All Japan 2015/1/3

New Year Wars 2015

(2015/1/3)

1.       Yohei Nakajima, Naoya Nomura, Yuma Aoyagi vs. Masanobu Fuchi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Ultimo Dragon

Fun opener with a peculiar underdog trio led by jobber Nakajima battling against the super experienced trio, they stood no chance and the story went exactly that way.

**3/4

2.       Soma Takao vs. Atsushi Aoki

Killer little match, rough and heavy, Aoki was relentless with attacking Takao’s back and it paid off. There was that one totally fabulous sequence with Aoki shoving Takao into the guardrails repeatedly, smashing shit. Also, the finish was excellent.

***1/2

3.       GAORA TV Championship: Ryuji Hijikata vs. KENSO ©

This was actually passable until the unnecessary ref bump.

bad

4.       Jun Akiyama, Takao Omori, SUSHI vs. Akebono, Shigehiro Irie, Shuji Ishikawa

So cool to see my man Shuji in All Japan, man I wish it could happen more regularly. Anyway, fuck SUSHI, there was too much of him in the match and he brought it down, because that’s what he does best. Fuck SUSHI. Sure, he was the obvious fallman, but still – FUCK HIM.

***1/4

5.       Shingo Takagi & Zeus vs. Suwama & Hikaru Sato

The fallman is obvious here but it didn’t prevent the match from being really good. That’s because they worked smart and didn’t get overambitious. It was cool to see Shingo in All Japan, just like Shuji Ishikawa earlier, hopefully they come back.

***3/4

6.       All Asia Tag Team Championship: Mitsuya Nagai & Takeshi Minamino vs. Kento Miyahara & Kotaro Suzuki ©

This was really awesome until KENSO decided to stick his beak in, and it was all downhill from there.

bad

7.       AJPW Triple Crown Championship: Go Shiozaki vs. Joe Doering ©

Unfortunately, this didn’t live up to the massive hype, as much as it really pains me to say. Good title match, but nowhere near the MOTYC level or something. Also the atmosphere was falsely advertised as “red hot Korakuen”. The pacing was kind of off and some moves/transitions were too botchy and weird, dunno how it got overlooked by the smarks, lol. Go did some things that were awkward and had me scratching my head a lot. Their September slugfest was much, much better. But like I said, good match though, and even though I was disappointed because I expected a bonafide classic, I’m still very happy for Go and have big hopes for his reign. However, All Japan is going produce at least 20 matches in 2015 better than this one, you can put that in the bank.

***1/2