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Hawke’s Top 23 AJPW Matches from 2016
All Japan is good again. You should be watching it with more regularity.
23. Atsushi Aoki vs. Hikaru Sato – 2/21/2016
22. Jun Akiyama vs. Yuma Aoyagi – 2/21/2016
21. Jun Akiyama vs. Jake Lee – 1/3/2016
20. Jun Akiyama vs. Suwama – 1/2/2016
This was for Akiyama’s Triple Crown Championship.
The first two thirds of this match were surprisingly (I don’t like Suwama) interesting to me. Akiyama got control by targeting the neck. He put a lot of focus on that work. Suwama needed some big movez (including a tope suicida) to make the match competitive. I was all in at this point.
Then the match shifted towards going back and forth with some bombs being thrown (and kick outs at one). They kind of lost me there.
The match shifted gears yet again to at least get back on track. Akiyama suddenly started throwing everything he had at Suwama but could not put him away. Suwama then fired back with everything he had and eventually finished him with a bridging back suplex.
There was enough good in here to recommend the match slightly, but it was not the match it needed to be given how they worked it. Also, it’s hard to be enthusiastic about any match that results in Suwama being the main champion of a company. (***)
19. Jun Akiyama vs. Kento Miyahara – 4/17/2016
18. Jun Akiyama & Takao Omori vs. Kento Miyahara & Jake Lee – 3/19/2016
17. Naoya Nomura vs. Takuya Nomura – 11/27/2016
16. The Big Guns vs. Strong BJ – 6/15/2016
15. Jun Akiyama vs. Kento Miyahara – 7/23/2016
This was for Miyahara’s Triple Crown Championship.
The first half of this match was excellent. Miyahara was a bit quicker at every turn, but he was not doing enough damage. Thus, as soon as Akiyama was able to find openings, he pounced and did maximum damage at lightning speed. This was a great use of character and strategy to set the tone for the match.
The second half of the match sadly abandoned all of that and basically entirely relied on nearfalls and kickouts. All strategy went out the window. All subtlety was gone.
It was also less appealing because Miyahara being successful seemed inevitable. There was not much drama to be mined from a seemingly endless stream of kickouts.
Half of this match was great. Half of it was massively underwhelming. Miyahara won after a strait jacket German. (***)
14. Zeus vs. Atsushi Aoki – 4/24/2016
13. Jun Akiyama vs. Daisuke Sekimoto – 4/16/2016
12. Daisuke Sekimoto vs. Kento Miyahara – 5/25/2016
11. Takao Omori vs. Kento Miyahara – 3/21/2016
10. Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Atsushi Aoki – 1/3/2016
9. Takao Omori vs. Jake Lee – 7/23/2016
8. The Big Guns vs. Strong BJ – 11/27/2016
This was for Strong BJ’s AJPW Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.
This match was shockingly measured given that it was the blowoff to a semi-long rivalry and for the tag belts on the biggest AJPW show of the year.
Strong Blow Job controlled the majority of the match. The Big Guns kept fighting and fighting. They did a fun back-and-forth sequence to close out the match. The Big Guns then eventually won cleanly after a Jackhammer from Zeus on Sekimoto. Nice and easy does the trick. (***1/2)
7. Yohei Nakajima vs. Jiro Kuroshio – 11/27/2016
This was for Nakajima’s GAORA TV Championship.
This was a very fun match and easily the best match of the evening so far! I had never seen Kuroshio before, but he never takes off his watermelon and does moonsaults with it on. Thus, he is my new favorite wrestler. He also has a unique charisma that makes him compelling.
Nakajima did a good job on controlling the majority of the match as well. He dominated the majority of the match, but it never felt monotone or anything like that. Instead, it felt like a fun match that would happen on television (appropriately enough). Good stuff. Kuroshio won after two straight moonsaults. (***1/2)
6. Jun Akiyama vs. The Bodyguard – 4/24/2016
This was a 2016 Champion Carnival match.
This was a fun, bomb-throwing sprint. The tone was set right away when The Bodyguard gave Akiyama a lariat during the latter’s introduction. Akiyama later came back with an exploder on the floor. The action never let up until the finish when The Bodyguard finished Akiyama cleanly with a great lariat. Fun fun fun fun. (***1/2)
5. Zeus vs. Kento Miyahara – 2/12/2016
This was for the vacant Triple Crown Championship.
While this lacked the meat to make it a great match, this match worked so well in the broad strokes and was easy enough to watch that you have to call it at least “good.”
The story of the match was very, very simple. Zeus got control after a few minutes. He dominated 95% of the rest of the match. Miyahara was fighting back more and more until he finally finished the greatest man who ever lived with a strait jacket German.
