All Japan 4/5 (Carnival Time!)

Champion Carnival 2015

(2015/4/5)

1.       The Bodyguard & Gurukun Mask vs. Atsushi Aoki & Yuma Aoyagi

Decent opener.

**1/2

2.       SUSHI vs. KENSO

NO!

3.       Xceed (Kento Miyahara, Kotaro Suzuki, Yohei Nakajima) vs. Jun Akiyama, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Ultimo Dragon

Damn good match here, almost a total scuffle. Akiyama and Miyahara still hate each other, all the Junior worked in sprints and it was good, and two face-in-peril sessions on poor Yohei were smash-mouth brutal. Borderline great match here, folks!

***3/4

4.       Champion Carnival 2015 – Block B: Zeus vs. Akebono

Relatively fun match, but too sloppy in early stages, and while the general story was fine and acceptable, the match needed more color to be considered good. IMO.

**3/4

5.       Champion Carnival 2015 – Block A: Yutaka Yoshie vs. Suwama

This match had the same plan and layout as the previous one, but these two did a way better job in everything. Sure, they got more time to develops stories, but ultimately, it wasn’t even about the time, they simply worked harder, better and smarter. This was a story about a big, strong man trying to outpower an even bigger, stronger opponent. Everything Suwama did here was pure struggle, determination and resilience, he was a man on a mission of taking down that big fat fuck, he was throwing some truly stiff forearms, man oh man, you could really feel his burden. Great performance by Suwama. But Yoshie was awesome too, just by being himself – a big, fat, immovable badass, only this time seriously challenged by the company ace, so naturally he gave way more than what you see in all the Akebono tags, he was so good in this one. The best Yoshie singles match in over a decade, unless I’m missing something obvious. Excellent, sluggish clash of the titans that wasn’t pretty or fancy at all, no, this was just a surly, manly dogfight and it delivered big time.

****1/4

6.       Champion Carnival 2015 – Block A: Takao Omori vs. Go Shiozaki

Current Carnival winner taking on current Triple Crown Champion. Unfortunately, while good, this wasn’t as good as it should’ve been, the main reason for it being Omori just completely refusing to sell the arm damage that was kind of an important plot in the first half. As soon as he cut off Go’s domination, he dropped his selling game and it put me off for awhile. The rest was really good and the match had some nasty, MANLY moments, the out-of-nowhere finish was amazing, but as a whole I can’t go higher than ***1/4.

***1/4