, so coming up with this list was kinda tough in the long run. These might not even be the best matches from technical standpoints, but are mostly just the ones I enjoyed the most. So here we go!

Matt’s Top 10 Japanese Matches of 2008

Honorable Mention (in no particular order)

GHC Heavyweight Title: Takeshi Morishima vs. Takashi Sugiura
All in all not a perfect match, but extremely enjoyable. Sugiura earned his title shot by pinning Morishima in a tag team match and he really brought it to the big man here. Nothing perfect, but a good main event for a one-shot show and Morishima was allowed to look dominant. Also the sight of Morishima attempting his moonsault was one of the craziest things I saw from NOAH this year.

Hair vs. Mask: Joe Doering vs. ZODIAC
These two big gaijin began feuding with each other in the spring, with them trading falls with each other. It climaxed in a hair vs. mask match between the two, which ended up being extremely entertaining. Doering is All Japan’s attempt at creating a new generation of monster gaijin and ZODIAC (Aaron Aguilera of WWE fame) was a strong opponent for him. Doering would win this feud, but joined up with VoodooMurders later in the year. Ironically, he formed a very strong team with ZODIAC for the World’s Strongest Tag League.

IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles: Minoru & Prince Devitt vs. NO LIMIT
While not quite a changing of the guard, it was still an impressive feat for the young team of Yujiro & Tetsuya Naito to make it to this title match with Minoru & Devitt. A quick match, but it certainly highlighted the rise of this young team from this year.

New Hazard vs. DDT Sekigun: Shingo Takagi, BxB Hulk, & Cyber Kong vs. HARASHIMA, Kota Ibushi, & Antonio Honda
This was from a special cross-promotional show between Dragon Gate and DDT as the main event of the show. What followed was an incredibly impressive match that demonstrated the very best of the Japanese indy scene. Honda was the star of the match for me, as he took a ton of punishment and looked incredibly strong.

Atsushi Aoki Shining Series Match 5: Atsushi Aoki vs. Yoshinari Ogawa
This has been my favorite of all of Aoki’s trial matches so far. Ogawa led him through the paces of an extremely technical match. Aoki impressed by being able to keep up with the psychological part of it all and kept his explosive offense to a minimum as he tried to out-wrestle Ogawa. Ogawa looked like the wily veteran he’s supposed to be. Good stuff.

10) GHC Heavyweight Title: Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Takeshi Morishima
Easily Misawa’s best match of the year (that I saw anyway) this was where we saw the rise of Morishima into the position of a true main-eventer in the Japanese landscape. Misawa put Morishima over incredibly strong here, make no mistake about it. The match wasn’t half bad either and Misawa pretty much did everything in his power to make Morishima look strong in victory.

9) Naruki Doi vs. KENTA
KENTA did a fair bit of participation for Dragon Gate this year and this was hands down his best match over there. This was a bout a lot of people wanted to see and it certainly did not disappoint. Doi looked great in there with KENTA, though I’m not above complaining about KENTA kicking out of the Muscular Bomb. Other than that, this was a great one-on-one match.

8) Best of Super Jr. Finals: Wataru Inoue vs. Koji Kanemoto
A showdown of new generation against old generation was the perfect way to end the 2008 BOSJ. Inoue represented the very best of the current crop of Jr. Heavyweights in New Japan against Kanemoto, who has had a long history in New Japan’s junior’s division. This match heralded Inoue’s departure from the ranks of junior division up into the heavyweights.

7) Open the Dream Gate: CIMA vs. Masato Yoshino
Easily one of the most dramatic Dragon Gate matches of the entire year. Yoshino was in the middle of an impressive Open the Brave Gate run and had made a successful defense against CIMA heading into this bout. Yoshino threw his entire playbook at CIMA, but the veteran managed to survive by catching Yoshino in a dangerous submission. Yoshino’s partner Naruki Doi threw in the towel when his friend refused to submit. A great match with an amazing finish, this would lead to Speed Muscle turning face and forming World-1 not long after.

