Puro Fury: NOAH Global League 2016 Final

NOAH Global League Final

 

November 23 2016

 

I’ve barely followed the Global League this year for two reasons. 1. Time constraints. There are too many promotions running too many shows. 2. NOAH has been actively bad recently. I am not keen on seeing more of it.

 

We’re in Korakuen Hall. 1313 for this show, which isn’t a bad number for NOAH, although naming Okada on an otherwise nothing show handily outdrew this.

 

Hitoshi Kumano vs. Alejandro Saez

Saez is hauling in those fat ‘I was in the Cruiserweight Classic’ paydays. He has a perfectly ok match with Kumano, who increasingly looks to have stalled in his development. It probably didn’t help him working the same opening match for two years only to graduate and find himself…in the opening match. Saez was in the Global League and actually won two matches. He adds another here, pinning Kumano with a flippydo. Kumano looked very deliberate, as if he was thinking hard about every spot, in this match. Saez seemed to be enjoying himself.

Final Rating: *3/4

 

Kenoh & Hajime Ohara vs. Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinari Ogawa

Everyone is a junior apart from Saito who must be 80lbs heavier than the next heaviest man in the match. Maybe even more. Officially Kenoh weighs 209lbs and Saito is 271lbs. He looks bigger. Ogawa claims to be 198lbs but he’s probably around 170lbs. Such is wrestling. Everyone lies about their weight (and height). The match is predictably bad until Kenoh goes on a kicking rampage. The rest of the match is heat on Ohara. Saito was in the Global League, he lost to everyone but Iizuka. Knowing his place on the NOAH totem pole has him downright depressed. Ohara does good work in the stretch, getting flash pins on Ogawa but Ogawa blocks the last one for the win. That’s a very unsatisfying result.

Final Rating: **

 

Suzuki-gun (Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Taichi & El Desperado) vs. Daisuke Harada, Atsushi Kotoge & Taiji Ishimori

Lots of very talented wrestlers in this match…and Taichi. Unfortunately Suzuki-gun won’t allow the match to breathe and there’s too much garbage on the floor. Kotoge is currently the junior champion so this is a match where they determine his next opponent. He’s already beaten Kanemaru twice so it’s not him and a friendly match with Harada happened on this tour. That leaves Desperado, who hasn’t been booked seriously for ages, Ishimori and Taichi. Naturally it’s Taichi who gets the pin, on Harada of all people. That means we’re getting Kotoge vs. Taichi as the final junior title match of the year. Mainly due to Taichi this match was nothing special.

Final Rating: **

 

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

Quiet Storm is actually getting larger. Where is he finding the space to pack muscle on top of muscle? His upper body is as densely populated as Singapore. I hope he changes his name to Loud Protein in 2017. Taniguchi could be a sneaky contender for ‘most improved’ in 2016 because he absolutely stunk at the start of it and now he’s bearable. Although that has little to do with in-ring and a lot to do with ditching a bad gimmick. In terms of actual ability he’s the fourth most important man in this match. I love Yone and Storm as a team because Yone is all about discos and afros and Storm is all about weights and raw meat. It’s a nice contrast. Go isn’t good with team work. He looks moderately disgusted with Taniguchi for existing and only comes to life when he’s having chop duels with Quiet Storm. His disappointment at not winning Global League, or even making the final, is palpable. And now he’s getting beaten up by a literal midget. Go casually hits the Go Flasher and Quiet Storm kicks out, to further piss him off. Go is forced to break out an extra lariat to get the pin and he looks thoroughly annoyed about it. This was actually pretty great, although that’s largely due to Quiet Storm. That’s where NOAH are right now.

Final Rating: ***1/2

 

Suzuki-gun (Takashi Sugiura & Takashi Iizuka) vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima & Kaito Kiyomiya

Kiyomiya was in Global League and got blanked. Iizuka was also a total failure. Sugiura contested his block, as did Nakajima on the other side. Nakajima is the GHC Champ, having gotten overly massively in New Japan, and took the strap from Sugiura. A secondary story is plucky young Kiyomiya standing up to the tyranny of Iizuka’s bullshit. It’d be a decent storyline if Iizuka wasn’t so goddamn terrible at everything. When Sugiura is involved the match quality shoots up and that includes Kiyomiya’s sequences. He gets to look doubly plucky for going after the former GHC Champion. Naturally Suzuki-gun cheat and Sugiura brutalises Kiyomiya for the win. This includes chair shotting him in the face and hitting a high angle release version of the Olympic Slam. Kiyomiya’s neck needs to retire already. An unfortunate downside to working the strongest of styles.

