THE FOUR HEAVEN IN NAGOYA DOME

August 10, 1997

Fresh off the G1 Climax, New Japan visits the Nagoya Dome, for a night of title matches, Different Style Fights, Chosyu starting the road to his retirement, and more! Ah, the days when New Japan could run major shows in large venues several times per year, and still sell them out.

Shinjiro Ohtani . . . can’t decide if he’s a heel or a babyface in the same match.

Great Muta . . . makes Naoya Ogawa look like a bumbling idiot, although that’s not a daunting task.

Kazuo Yamazaki . . . can’t get anything good out of Nakanishi, proving that his suckage knows no limits.

KAZUYUKI FUJITA vs. KENDO KA SHIN

Fujita’s lack of experience was very much on display here (less than one year at this point), and Ka Shin carries pretty much the whole thing on his back. In that regard, it’s surprising that this is as watchable as it is. When you consider the backgrounds of both Ka Shin and Fujita, you’d expect more of a shootstyle match than the technical pro-style match that’s on display. The only real story to speak of is Ka Shin using his mat prowess to catch Fujita with his signature juji-gatame, and Fujita using his power to wear down Ka Shin. In that respect, the ending seems to be more of a swerve than anything else, with Fujita getting with win not with his power advantage, but by catching Ka Shin in a juji-gatame of his own for the tap out. The chain wrestling bits were nice to look at but was just filler, and between the work on the ground, and Ka Shin setting himself up to get slammed down by Fujita, it’s pretty much a one man show from Ka Shin.

KOJI KANEMOTO vs. JYUSHIN “THUNDER” LYGER

Lyger was his usual awesome self here, but Koji and his usual bad habits dragged this down a few notches. Nearly the entire first half of the match was much slower and methodical that the usual junior match, with both of them using lots of holds and using stiff strikes, rather than doing lots of flashy spots. Koji starts his attack on Lyger’s leg when he catches him in his ankle lock, and for the rest of the match, anytime that anything happened to his leg, either Lyger using his for offense, or Koji going after it, Lyger’s reactions are excellent. Kanemoto is the polar opposite of Lyger in that sense, his selling his fine on a move to move basis, but he’s not terribly consistent about it. And there are times he goes too far with his punk character. For instance, one of the nicer spots in the early portion was when Lyger and Koji were dodging each other’s strikes. Lyger wins the exchange by connecting with a fairly stiff shotei, and Koji drops like a ton of bricks before nipping up to his feet with his trademark cocky smirk.

The second half looks more like something out of an All Japan main event. It starts off with perhaps the most dangerous spot of the match, Lyger giving Kanemoto a brainbuster on the apron. When they both struggle to get back into the ring, Koji takes a shot at Lyger’s leg (with the same killer selling) and rolls in first. Koji smartly goes back to the ankle lock when Lyger rolls back in, but after that, the match is off the charts with both of them using their big moves for near falls. Thankfully, Koji doesn’t pop up after Lyger’s avalanche brainbuster. Both of them using the bombs makes for some nice drama, although it renders much of the first half of the match useless. Koji doesn’t have as big an arsenal as Lyger, so his big goal is to drop the moonsault, although Lyger makes it a struggle. Koji’s first attempt is met with knees, and Koji responds with several rolling sentons and then drops the moonsault, but Lyger kicks out. Koji hits his own bombs on Lyger with the top rope capture buster, release Tiger suplex, and finally the moonsault for the win. There was plenty of nice stuff from Lyger, and Koji was better than usual as well, the match itself would have been better if they found more of a middle ground to work on rather than the two extremes that this match had. ***

EL SAMURAI © vs. SHINJIRO OHTANI (J* Crown)

While there’s no doubt that this is better than the previous juniors match, there’s still some obvious flaws to this. Namely the roleplay that’s going on, and the fact that Ohtani can’t make up his mind whether he’s the punk heel or the young fired up babyface, crying to the ref after Samurai kicks out of something. Both roles make sense for Ohtani to play. This is taking place during the same time period that the Ohtani/Kanemoto/Takaiwa vs. Lyger/Samurai/Ka Shin feud was getting underway. And Ohtani had vowed that if he failed to win the 7-crown here (Lyger had lost the WAR International Jr. Title to Yuji Yasuraoka in June). Things might have gone a bit smoother had Samurai also changed roles with Ohtani, and went from being the brave champion fending off the punk, to being the grumpy veteran trying to keep him down. There’s also some weird moments, like Ohtani no-selling two neckbreakers and then selling the third (he’d done the same thing to Samurai at the Osaka Dome), and Ohtani’s fun arm work in the early going not going anywhere, but that’s pretty much par for the course with New Japan juniors.

