DOME-QUAKE

July 20, 2001

The perils of being a completest of New Japan Dome shows, this was during the point when Inoki thought the only way for New Japan to be successful was his shootfighting bullshit. And that New Japan getting spanked by outsiders on a regular basis was a good idea.

Manabu Nakanishi . . . tries to work the mat like Dean Malenko, and looks like a total putz in the process.

Masayuki Naruse . . . debuts in spectacular fashion, and proceeds to crash and burn.

Don Frye . . . finally has match that doesn’t make me hate watching his matches.

OSAMU NISHIMURA/SHIRO KOSHINAKA/YUTAKA YOSHIE vs. HIRO SAITO/TATSUTOSHI GOTO/AKIRA

Ugh. What a boring opener. The only one who really brought anything watchable on a consistent basis was AKIRA, and even then, it wasn’t any of his offense, but rather the bumping and selling he’d do for the other team. The old guys (and Yoshie) don’t do much else other than punch, kick, and hip attack, and Nishimura isn’t involved nearly enough to take this to another level. The only notable Nishimura contribution to the match comes when he surprises Goto with a Cobra Twist, segues to an Octopus, and segues that into a cradle. Goto’s only notable contribution is his low kick. If nothing else, Team 2000 is good about trying to make Yoshie look semi-dominating, before he gets hit with all of their finishers and pinned. But aside from the Nishimura submission exhibition, there’s nothing here that can’t be found in any one of NOAH’s thrown together trios matches.

JYUSHIN LYGER/EL SAMURAI © vs. GEDO/JADO (IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles)

While this is fun at times, it’s worked at a rather slow pace, which doesn’t do a lot to make the match seem exciting. The early portions, with Lyger and Samurai heeling things up seems downright odd, but not totally out of place, given that they won the titles by being punks and attacking Kanemoto’s injured shoulder. What the match is missing is a lack of real story or flow to hold it together. The champs will have control for a while, and then the challengers will get control, and while there are some nice spots to the match, it doesn’t flow together very well at all. There wasn’t much (if any) build to the crossface, other than the super backdrop, and their signature superbomb. Lyger is a country mile ahead of everyone else, bringing the fun grumpiness in the early going, and trying to stretch both Gedo and Jado at various points, and bringing some good work with him. Both teams get their big chance to win the match, when Jado locks in the crossface, and when Samurai locks in the Chickenwing, but those are both thwarted by partner saves. Jado levels Samurai with the backdrop and locks in the crossface for the tap out. Domes aren’t the best settings for junior matches anyway, but the slow place and lack of a meaningful story only compounds the problem.

GARY GOODRIDGE vs. MANABU NAKANISHI

It’s just not a New Japan Dome show without Inoki’s shoot fetish creeping into the show via Wrestler vs. Shooter matches. And with Hashimoto in Zero-One and Yamazaki retired, it’s not too likely they’ll be kind on the eyes. I’m sure which I find more offensive, that these matches were even booked, or Gary’s Farrooq Asaad-esque attire. The first and last five seconds of this are cool, as Gary floors Nakanishi with a big punch, and ground and pounds him to finish him off. The rest of the fight is less so. Watching Nakanishi try to work this style is good for a few laughs. Watching them attempt to trade holds on the mat is like watching two rookies try to chain wrestle. Nakanishi’s attempt to ground and pound is even funnier, given that Gary covers up, and Manabu’s strikes don’t look dangerous in the least. Nakanishi gets a bit of success by going back to his wrestling moves, like a spear, crab hold, and water wheel drop, but Gary uses his own wrestling technique by going to the floor to buy time. Nakanishi tries one spear too many and Gary pops him in the face, and then pounds him till the ref stops the fight. Aside from getting to point and laugh at Nakanishi, there’s no real appeal to this, and there’s no shortage of matches where one can point and laugh.

YUJI NAGATA vs. MARK COLEMAN

After losing to Fujita in the main event of the last big NJPW show, this is the last thing Nagata needed to be doing. It’s better than the previous fight, but it’s still boring even though it’s short. The problem is that neither of them seemed to want to actually *work* the match (work in this case meaning showing some cooperation) so this looks like something akin to the UFC, and it’s far from interesting. There’s a couple of bright spots, when it looks like Yuji can finally get something going, such as the suplex, or when Nagata knocks down Coleman with a couple of leg kicks and then locks in a leg lock. But they’re just stall tactics to fend off the inevitable, which is when Coleman slaps on a grounded headlock. Things would get better for Nagata later in the year (G1 Climax) and then get much worse (12/31 vs. Cro Cop).

HIROYOSHI TENZAN/SATOSHI KOJIMA © vs. TAIYO KEA/JINSEI SHINZAKI (IWGP Tag Team Titles)

At first this looked promising, but after the match went to the floor and TenKoji brought the table into play, it just fell to pieces. The opening seems to establish Tenzan as the brains of the team, as he’s able to get ahead in the match by working smart, such as throwing a headbutt when Kea blocks a Mongolian Chop, and blocking Shinzaki’s flying chop after his ropewalk, whereas Kojima basically walks into anything the BATT team throws at him. After the failed attempt to put Shinzaki through the table, any hint of a story pretty much vanishes.

Tenzan, who had taken hardly any damage at all, gets hit with simple DDT by Kea, and is almost KO’d. Shinzaki tries his Dragon screw variation on both Tenzan and Kojima, the results of which are not pretty (although the one on Tenzan looked a lot better than Kojima). Kea has never been one for being able to carry the action, and it shows in his control segment on Kojima, where all he does is pile up spots, and nothing in the way of trying to tell a story. Neither team is really able to get ahead to a great degree, and while it’s not necessarily bad that the match is kept even, the only signs of teamwork were the TenKoji cutter, and the double splash by BATT. The finish itself doesn’t have any deeper meaning than Shinzaki getting hit with too many of their finishes (Koji cutter, TenKoji cutter, TTD, lariat, and moonsault) and Kojima keeping Kea at bay. It’s telling, and sad, that TenKoji had a better match against Steve Williams and George Hines than they did here.

