The Vile One’s Dungeon: NOAH Autumn Navigation 2006 DVD review (US version)

Once again I’m a complete and utter novice with puro.

First some back-story as far as I know. So Marufuji surprises everyone and silences the critics and nay-sayers on September 9th, 2006 when he defeats the reigning GHC Heavyweight champion, Jun Akiyama, and becomes NOAH’s first worker to win all five of their titles. Marufuji would then cement his status early in his title reign when it’s announced less than a week later that he would be the first GHC Heavyweight champion ever to take the title to US soil and defend it at a non-NOAH wrestling show in the US on night two of Ring of Honor’s Glory By Honor V.

This was also a bit of a controversial decision for puro fans. People were expecting Marufuji’s first title defense to be against his teacher, Misawa in Japan. Before this announcement some snobby and elitist fans scoffed at the mere idea of NOAH allowing their title to be defended at some crummy gym in front of a few hundred people. Never would NOAH allow their main title to be sullied in such a way. Well Marufuji decided his match against Nigel McGuinness should be a title match, and it happened. Marufuji defended the title a week after winning it in the US against NOAH regular, Nigel McGuinness, in a fantastic match that got great reviews all across the board.

It was then announced that his next title defense would be against his longtime rival and former tag partner, KENTA. This was also a controversial decision. People were expecting this to happen much later and thought this was being given away too early. Others saw it as an experiment for Marufuji and KENTA, two of the top workers in NOAH, and their two top junior heavyweights by far. Now they were competing in the heavyweight division for the heavyweight title, a bold move that had never happened before in NOAH. The experiment I suppose was to see how well the junior heavyweight turned GHC title competitors would draw at a Budokan show that they were headlining.

Unfortunately the attendance for this show wasn’t all that great (only about 11,000 in attendance with only around 7,000 paid or so I hear). I think to the defense of Marufuji/KENTA, it was somewhat unfair to expect a huge draw out of them this early into Marufuji’s title reign and on a card that wasn’t all too desirable looking otherwise. Marufuji could’ve easily been built up more as a champion with some wins over some other credible heavyweights before the big showdown with KENTA. Still we got this match and it’s considered as a MOTYC by many, and even higher ranked than their other great match early in 2006 for the GHC Jr. Heavyweight title when KENTA was defending.

This was the English DVD for the show with English commentary as well as clipped entrances. All the matches are shown in full.

Now onto the show. Live from the Budokan Hall in Tokyo, Japan. The English commentary is once again by Ken Hirayama and Yamaguchi-san. Ken and Wally still aren’t particularly good, but at least they are easy to ignore. I wish NOAH would hire out Dave Prazak or someone like that to do the commentary for these shows. Their commentary really isn’t working. Also we should at least have the option for the original commentary like the NJPW matches that have been on WWE DVD’s.

Mitsuo Momota and Atsushi Aoki vs. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi and Tsutomu Hirayamagi
Kikuchi’s ribs are taped up after injuring them earlier in the tour. This match is actually a pretty dull tag and didn’t do too much for me. Seeing Momota and Kikuchi stiff each other with the forearm strikes was pretty fun though. Kikuchi eventually gets the pinfall on the great Momota after a backslide.
Winner(s): Kikuchi and Hirayamagi in 9:46.

Yoshinobu Kanemaru and SUWA vs. Ricky Marvin and Taiji Ishimori
Well this was a fun little junior heavyweight match. I think Marvin is very polished and impressive. Ishimori is also impressive and I think has a lot of potential. I don’t think this will be his breakout year but I think he will continue to get better and will eventually hold the single or tag jr. belts. I’ve recently discovered SUWA and I love his work, and he has a very well defined heel character. Great finish with SUWA hitting his running FFF on Ishimori. Not great shakes or anything, but a fun little match and I enjoyed it.
Winner(s): SUWA and Kanemaru in 10:33.

Tamon Honda and Shuhei Taniguchi vs. 2 Cold Scorpio and Murat Bosporous
The subtitle to the tour is “European Catch” and Bosporus is one of the numerous European workers competing in the tour. Bosporous is also from Germany. Another short and rather dull tag team match that didn’t really set me afire, though I really like Honda and Scorpio. Bosporous busting out a standing moonsault for a guy of his size and shape was pretty impressive though. Honda gets the win after hitting Bosporus with a nasty backdrop suplex.
Honda and Taniguchi in 12:10.