This was fun, and the simple story was told effective. It was not the deepest match you’ll see, but it’s worth checking out. (***1/2)
4. Zeus vs. Yuji Okabayashi – 5/25/2016
ZEUS! Bow down to the king! Oh, this was the hossiest of hoss battles. It was a great example of two hosses hossing it up but pacing and timing everything well so that it never once felt like overkill. That is such a tough line to walk. They pulled it off though and worked a match where it progressively got more and more exciting and dramatic until Okabayashi finished Zeus cleanly (a miscarriage of justice if I ever saw one) with a top-rope splash. Everyone should watch this one. (***3/4)
3. Kengo Mashimo vs. Kento Miyahara – 4/9/2016
This was a 2016 Champion Carnival match.
On paper, a thirty-minute draw involving Kengo Mashimo sounds like the stuff that nightmares are made up of (ok, maybe only I have nightmares about being forced to watch super boring pro wrestlers). Mashimo just is not that compelling of a worker. He reminds me of what Hirooki Goto would be like if he was somehow less interesting and moved in a more awkward manner. I know, scary stuff. Like, The Babadook scary. (Was that film actually scary? That was me grasping at pop culture reference straws.)
Anyway, the match compensated for Mashimo’s deficiencies by telling a simple, yet compelling story. After a somewhat lengthy feeling-out process, they battled on the floor and in the crowd. That led to Miyahara accidentally giving a ring post a lariat. Mashimo saw the weakness and immediately proceeded to exploit for the duration of the match to maintain control over the Triple Crown champ.
Miyahara would sporadically have more and more success in his attempted comebacks. Mashimo just kept going straight back after the now-injured arm though, and that strategy prevented Miyahara from being able to stay on offense long enough to put Mashimo away.
I love these kinds of in-ring stories, and this one was executed very well. I would have preferred that they spent less time sitting in arm submissions and more time battling over those arm submissions. That’s the kind of nitpick though that does not bring a match down much at all. This was still great.
I also actually liked the draw as a finish here. The match was still perfectly satisfying, and it sets up a future title shot in a smart way while also opening up some ideas for how that future title match can unfold in the ring.
This was pretty much everything I want from a big heavyweight match in Japan. (****)
2. The Big Guns vs. Kento Miyahara & Jake Lee – 2/21/2016
This was for The Big Guns’ AJPW Tag Team Championship.
ZEUS is a big gun. The BODYGUARD is a big gun. Thus, Zeus and The Bodyguard are The Big Guns. They are the greatest tag team in the history of professional wrestling. They beat people up. They’re roided beyond belief. They’ve got terrible tattoos. They’re big. They’re guns. They’re everything you would want in a tag team.
They also had a fantastic match with Miyahara and Jake Lee. The story was simple. The Big Guns dominated. Lee and Miyahara survived as long as they could before trying to throw everything they had at them. The key to this being great though was that it did not really turn into a back-and-forth fest that felt like it went forever. The Big Guns took everything the challengers had until they finally were able to put them away. Just great stuff, and it will sadly get overlooked by most everyone. (****)
1. Kengo Mashimo vs. Kento Miyahara – 6/15/2016
This was for Miyahara’s Triple Crown Championship.
Kengo Mashimo proved in both of his matches with Miyahara in 2016 that he is clearly someone that needs to be taken seriously in the discussion of “great wrestlers.” His ability to deftly control a match comes off as nearly unmatched (especially among heavyweights in the major Japan promotions). His pacing, his in-ring strategy, and his ability to convey stakes without being obnoxious about it seems second to none.
In this match, he had a fantastic strategy. He basically waited out the more eager Miyahara knowing that a mistake would eventually come. Sure, he had to endure some offense from the champ, but he did not suffer too much damage. Miyahara eventually crashed, shoulder-first, into a turnbuckle post, and the game was on.
Mashimo tore after Miyahara’s arm in way that made it believable that Miyahara’s arm would not be crippled. It was simply a focused attack. Miyahara nailed this portion of the match.
Miyahara would of course find pockets to fight back. He kept the match competitive and made sure the match never felt monotone while he was being worked over.
The weakness of the match was definitely the closing stretch where Miyahara got a little obnoxious with not selling the arm. Your tolerance for it probably depends on how you viewed the arm work that led up to it.
For me, the arm work was not devastating enough to strain credulity that Miyahara could mostly work through the pain. Thus, this unfortunate lack of payoff merely prevented this match from being a MOTYC. Others may feel more strongly one way or another.
Regardless, this was a fantastic performance from Mashimo, and one of the better Japanese matches of the year. Miyahara won after a strait jacket German. (****)
