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The Navigation Log 01.04.09: All Asia Tag Team Tournament and Doi’s Big Win

January 4, 2009 | Posted by Matt Short

Welcome to 2009 folks. That means we’ve got 4 years until 2012 when the world is supposed to end. If you believe that sort of thing. Otherwise, what’s there to worry about? Nothing, that’s what. I do find it hilarious though that the closest thing we had to a New Year’s doomsday scenario was the Zune apocalypse from this year. And even that was fixed in about a day. The main point though, is that if the end of the world was coming on a New Year’s it’d be so predictable that it would be boring as hell. I like my Armageddons flashy and unexpected.

Onto the Navigation Log!

All Japan Crowns 81st All Asia Tag Champs
Announced towards the end of 2008, All Japan has kicked off 2009 with a tournament to crown the 81st All Asia Tag Team Champions in a two day tournament. Unlike the usual round robin-style tournaments that are popular in Japan, All Japan is opting for a quick event to crown new champions. The reactivation of the oldest title in Japanese wrestling history means a lot for the company , if only just for the history behind the belts.

The opening round match-ups and teams were as follows

-Masanobu Fuchi & Osamu Nishimura vs. Taiyo Kea & MAZADA
-Minoru Suzuki & NOSAWA Rongai vs. Hate & “brother” YASSHI
-Satoshi Kojima & KAI vs. Suwama & Ryuji Hijikata
-Keiji Muto & Kaz Hayashi vs. Shuji Kondo & Ryota Hama

The advancing teams into the semi-finals were Fuchi & Nishimura, Suzuki & NOSAWA, Kojima & KAI, and Muto & Hayashi. The match-ups for day two were as follows:

-Satoshi Kojima & KAI vs. Masanobu Fuchi & Osamu Nishimura
-Keiji Muto & Kaz Hayashi vs. Minoru Suzuki & NOSAWA Rongai

The finals ended up being a contest between Tokyo GURENTAI’s Suzuki & NOSAWA against Team Old School of Fuchi & Nishimura. When the dust settled the 81st All Asia Tag Team Champions were Minoru Suzuki & NOSAWA Rongai. All of a sudden, Tokyo GURENTAI is holding a lot more gold around All Japan. Suzuki is already one half of the All Japan World Tag Team Champions with Taiyo Kea and now he’s holding the All Asia belts with Rongai. It’s another honor to add to Suzuki’s impressive list of titles and a good boost for NOSAWA as well. Now that their newest temporary member, Yoshihiro Takayama has arrive and is gunning for The Great Muta and the Triple Crown, GURENTAI is becoming a dangerous force to reckon with in All Japan. They seem poised to make 2009 their year and intend to tear a rampage through the company.

Dragon Gate: Doi 555 For the Dream Gate!
Dragon Gate’s final show of the year ended with quite the shocker. Shingo Takagi was to defend the Open the Dream Gate title against the 2008 King of Gate, Naruki Doi. I’ll admit, I didn’t like Doi’s chances in this one. While he had an impressive 2008, his singles exploits weren’t quite as strong as his 2008 resume in tag team competition. However, he earned his shot by winning King of Gate and he more than made the most of it by becoming the 10th Open the Dream Gate Champion.

This surprised me because I really thought that they were going to be giving Shingo a longer run. The odds of him beating CIMA’s run with the title were rather slim, but I expected him to at least last in 2009. He spent the better part of his reign as a lone wolf champion, being expelled from Real Hazard after winning the belt and having a short stint in Typhoon before his attempts to usurp leadership and banish Susumu Yokosuka were met with resistance. Just as Shingo was poised to form a new group with Taku Iwasa and Akira Tozawa, he now loses the title to Doi. In a more positive spin on that though, it does put more focus on Shingo’s new stable rather than Shingo the unpredictable loner. Which will end up being better for Iwasa and Tozawa in the long run.

For Doi, this is obviously huge. He had long been considered one of the top young stars of Dragon Gate and has not finally realized his potential. His star has been on the rise since he broke away from the Blood Generation stable and founded the Muscle Outlaw’z. He’s had an impressive track record in the promotion, as a member of New M2K and Final M2K, Blood Generation, Muscle Outlaw’z, and now World-1. He was the company’s first Open the Brave Gate champion, and a member of the first Open the Twin Gate Championship team with Masato Yoshino. He’s represented Dragon Gate all over the world in companies like ROH and TNA. It all culminates in winning the Open the Dream Gate title as he becomes the first man to hold all the titles in the company (Dream, Brave, Triangle, and Twin).

Now to contrast Doi’s great success, Typhoon’s night was not quite as good. They were involved in a three-way six-man tag match, that pitted the trio of Ryo Saito, Susumu Yokosuka, & Dragon Kid took on Gamma, Genki Horiguchi, & Yasushi Kanda from Real Hazard and BxB Hulk, Naoki Tanisaki, & m.c.KZ of World-1. The catch was that the losing team would be forced to have its entire unit disbanded. Typhoon was that unlucky group as they dropped two straight falls in the match to have what was once the super group of Dragon Gate disband forever.