Flaws aside though, this is still Shinjiro Ohtani and El Samurai during the prime periods as workers, so there’s still plenty of good and fun moments to go around. It may not have been anything other than filler, but Ohtani’s early attacks on Sammy’s arm are exactly what you’d expect from Ohtani, he’s ruthless about going at it, and adds some enjoyable moments to the mix with things like refusing to break the hold when Samurai gets the ropes, and ignoring the referee’s count. Samurai tries to give Ohtani a taste of his own medicine with the face scrapes, and Ohtani springs to action, and gives Samurai a demonstration of how it’s meant to be done. Both men also do their own little ode to Lyger. Samurai’s being in the form of a La Magistral cradle after he’d sidestepped Ohtani’s swan dive dropkick, and Ohtani doing a Thunderfire Lygerbomb. They also both start throwing out bombs toward the end, starting with Ohtani’s attempted Dragon suplex on the apron, one nice moment was Ohtani being unable to hit the Dragon suplex and settling for a German suplex, and then making the motion of a title around his waist. Samurai isn’t outdone either, with his reverse DDT off the top, and thankfully, Ohtani saves himself with the ropes rather than kicking out.

One thing Samurai has always been very good at when he’s on the losing side of a match with a younger worker is making him earn the big win. It starts out with Samurai’s nearfall on the reverse DDT drop, and Ohtani’s reversal as a second try. When Ohtani goes for the rana off the top, Samurai keeps slapping him down. Ohtani finally does get the rana, and Samurai does a nice job putting it over. Ohtani hits the springboard DDT, which won him his first singles title (WCW Cruiserweight Title), and it’s met with another great sell job. Ohtani finally ends it with his Dragon suplex hold, and his reaction to the win is simply awesome, it’s like Flair doing his crazy old man gimmick, when he does the flop and elbows the ring mat. While it’s not the classic that Ohtani could have had by winning the title from Lyger, it’s still a really good match and worthy of such a classic moment as Ohtani’s huge win. ***1/2

RIKI CHOSYU vs. TATSUMI FUJINAMI

It seems to me that the “final” battle between these two (Chosyu was just starting his road to retirement, although he’d come out of it three years later) should have been longer, and felt more epic. It does have the whomp ass video package chronicling their history together, but the match itself is a sprint without much in the way of story or focus. There are a couple of fun spots, Fujinami leveling Chosyu with the big backdrop for instance, and Chosyu busting out head scissors takeover. Chosyu also levels Fujinami with the Riki Lariat not once, but twice, and it means absolutely nothing. The finish is a bit blown, with Fujinami and Chosyu losing their balance at the attempted abdominal stretch and Fujinami improvising with the Dragon sleeper for the tap out. There’s nothing wrong with the match itself actually taking place, and doing so on a big show is worthy of something with the history of Fujinami and Chosyu’s feud. The match itself should have been more than just a six minute sprint that ends on essentially a fluke.

THE GREAT MUTA vs. NAOYA OGAWA

Wow. This is, shall we say, different from Ogawa’s fights with Hashimoto. Shocking as it may seem. The terms “Great Muta” and “Different Style Fight” don’t really mesh together that well. The funniest part of the whole thing actually took place before the fight officially started, when Muta spewed the mist in the face of Antonio Inoki and started choking Ogawa with his gi, and the sold out Nagoya Dome erupted in cheers! Muta is almost Minoru Suzuki-like here, making Ogawa look like an inept fool, not even caring to help him look good. Muta basically chokes Ogawa with his gi and his belt, while Ogawa tries to gain the advantage using his judo skills. He finally has some success catching Muta in a Triangle choke, and Muta uses the mist to escape, in what has to be the most original form of escaping that particular hold, and then Muta kicks a field goal between Ogawa’s legs, while the Nagoya Dome is still cheering him on. One juji-gatame later, and Tiger King throws in the towel to mercy kill this. And who says Inoki’s stupid Different Style Fights have to be boring worked shoots?