Masao Inoue, Kishin Kawabata, and Ippei Ota vs. Nigel McGuinness, Doug Williams, and Ares
I’m not familiar with Ares work at all, but it seems like he’s jacking Hero and Claudio Castagnoli some. Unless those guys were jacking Ares, I apologize. Nigel actually looked the most impressive in this match and was really letting his charisma shine doing all sorts of fun stuff and playing to the crowd really well. Ares gets the win for the Englanders after nailing Ota with a nice looking tiger driver. Another decent tag but once again, nothing fabulous.
McGuinness, Doug Williams, and Ares in 16:27.

Akira Taue and Kentaro Shiga vs. Akitoshi Saito and Go Shiozaki
Shiga and his “punchu” coalition are awesome. This one actually kind of put me to sleep a little so I don’t remember too much of it. Shiga gets the pinfall on Go with an ab stretch cradle.
Taue and Shiga in 11:43.

Takeshi Morishima and Mohammed Yone vs. Jun Akiyama and Makoto Hashi
Honestly I don’t really care for the Yone/Morishima team. I like the Morishima/Rikioh team a hell of a lot more. They just seem to match up together better. I do like the Akiyama/Hashi team though. Another kind of there tag match. Yone picks up the win after a flying guillotine leg drop on Hashi.
Morishima and Yone in 14:28.

Takayama, Suguira, and Takuma Sano vs. Misawa, Yoshinari Ogawa, and Kotaro Suzuki
Solid six man tag match. I see Sugiura growing into the heavyweight role quite well which is where NOAH seems to be going with him. Really liked Suzuki a lot in this match as the plucky high flyer of the team. Misawa just seemed there to be there more than to really wrestle as Ogawa and Suzuki seemed to be carrying most of the weight of the team. After getting the ring isolated, Sano hits Suzuki with a northern lights bomb for the pinfall and the win.
Takayama, Sugiura, and Sano in 25:57.

GHC Heavyweight Title Match: Naomichi Marufuji(c) vs. KENTA
A long awaited rematch from January, this time for the GHC Heavyweight Title instead of the GHC Jr. Heavyweight title. Early tension and minutes of this match are great. KENTA changed his hair style which the fan-girls must’ve gone nuts over. You can tell Marufuji is trying to avoid KENTA’s kicks like death. This is really not just about winning the title, but KENTA proving once and for all that he’s the better guy, hell he was freaking dominating the jr. heavyweight division while Marufuji kind of walked into the heavyweight division. Once the match gets going for a while is when things start to get really sick. KENTA and ‘Fuji don’t hold back on each other at all. Fuji starts going after the shoulder and neck area of KENTA, and KENTA just brutalizes ‘Fuji’s abdomen with his kicks.

Sometimes in wrestling matches they’ll tease a lot of spots that never actually hit, while in this match they do them. The German suplex off the ramp, the falcon arrow off the ring apron, just really nasty. But it really feels like this rivalry has built up to a point where they just won’t hold back anymore and will do any and everything possible to win. At one point Marufuji does a top rope springboard Asai moonsault onto KENTA in the crowd while his neck and throat area directly hits the steel guard rail. Immediately after you can see a nasty bruise and mark on ‘Fuji’s neck, don’t know how he could still keep going after a hit like that. They start releasing the finishers close to the end. Marufuji survives the Go 2 Sleep and the busaiku kicks. KENTA kicks out of the Shiranui’s. They do fudge up a move, but they at least don’t try to repeat the spot. To me, botching moves and then re-doing the move you botched just exposes it even more because in this type of match that goes on this long you can kind of understand that they would make some mistakes kayfabe-wise. After a rush of “FIGHTING SPIRIT” and trading back and forth with the suplexes, Marufuji hits KENTA with the Pole Shift and that keeps him down for 3 after over 35 minutes of brutal awesomeness. Hell of a freaking match.
Naomichi Marufuji retains the GHC Heavyweight Title in 35:34.

The DVD closes with a little bonus 5 minute interview with KENTA in Japanese with English subtitles. KENTA talks about getting into wrestling and who he grew up watching. He also talked about his current goals in wrestling and creating a fanbase in the US. It was good but short, and I’d like to see future releases have more features like this or even some more bonus matches like the KENTA/Danielson match on the 12/10 Budokan show DVD.

The 411: Overall, I'd say this is the definition of a "one match show". I wouldn't call anything really horrible, but there's really only one reason to watch this show and that's KENTA/Marufuji. Unlike the last Budokan show before this one which I felt was a little more well rounded and at least gave us two really exceptional and hot tag team matches, a decent singles bout to open it up, and along with a great GHC title main event. At the very least, try to seek out KENTA/Marufuji which totally rocks the camel's ass.

Final Score:  7.5   [ Good ]