The Navigation Log 6.01.08: Great Voyage, BOSJ, and WORLD-1

So Vince MacMahon is going to be giving away ONE MILLION DOLLARS of his own money on Raw. I don’t think I’ve seen an announcement met with quite as much skepticism as this and while I’m usually open to any angle at the start, this is pretty sad. For one, we were promised an “epic” announcement. That was the first mistake. Anything short of reforming WCW or buying TNA was going to be pathetic. It was a pretty dull way to end Raw too. But now we get to speculate about what we would all do with a million bucks. Me? I would do nothing besides avoid getting one of those shitty office jobs that my generation seems doomed to. Plus, hookers and blow.

Onto the Navigation Log!

NOAH Happenings
While the past couple of weeks have been jam-packed with title bouts and a title switch, things seemed to slow down quite a bit in the Northern Navigation. But while the action has cooled down, some big matches are being set for the finale of the tour in Hokkaido.
First, KENTA & Taiji Ishimori will have their first defense of the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles as they face former champs Ricky Marvin & Kotaro Suzuki. Marvin & Suzuki brought a lot of prestige to the titles in 2007, winning them from The Briscoes at the start of the year and making many successful defenses against other NOAH teams as well as outside talent from Dragon Gate. They only lost the titles when an injury to Marvin in the middle of a match against Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino forced the switch. KENTA & Ishimori have a tough challenge right out of the gate and a big win against a team like the former champions would give a lot of credibility to them. I wouldn’t mind Marvin & Suzuki taking the belts again though. They’re an amazing team and they really elevated the belts. They gave people something to really care about when most of NOAH was in a holding pattern in 2007.

Three singles matches have also been set for the show, though the pairings haven’t been finalized yet. Six wrestlers, Takeshi Morishima, Naomichi Marufuji, Akitoshi Saito, Jun Akiyama, Takeshi Rikio, and Muhammad Yone, will have their names put into a drawing and paired up randomly. Neat, huh? We could get some interesting matches out of this, but I’m really hoping for an Akiyama vs. Marufuji rematch. Their GHC Title match was quite good and I’d love to see them go at it again. Saito vs. Morishima could be another potentially good match.

The full card for the GREAT VOYAGE show in Yokohama is finally set.

-Ricky Marvin vs. Akihiko Ito
– Junji Izumida and Taiji Ishimori vs. Takashi Okita and Kento Miyahara
– Kishin Kawabata, Kentaro Shiga and Masao Inoue vs. Tamon Honda, Tsuyoshi Kikuchi and Mitsuo Momota
-Akira Taue and Mohammed Yone vs. Akitoshi Saito and Kazushi Miyamoto
-Guest Referee, Satoru Asako: Mitsuharu Misawa and Ippei Ota vs. Naomichi Marufuji and Kotaro Suzuki
-Atsushi Aoki 5th Trial Series Match: Atsushi Aoki vs. Yoshinari Ogawa
-Jun Akiyama, Takeshi Rikio and Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, Takuma Sano and Genba Hirayanagi
-Kenta Kobashi and KENTA vs. Kensuke Sasaki and Katsuhiko Nakajima
-GHC Heavyweight Title: Takeshi Morishima vs. Takashi Sugiura

Not a bad line-up at all. Satoru Asako is a former wrestler who worked in All Japan and NOAH, but was never really able to break out. Injuries forced him into retirement, yet he continues to work in the NOAH office. I can’t say I know much about him, but he’ll be work as ref for the tag match between Misawa & Ota vs. Marufuji & Suzuki. NOAH is also going to get a taste of Kobashi vs. Sasaki again when they team with their protégés in the Kobashi & KENTA vs. Sasaki & Nakajima match. That’s gotten a lot of attention and many suspect it was put onto the card to help boost sales on the off chance that Morishima vs. Sugiura doesn’t draw well as a main event. Between Morishima’s first defense, Aoki’s next trial series match, this show looks very strong.

Best of Super Juniors Kicks Off
New Japan’s legendary annual junior heavyweight tournament officially kicked off with some surprising results right out of the gate. Easily the biggest upset of the night came when TNA’s Jimmy Rave beat legend AKIRA in the opening bout of the tournament. Can we say that this qualifies as the biggest win of Rave’s career? Tiger Mask handily beat the youngster Tetsuya Naito, but the final bout saw yet another surprise. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion Wataru Inoue was beaten by the former champion Ryusuke Taguchi. While there’s a lot more of this tournament to go, Rave and Tiger Mask are tied in the B Block with two points each, while Taguchi leads the pack in Block A.

It’s hard not to be surprised by Jimmy Rave’s win. He’s never been considered a top tier wrestler and there were plenty of people surprised that TNA sent him to wrestle in BOSJ. But who knows, maybe this is a chance for Rave to really better himself. He’s already been shown to be a threat in the tournament with this first win and could go far. I’ve got no real favorite myself in this. It’s impossible for me to sort out these huge round robin tournaments until they’re a couple of weeks in.