Final Rating: ***

 

GHC Tag Team Championship

Naomichi Marufuji & Toru Yano (c) vs. Killer Elite Squad

This is some goofy bullshit. Yano does his usual stuff and KES stumble around looking like a pair of clowns. Davey is getting worse at this style of wrestling in front of my very eyes. His work is looking more like old rubbish WWE stuff by the day. Archer has always worked WWE style, which is why I don’t like him, and this combined crap stinks up this match. The match is nearly 18 minutes long and it’s quite dreadful. Considering how great Marufuji looked in his NJPW guest spots it’s pretty embarrassing that his home promotion books him to look this bad. He’s surrounded by mediocrity and, his chops aside, the work is pedestrian. I’m sure all these lads will look at themselves and say this wasn’t their best work. Once Marufuji knows he can’t salvage the match he doesn’t bother trying. He’s still the best worker on show but he hits his spots and gets out of there. His sneaky kicks are a personal favourite. KES dominate with their size and the Killer Bomb puts Yano away for KES to get their second GHC title. The first run lasted 472 days. I didn’t get Marufuji & Yano being the team to unseat them first time around. Now it’s someone else’s mission (Shiozaki & Taniguchi get first dibs). This wasn’t very good.

Final Rating: *1/2

 

Global League Final

Minoru Suzuki vs. Masa Kitamiya

This is a story that’s been catching fire recently in NOAH. Kitamiya wants to beat MiSu so badly. Now he has a grand stage on which to do so after an unlikely block victory. This match suffers from the usual NOAH main event problems, slow build, overlong and lacking fire in the early going. If Kitamiya was legitimately coming after Suzuki, like this was a shoot, he’d start hard and fast and look to gain a foothold. That barely happens. Plus Suzuki must surely want to put this punk fucking kid in his place and that seems to involve lying around on the floor and chatting with Suzuki-gun. To quote Simon Pegg in Spaced; “skip to the end”. Except I can’t because I’m watching this in a reviewing capacity. The brawling around the ring actually gets pretty fiery because Suzuki is a dick and gets into it with the NOAH seconds, out here to ensure a clean contest. You have to admire the mentality of looking for a fight, rather than noticing the amassing of forces aiming to prevent one. Minoru Suzuki would have shot Archduke Ferdinand without even thinking about it. The in-ring gets a bit fiery down the stretch too as Kitamiya stands up to his abuser and they trade on forearms like the fate of the world depends on it. The match is still too long and Kitamiya spends far too long trying to get MiSu to submit to a leglock, which is never happening. KES run in, followed by Nakajima for the save. I could have lived without that, and all the Suzuki-gun bullshit that has been happening over the previous two years. Kitamiya’s comeback after this is straight fire, including a swank piledriver that MiSu just barely kicks out of. It should be a career making match for Kitamiya but the distractions and the crawling pace hurt that story. It’s a shame because when the match is operating at it’s peak, it’s truly great. Like when MiSu dropkicks Kitamiya in the face to cut off his comeback. Or MiSu just shutting down Kitamiya’s big final comeback with slaps so stiff that they cause a nosebleed. That stuff is magic but it’s just too sparse. The match is overbooked and so, so long. MiSu takes it with a Gotch Piledriver and goes on to face Nakajima for the title. This had great moments but never quite added up to a great match. Enough for a solid rating.

Final Rating: ***3/4

 

Post Match: Suzuki kicks the trophy over because who the fuck needs trophies when you’re Minoru Suzuki. You’re already a walking legend. Then he throws the three million yen cheque away and lays out the official challenge to Katsuhiko Nakajima. One tiny wrinkle; whoever loses is gone from NOAH. Is this the end for Suzuki-gun? Or, perhaps more shockingly, is Nakajima about to jump to New Japan?

 

 

6.0

The final score: review Average

The 411

This felt like a bad show. Some of the undercard was completely worthless. That said several of the bigger matches did deliver. The main event may have been a drawn out version of what a good match should be but it did deliver in a few sequences. If you skip to the last five minutes or so you’ll see the peak of the match. Plus two matches (Go, Taniguchi vs. Storm, Yone and Takashi’s vs. Nakajima, Kiyomiya) genuinely over-delivered. Watch those three matches and you’ll have a nice time. Watch this entire show and you’ll post a Twitter poll asking “do you give a shit about Pro Wrestling NOAH?” in the hopes of people responding in the negative and me ditching it from my regular running order in 2017.