All Japan 8/16: Go, Stop Being Gobashi Already!

Summer Impact 2014

(2014/8/16)

1.      Yohei Nakajima vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru

Similar to Yohei’s great match against Kotaro, and almost as good, mind you. Yohei’s ongoing underdog arc is an awesome watch and one of my favorite angles in the business today, All Japan’s got themselves a potential future Junior ace in him.

****

2.      SUSHI & Masao Inoue vs. Masanobu Fuchi & Soma Takao

Harmless fun, an easy-going match.

**1/2

3.      Hideki Suzuki & Brother YASSHI vs. Atsushi Aoki & Hikaru Sato

Good match with good performances from everyone involved. YASSHI is a relative unknown to me, I know he’s a famed VOODOO MURDERS member and big mouthpiece, and he looked rock solid here, nice contrast to ground-based style from the other three guys.

***1/2

4.      KENSO vs. Zeus

There’s no finishing run of this match due to technical difficulties, which is a fucking TRAVESTY considering it’s a great fucking contest. Zeus got busted wide open pretty damn nasty, there was juice all over him, it added some tremendous heat to the match, good shit all over the place and then the darkness happened, fuck me sideways. I hope we catch a replay soon enough.

N/A (but somewhere between *** and ****, mos def)

5.      All Asia Tag Team Championship: Kento Miyahara & Kotaro Suzuki vs. Shigehiro Irie & Keisuke Ishii ©

Fantastic tag match where everyone shined, but if I really had to, I’d pick Ishii the MVP, poor prick worked turbo balls-to-walls. Words are futile here, just sit, watch and enjoy some marvelous tag team wrestling.

****1/2

6.      Jun Akiyama & Akebono vs. Joe Doering & Takao Omori

Short and fun sprint with the promising Akebono/Doering chemistry, liked this a lot, Bono has lost some weight, looking better now, hope he stays healthy.

***1/2

7.      Go Shiozaki vs. Suwama

Go is such a talented pro-wrestler, both as an athlete and as a thinker, it’s more than obvious, but I don’t know what it is inside him that makes him look like a knock-off fool sometimes, with all them tributes to his mentor Kobashi via certain mannerisms and moves he does. I do realize he feels the need to pay some tributes to his sensei, but jeez, it makes him look like a total dork more than often. Unfortunately, this is one of those aforementioned cases where he felt it’d make for a good performance to be Gobashi again, and he failed, it brought the match down. Suwama was awesome, of course, what else is new?

**3/4