Wednesday, February 4, 2015

New NOAH & K-DOJO (Cherry-Picked)

NOAH 2015/1/24

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima

Nice match with Zack working on Nakajima’s arm once again, and generally it was good, but the curse of NOAH is strong as its matches are often emotionally dry, and the fact Nakajima has regressed in quality tremendously certainly doesn’t help either, he’s such a lifeless wrestler now. So yeah, the match was good with some neat ideas thrown around but overall it’s nothing must-see as the paper might suggest. If this was Nakajima from 5+ years ago, then yes, but now I feel like a ***1/4 match might be his limit, even when facing someone as great as Zack, although the latter displayed his fair share of flaws as well.

***1/4


NOAH 2015/1/24

5-on-5 ELIMINATION MATCH: SZKG (Minoru Suzuki, Lance Archer, Davey Boy Smith Jr., Shelton Benjamin, Taichi) vs. Naomichi Marufuji, Mikey Nicholls, Shane Haste, Mohammed Yone, Taiji Ishimori

Pretty average elimination tag, absolutely nothing must-see here. While it’s cool to see Suzuki-gun invading NOAH, the problem is they have no one to work against. TMDK is a duo of boring crackas who somehow make for a decent tag team, Marufuji and Yone are absolutely horrendous and make me cringe hard, Ishimori is the only good guy from the group, but he got whacked first. Dull aura surrounding NOAH shows doesn’t help either. Eh, at least the post-match brawl was well done. If nothing, it’s also at least cool to see the boring NOAH quasi-stars getting beaten.

**1/4


NOAH 2015/1/24

GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship: Daisuke Harada vs. Atsushi Kotoge ©

I get what they were going for, but ultimately they disappointed. Two Juniors doing a sluggish heavyweight battle is very interesting in theory and can be delightful when done right, but here I feel like it hurt the match. When they decided not to wow us with crazy Junior action, they didn’t really think it through, they didn’t deliver a Plan B that would require more engaging personality work as a substitution. Good match that falls under that category of three star matches I’d be fine with never watching again.

***


NOAH 2015/1/18

SZKG (Taichi, Desperado, TAKA) vs. Yoshinari Ogawa, Zack Sabre Jr., Hitoshi Kumano

I expected a lot from this match because I love the SZKG trio of dickheads, Ogawa is probably the best NOAH wrestler, Zack is really good with some tendencies for greatness, and Kumano is a solid young gun. Plus the storyline about SZKG invading NOAH is somewhat interesting, so there it is. Unfortunately, the match was kind of average, basic as fuck.

**3/4


K-DOJO 2015/1/25

Kotaro Yoshino vs. TAKA Michinoku

New Japan’s TAKA is an eternal goof who does semi-comedic wrestling and interferes into his stablemates’ matches all the time. The homefield TAKA, though, that guy is real deal, it’s such a breeze of fresh air watching him in K-DOJO where he is a seasoned veteran schooling younger guys, and he’s so damn good at it, his ground game is excellent in its simplicity, the way he uses headlocks is amazing, like a relentless honey badger he keeps insisting on them until he breaks his opponent’s spirit.

***3/4


K-DOJO 2015/1/25

Yuji Hino & Hiro Tonai vs. Shiori Asahi & Ayumu Honda

Good tag match overall, albeit little too by-the-numbers and dry at places. First time seeing the young Honda and kid looks promising. I love Shiori Asahi, that sneaky little rat fuck.

***


K-DOJO 2015/1/25

Strongest-K Championship: Saburo Inematsu vs. Kengo Mashimo ©

Holy shit, this was so boring.

bad

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