This was actually something that has been a long-time coming. Typhoon was a group that was created out of necessity when the Muscle Outlaw’z broke away from Blood Generation and DoFixer was imploded from the inside by Genki Horiguchi’s betrayal as well. Only a collection of the best of Dragon Gate united could stand up to the super heel group. CIMA, Ryo Saito, Susumu Yokosuka, Dragon Kid, and Anthony W. Mori (occasionally Matt Sydal and later PAC) represented the best. But once Muscle Outlaw’z gave way to Real Hazard, Typhoon’s purpose began to fade. World-1 became RH’s main protagonists. With their leader CIMA spending the better part of 2008 out with a neck injury, the group had little direction. World-1 currently represents the best young stars of the company while Typhoon is filled with men who were stars in the years prior. A change in direction was definitely needed for the members of Typhoon and with the prospects of a new unit shuffle on the horizon, the company will have some exciting times in early 2009.

The Weekly Puro
Judging from the comments to last week’s collection of my favorite matches of 2008, I missed one match that everyone claimed was a must-see. Always being one to check out recommendations from outside sources I watched it and was pretty impressed. This match comes from Big Japan, a company that sometimes gets an unfair shake because of its focus on deathmatches. Though even their deathmatches are leagues ahead of some things that you find on the US independent circuit, they have their fair share of strong wrestling too. This match is proof of that.

BJW Tag Team Titles: Kengo Mashimo & Madoka vs. MEN’s Club (MEN’s Teioh & Shinobu)

Quick News
-Kenny Omega is returning to DDT this month for a month-long tour with the company. His first appearance in DDT was met with positive reviews, so his return has high expectations.

-Don’t forget, Wrestle Kingdom III is today. We’ll have full coverage of it next week, but here is the card once again, just to keep it fresh in everyone’s mind:

-Mitsuhide Hirasawa, Kazuchika Okada & Nobuo Yoshihashi vs. Milano Collection AT, Minoru & Taichi Ishikari
-Wrestle Kingdom Grand Opening VIENTO DORADO: Mistico, Ryusuke Taguchi & Prince Devitt vs. Averno, Jado & Gedo
-Jushin Thunder Liger 20th Anniversary Match: Jushin Thunder Liger & Takuma Sano vs. Wataru Inoue & Koji Kanemoto
-IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title ~Tread on!!~: NO LIMIT (Yujiro & Tetsuya Naito) (c) vs. Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin)
-IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title ~Ballistic interception~: Low Ki (c) vs. Tiger Mask
-Fighting Holdings Competition: Riki Choshu, Masahiro Chono, Kurt Angle & Kevin Nash vs. Giant Bernard, Takashi Iizuka, Tomohiro Ishii & Karl Anderson
-World Heavyweight Title ~Crusade for Justice~: Yuji Nagata (c) vs. Masato Tanaka
-New Japan vs. NOAH Battle Tendencies ~the invasion~: Manabu Nakanishi vs. Jun Akiyama
-IWGP Tag Team Title – 3WAY Hardcore Match ~Three correct answers~: Togi Makabe & Toru Yano (c) vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima vs. Team 3D (Brother Ray & Brother Devon)
-New Japan vs. NOAH Battle Tendencies ~the encounter~: Shinsuke Nakamura & Hirooki Goto vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Takashi Sugiura
-IWGP Heavyweight Title: Keiji Muto (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

At Home
Looking back at Raw this past week, I have a hard time gauging what we saw in the main event of that show. The Fatal Four-Way Elimination match had an interesting angle to it with the Shawn Michaels/JBL partnership, but it was a good, solid match for what we got. But then it came to HBK vs. JBL and we saw exactly how far this whole employment angle is supposed to go. It wasn’t exactly the most positive way to end 2008, but it sure as hell was dramatic. The sight of Michaels begging JBL not to make him lie down was pretty amazing stuff. People say that wrestling is getting too predictable, and while the outcome of the match could have been seen coming a mile away, this was a case where I just had no idea if Michaels was actually going to lie down or not. All around a great show. So I was incredibly disappointed with ECW the following night. It was easily the worst edition of that show that they’ve put on in months and not really a positive way for the WWE to end the year. Smackdown was marginally better, but the Kizarny debut… well I heard more people trying to get behind MVP than I did for the new guy. Lastly, I want to talk about Mr. Kennedy. I hope the guy comes back to the ring soon, because he is getting on my last nerve with his current promos and schilling of Behind Enemy Lines. Part of it is because I just don’t care about his movie and I will never see it. But these babyface promos he’s been doing are way too forced and they flat out suck. The guy either needs to be a heel or be less of a clean cut face. He also needs to get back in the ring so he’s not doing JUST these horrible interviews.

Short Takes
-CHIKARA will be running their first ever ladder match in January at their season opener. Vin Gerard vs. Jimmy Olsen looks good on paper, but will they bring something new to the ladder match concept or will be a retread?

-Part of me wishes they hadn’t jobbed Hurricane Helms to Kozlov this past week, but I figure they’re just out of guys for the Russian to squash.

-On the Vickie Guerrero nude photo shoot. Um… are they really going to do this? Are they really going to try to do an angle where she’s trying to get into Playboy? God damn this sucks.

-I really dug Impact this week. It was nice seeing some of the better matches of the year along with some commentary from the wrestlers. And the tag title match was pretty damn awesome too.

That’s all for this week folks. Next week we’ll have the results of New Japan’s Wrestle Kingdom III show to report on, as well as whatever wackiness goes on during the week. Until then, peace!

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Matt Short

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