6) All Japan Triple Crown: Suwama vs. Osamu Nishimura
My favorite of Suwama’s title defenses from this year. This match was heightened by the sheer badassery of Nishimura, who went full on old school on Suwama. No shoes. Stiff hits. Flash pins. Nishimura seemed to have Suwama’s number after having numerous pins over the champion in tag team matches, but Suwama finally got the monkey off his back so to speak.

5) Champion’s Carnival: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Keiji Muto
Tanahashi pulled a hell of a match out of his mentor Muto in this bout. He went 30 minutes with 2008’s Wrestler of the Year and the two eventually came to a draw. This match was easily one of Tanahashi’s best of the entire year and really showed how far he’d come in that he was able to help the aged Muto to such a fine bout. This would become one of the main reasons why Tanahashi was chosen to challenge Muto for the IWGP Title in 2009. He came the closest out of anyone in New Japan to beating the legend.

4) BURNING vs. Kensuke Office Elimination Match: Kenta Kobashi, KENTA, Atsushi Aoki, & Akihiko Ito vs. Kensuke Sasaki, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Takashi Okita, & Kento Miyahara
Part of a series of tag matches that pitted Kobashi and Sasaki against each other leading their respective apprentices, this was hands down the best of the lot. It started out as two-on-two and as team members were eliminated, another would take his place. This was an incredibly fast-paced bout and it did a great job putting over young guys like Aoki, Ito, Okita, and Miyahara. Everyone got a chance to shine and fans got just a little more of a tease for Kobashi vs. Sasaki II.

3) ZERO1 World Heavyweight Title: Masato Tanaka vs. Yuji Nagata
Dream match of the year. This might have been one of the most highly anticipated matches that New Japan had this year and fans were eager to see two legends battle each other. They were not disappointed. Tanaka and Nagata battled all over the arena, with Tanaka trying to take Nagata out of his game. But in the end Mr. IWGP pulled out the win on his home turf and took the ZERO1 Heavyweight Title from the company’s ace. Like I said, dream match.

2) All Japan World Jr. Heavyweight Title: Naomichi Marufuji vs. Shuji Kondo
A late entry in the year, but it won Japan’s Match of the Year in the Tokyo Sport Awards. It’s hard to argue against that decision apart from just personal preference. Kondo and Marufuji battled for 40 minutes in a very well laid out battle of strength vs. speed and experience. In the end Marufuji’s experience in dealing with larger opponents helped him finally finish off Kondo and lead him one defense closer to his goal of becoming the strongest All Japan Jr. Heavyweight Champion ever.

1) Champion’s Carnival Final: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Suwama
Even though Marufuji vs. Kondo may have been Japan’s match of the year, this is hands down my favorite bout. I have watched this match over and over and even though there are certainly flaws in it, I love it. It’s the perfect meeting of a lot of factors. The crowd was blazing hot for it. Tanahashi was the invader from New Japan and had gone undefeated through the entire tournament. Suwama meanwhile was looking to win the Carnival and solidify himself as a top star in Japan. What followed was the definitive Climactic Showdown ™ that every wrestling tournament needs.

Again, let me qualify this list by saying that is it by no means representative of what was the best in the past year. Just my favorites. Don’t discount matches like KENTA vs. Marufuji, Kurt Angle vs. Yuji Nagata, both of BxB Hulk and Shingo Takagi’s Open the Dream Gate matches, or Keiji Muto vs. Shinsuke Nakamura. NOAH might have had a weak year, but on a whole, I think this was an excellent year for Japan in terms of matches.

I’m going to close with the year with the epic elimination match that came in at #3 on my list. I can’t believe that I haven’t actually posted it yet. Enjoy and have a great new year!

BURNING vs. Kensuke Office Elimination Match: Kenta Kobashi, KENTA, Atsushi Aoki, & Akihiko Ito vs. Kensuke Sasaki, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Takashi Okita, & Kento Miyahara