All Japan
The company had a big show in Kobe last weekend with three big matches lined up. First, Joe Doering met with Voodoo Murders member ZODIAC in a Hair vs. Mask match. ZODIAC had been beating Doering at every turn and demanded that the hair and masks be on the line in this bout. Unfortunately for him, Doering won this time and won ZODIAC’s mask. The man under the hood is better known to North American fans as Aaron Aguilera, who wrestled as Jesus in WWE and in Wrestling Society X on MTV. On the same show, Taiyo Kei & Minoru Suzuki became the number one contenders to the AJPW Tag Team Titles with a win over Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima. They’ll challenge Joe Doering & Keiji Muto at the end of June for the belts. Lastly, Ryuji Hijikata had a successful first defense of his AJPW Jr. Heavyweight Title against Kaz Hayashi.

Hijikata’s next defense will also be at the end of the month, when he defends against El Samurai, who will be some stiff competition for the young champion. Meanwhile, new Triple Crown Champion Suwama will have his first title defense against Osamu Nishimura on the same show. Nishimura has had Suwama’s number for awhile now, but with the title on the line the champion has vowed to now be beaten. He is apparently studying tapes of the MUGA style of wrestling that Nishimura is famous for.

Enter WORLD-1
Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino officially named their new faction comprised of themselves, BxB Hulk, Naoki Tanisaki, and m.c.KZ. They will be known collectively as WORLD-1 and their colors will apparently be gold, silver, and white. The purpose of this unit is to be a super face stable like Typhoon, but focus more on young stars. This is a great idea as far as I’m concerned because the guys in this stable are very deserving of being pushed. After the WORLD-1 coming out party, BxB Hulk has issued a challenge for the Open the Dream Gate. At the same time Shingo Takagi issued a challenge as well. It’s easy to see where this is headed. More than likely we’ll get a match between the two with the winner going after CIMA for the title. A Takagi vs. Hulk match would be perfect considering how Hulk was dumped by Shingo.

Elsewhere in Dragon Gate Magnitude Kishiwada returned, but this time as a face to team with Don Fuji and Masaaki Mochizuki. They’re likely to form a team to challenge for the Open the Triangle Gate titles, but damn if I’m not disappointed in Kishiwada turning face. He’s an awesome heel, though I understand that he needs to transition a bit from his role in Muscle Outlaw’z to whatever he’ll be doing next.

At Home
This can be seen as more continuation of regular Japan coverage, but TNA might have a winner on their hands with the World X-Cup this year. And I credit this with a couple factors. First is Doug Williams who is probably one of the best in England right now (keep in mind I’ve got a limited idea of the wrestling scene in England). Williams is a great wrestler and sports one of my absolute favorite finishers in wrestling, the Chaos Theory.

He’ll be heading up Team International along with himself, Shawn Davari, Alex Koslov, and Tyson Dux. I’m however much more stoked about Team Japan, as they’ve put together a nice quartet of stars for this. First, Milano Collection A.T. will be back in the U.S. and bringing along Taichi Ishikari from New Japan. Dragon Gate will also be represented by Speed Muscle of Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino. That pair right there is cause for celebration. TNA, don’t screw this one up and give us Speed Muscle vs. Motor City Machine Guns. Oh please, oh please, oh please. It’s also interesting for the Italian Connection reunion of Milano and Yoshino being possible.

One Night Stand is tonight! Or this evening! Or however you might choose to say describe the time of day. I really like this card, and while the card is stuffed with gimmick matches (something TNA is accused of doing too much) this is the reason that it works. Better than Lockdown, in my opinion. For one thing, every match has a different stipulation. With Lockdown you have extra stipulations on top of the cage match which can come off as unnecessary. And for the most part all of these matches require different ways of finishing the match. Thus, more varying types of endings. The truth of the matter though is that Lockdown was a really good PPV this year, so it might not be the best example ever. I think it’ll be a fine show tonight and be honest, who doesn’t love a good hardcore match?

Short Takes
-If it comes down to Big Show vs. Kane after One Night Stand it might be better than their last singles match. They might be more motivated this time around. Whatever happens, we get a chance to see a title change hands on TV since the ECW Title usually gets moved around on TV.

-Some might consider that last point to be a bad thing. I, however love seeing title changes on free TV.

-Ted DiBiase Jr. looks like he bulked up since the time I last saw him in NOAH. I hope he’s improved his wrestling a bit because he really didn’t look that impressive. More average than anything else.

-Are the Edgeheads ever going to do something other than get beat on? I really want to like them, but they’re treated as such jobbers it’s impossible to take them seriously.

-One of the most annoying things ever about enjoying anything Japanese, wrestling or otherwise, is douchebags throwing around random Japanese phrases. Hell, I’ve studied the language for four years and I don’t do that. If you see someone doing that in a non-ironic way or if they aren’t Japanese themselves you tell them to go to hell.

That’s all for this week. More of the same will happen right here next week. Until then, peace!