JUNJI HIRATA/OSAMU KIDO/TAKASHI IIZUKA/TADAO YASUDA/TATSUHITO TAKAIWA vs. KENGO KIMURA/TATSUTOSHI GOTO/MICHIYOSHI OHARA/HIRO SAITO/AKIRA NOGAMI

It seems at times like the main goal of some matches to simply get as many guys on the card as possible, no matter what the situation calls for. Take this match for instance. It’s not about the workers or about the NJPW vs. Helsei Ishingun rivalry. Its main goal is to illustrate dissension in the ranks of Helsei Ishingun, which really doesn’t need ten workers to properly demonstrate. There are some cutesy switches in the early portion, when Iizuka counters one of Saito’s kicks and hooks an ankle lock, and two separate occasions when Kido counters into his waki-gatame. Beyond that though, the work is very subdued for the most part. The bulk of the match is Takaiwa getting beaten down, he’s never been much in the selling department, but he’s okay here, considering the level of work he was putting over. The ending stretch is also rather fun, with HI seeming to have things at hand until Ohara and Kimura start arguing on the floor. Nogami and Saito try to make peace and nobody sees Yasuda dropping Goto with his Tiger driver (which looks better than it would later on) for the win. The match did have its point to make, but the same point could have been made in a regular tag or a trios match, without putting so many guys in there to basically do nothing.

DON FRYE vs. CAL WORSHAM

Ugh. That pretty much sums up this match. It would have been much less harder on the eyes if one (or both) of them weren’t as green as the big guy on the canned vegetables. Both of them look ridiculous trying to throw worked strikes, because they don’t even make half decent contact. Frye looks okay when he gets a mount and unloads the punches that way, and he plays a heel in the form of refusing the break the mount after Worsham gets the ropes. Frye gets the win with his grapevine and choke, and I need to dig out some BattlArts and UWF-I to wash away some of the memories of this.

This doesn’t feel like a major tag titles match, it feels more like an extended squash match. Things are worked almost as basic as can be, and the result isn’t just new IWGP Tag Team Champions, or feeling like you’ve wasted twelve minutes on this, but that Yamazaki and all his talent was pretty much squandered here. Yamazaki leaves almost all of his good offense behind, opting for laying in kicks, and only a few submission attempts. The Yamazaki/Nakanishi exchanges are almost comedic, thanks to Nakanishi’s inability to follow along when Yamazaki tries to take him down for an armbar, and Yamazaki has to improvise in mid-move and come up with something else. Kojima was a bit better with Yamazaki thanks to his ability to better eat his kicks, and to follow along with his submissions. Sasaki’s offense was never very dazzling, but he was very motivated here, so it came off fine. The champions get in precious little offense of their own, not that either one had a whole lot to offer at this point in their careers. Sasaki finishes off Nakanishi with a pair of Northern Lights Bombs. It’s nice to see Yamazaki winning a title, but sad that he had to dumb things down so much and that he more or less played second fiddle to someone that he could work circles around.

Considering the result of their two G1 matches, and the fluke nature of both of those wins, and the fact that Hashimoto is already set to defend the title in three weeks against Sasaki (who defeated Tenzan to win the G1), the result here isn’t in much doubt, not that anyone would give Tenzan a hope of winning the IWGP Title at this point in his career anyway. None of that stops Hashimoto from doing his best to make Tenzan look like a credible challenger though, in fact until Tenzan’s moonsault hurts his knee (bitter irony after their 1996 G1 match) Tenzan has almost total control over Hashimoto. Tenzan never did employ a great range of offense, and it’s shown here with his constant use of the Mongolian chops and his headbutt. Hashimoto puts them over like their systematically sapping his strength. For nearly half of the match Tenzan hacks away at Hashimoto with the chops and headbutts him in the face and on the head, and Hashimoto just puts it over awesomely. Once Tenzan hits the moonsault, and hurts his knee, the match turns around though. And it wasn’t because Tenzan made a mistake. He had his opponent weakened and went for a move that had won him countless matches, he just aggravated an injury in the process and couldn’t take advantage.

When Hashimoto has control of Tenzan, it’s shown just how big a gap there is between the two of them and their respective spots on the pecking order. Tenzan’s first win over Hashimoto saw him attacking Hashimoto’s knee endlessly, and whenever he tried to stray away from it, Hashimoto would level him with something and Tenzan would have to go back to it. Now with the shoe on the other foot, Hashimoto doesn’t even really bother with going after Tenzan’s knee. He sticks to what works for him, the roundhouse kicks, the big spinning chops, and the DDT. There is one nice moment, when Tenzan tries to mount a comeback and Hashimoto hits a leg sweep on him. Tenzan never does recover from his mishap though, he’s able to go back to pasting Hashimoto with his strikes, but his attempts his TTD, and his knee buckles and it looks more like a bodyslam. From there on the match is essentially a forgone conclusion, with Hashimoto pasting him with one last big chop and then dropping him with the brainbuster to retain the title. Again, Hashimoto being three weeks away from defending against Sasaki only make it more obvious that Tenzan wasn’t winning here, but mad props to the champion for not making it look that way. ***

Conclusion: While it’s not the greatest Dome show that NJPW put on, it’s got its fair share of enjoyable stuff and with a couple of exceptions, almost nothing is totally unbearable.