Summer
Impact 2014
(2014/8/30)
1. SUSHI
vs. Yohei Nakajima
By
far the best SUSHI match I’ve ever seen, strong storytelling and action all
around. This current Yohei Nakajima arc is very enjoyable, it’s always fun to
witness someone’s road to recognition and growth as a pro-wrestler.
***3/4
2. Masashi
Aoyagi & Ryuji Hijikata vs. Masanobu Fuchi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru
Aoyagi
is an old karate dude, and considering that even older Fuchi stood on the other
side, I thought this match would be somewhat comedy heavy, but no, they worked
a “proper” match instead, and I have to say it was such a pleasant surprise,
shockingly good, especially with Kanemaru and Hijikata in there.
***
3. KO-D 6-Man Tag Team Championship:
Dark Kingdom (KENSO, Mitsuya Nagai, Kengo Mashimo) vs. Team Drift (Shigehiro
Irie, Keisuke Ishii, Soma Takao) ©
The
DK trio arrived in a huge ass limo, nice touch from KENSO there. The match was
fine, done by-the-book with a nice FIP workover on Takao and hot tag on Irie,
things were going smashing. But then Mashimo’s turn happened, and it was random
as fuck, taking away from the match. In the end, it’s still a good shit but
could’ve been borderline great.
***
4. Zeus
& Brother YASSHI vs. Suwama & Hikaru Sato
Decent
match, not good. Not that anyone was bad, it’s just that no one stood out, and
the lack of heat hurt things. Suwama/Zeus looks like a promising match for down
the road.
**3/4
5. AJPW World Jr. Heavyweight Championship:
Kotaro Suzuki vs. Atsushi Aoki ©
Totally
untypical Junior match, especially for modern puro standards. There was a
plethora of heavyweight inspired struggle, with shoot style admixtures. Good
shit right there, borderline great.
***3/4
6. AJPW World Tag Team Championship:
Go Shiozaki & Kento Miyahara vs. Burning Wild (Jun Akiyama & Takao
Omori) ©
Words
cannot do this justice. Phenomenal tag match with a perfect King’s Road
structure, it had a little bit of everything: old grudges, new grudges, a young
promising underdog and his rough, painful road to glory, heavy smacks, lethal
head-dropping and spine-bending throws, impeccable timing… Glorious stuff,
comparable to the good shit from them old days.
****1/2
7. AJPW Triple Crown Championship:
Akebono vs. Joe Doering ©
Akebono’s
had three good TC defenses earlier in the year when he was the champion (Omori,
Shiozaki, Miyahara), he had to hand over the title due to injury, while Doering
is a rock solid tag team wrestler who shocked the promotion recently by beating
Suwama in his V1 defense. Naturally and all things considered, there was a beef
surrounding the match and it was logical to expect good shit, but unfortunately
– they flopped. The match was structured wrong, IMO, instead of a vivid hate
fueled brawl they worked a more methodical pace which worked in the previous
Akebono title matches mentioned, but the problem here is that Doering is not
only the champion, but also a rather large fella himself, so there was no room
for an underdog story. Shit was boring, it’s that simple. Technically, they did
good, but emotionally? Yikes. There goes another opportunity for Joe to explode
as a legit main event performer. The clock is ticking, brother.
bad
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