TADAO YASUDA vs. MICHIYOSHI OHARA

The best of both worlds! Two pro wrestlers with the same talent level as Nakanishi, working a match in the same exciting style as Nagata/Coleman! They spend a few minutes laying in the guard, and then a few more minutes holding onto each other as though they were two brothers at a wedding or a funeral. Yasuda lands a single punch (which would ironically be his only offense that would get any heat when he’d have his big heel run in the Makai Club), and locks in a near naked choke for the tap out. There, it’s over and done with. Next!

RIKI CHOSYU/TATSUMI FUJINAMI/OSAMU KIDO vs. SHINYA MAKABE/HIROSHI TANAHASHI/KENZO SUZUKI.

The way this is worked in understandable to a degree. None of the young guns team had done anything of real note in their respective careers yet, and with Kido headed toward retirement, obviously they wanted to put the spotlight on him for one last time in Sapporo. But the match also has a perfectly good, and simple, story staring them almost right in the face, and it’s totally ignored. It’s not so bad that the veterans spend most of the match beating on the kids, but it’s not done in the most interesting of ways. The veterans don’t have the grumpy flair that Jumbo or Hansen had. And conversely, the kids don’t do anything to give the idea that the vets are taking them lightly. The only thing that the kids have is a mean streak (Makabe and Kenzo do, Tanahashi tried and failed), but even that’s only in form of punches and facial expressions. It’s telling when Chosyu gets triple teamed in the corner, and hit with a diving knee from Makabe and he kicks out at one. Again, the spotlight was meant for Kido, which he gets by tapping out Tanahashi to his Wakigatame, it’s just too bad that ego and/or lack of knowledge prevented the match from being a rather fun affair.

It’s no secret that I’ve never been a big fan of Tanaka, but even he deserved better than this. Considering Naruse’s RINGS background and Tanaka’s BattlArts background, they obviously work a more exciting shootstyle match than everyone else thus far, but it still has its problems. The big one is with selling, Tanaka punts Naruse several times straight in the head and they barely register, and Tanaka gets locked in a choke sleeper for a good three minutes, and then decides to make the superhuman style comeback and get the ropes. Naruse also spends most of the early portions trying to take down Tanaka and beat him with various leg submissions, and Tanaka shows how much they’ve affected him by jumping up and punting him in the head. And just to cap it off, after working the whole match with the premise of going for the win by submission or KO, Naruse simply levels Tanaka with the spinning backhand blow and simply pins him. The fact that Naruse would lose the title three months later in twenty-six seconds, and was turned into a jobber after that, should be an indication of his talent at this point.

KEIJI MUTOH vs. MASAHIRO CHONO

If nothing else, this pairing usually brings interesting results, whether it’s all time classics like the finals of the first G-1 tournament, or stinkers like their match in April of 2000. There really isn’t anything here that’s actively bad, but it’s quite dull at times. Both of them know what they need to do to win, which is only natural with how often they’ve wrestled. But neither of them can implement their strategy in the most interesting of ways. Chono’s strategy seems to be to throw Yakuza kicks at Mutoh and wear him down for the STF, but Chono doesn’t always make decent contact. Mutoh, of course, works the knee to set up the Shining Wizard.

There are times when something will happen to play off the familiarity card, such as Mutoh catching Chono’s foot during the Yakuza kick attempt and hitting a Dragon screw, and Chono blocking Mutoh’s dropkick and slapping on the Butterfly Lock, but moments like those are the exception rather than the rule. There’s another cool moment where Chono surprises Mutoh (and everyone else) with a tope suicida. But by and large, the match is just Chono and Mutoh doing Chono and Mutoh stuff, which is fine when it looks good, but it doesn’t always look good. The way Chono sold the last Dragon screw, he may as well have held a neon sign saying ‘Shining Wizard,’ with the way he got on one knee and sat there looking dazed. And that only makes the ending that much more silly, with Chono totally blowing off another Shining Wizard and putting Mutoh in the STF for the win. With their age and physical condition, this obviously wasn’t going to be a classic, but they could still have brought more than almost the bare minimum.

He may have lost, but Don Frye finally had a match that I didn’t find a way to hate him in. It’s worked in the same boring style as Nagata/Coleman, but there are a few more bright spots here, than in the Nagata match. Don Frye actually performs a wrestling move, when he takes down Fujita with a Minoru Special! Frye also, thankfully, brings his heelish attitude with him, at one point Fujita had to roll out to the floor to catch a breath, and Frye followed him right out and sucker punched him a few more times. And after Fujita chokes Frye out with his neck lock, Frye jumps right back to his feet and attacks Fujita. The real bright spot of the match though comes when Frye pummels Fujita’s ribs with punches, and Fujita is actually good at selling him. Fujita’s only other real notable contribution was taking Frye down and throwing knees into his head. It was smartly kept short, and Frye was smart enough to interject some personality into the fight, but that’s probably the best compliment one can praise a match, and when one is out performed by Don Frye, they’re not doing a whole lot.

Conclusion: I don’t want to say ‘worst Dome show ever’ or ‘worst Dome show of 2001' just to avoid hyperbole, but this has got to be close to the bottom. Even the dreadful NEXESS show had the fun main event. This just starts badly, and seems like it could get better, but never actually does, avoid at all costs.