CIRCUIT 2009 NEW JAPAN SOUL

July 20, 2009

The fun continues in New Japan! There’s no rest for Tanahashi. He defends his newly won IWGP Title against NOAH’s Takashi Sugiura! Makabe attempts to settle the score with his former tag team partner! Tenzan gets another crack at his hated rival, Iizuka, in a chain death rematch!

Shinsuke Nakamura . . . continues to disappoint me in his role as the alleged leader of the top heel group.

Hiroyoshi Tenzan . . . gladly sinks to the level of his hated rival to avenge his prior chain match loss.

Takashi Sugiura . . . makes Tanahashi respect him in the form of several boots and knees to the face.

RYUSUKE TAGUCHI/PRINCE DEVITT © vs. MILANO COLLECTION AT/TAICHI ISHIKARI (IWGP Jr. Tag Team Titles)

Out of the three matches that I’ve seen between these two teams (5/3, 5/6, and now this) this is clearly the best of them, to that end, it’s too bad this is the blowoff to the feud, because they finally seemed to be on the right track. Some of the good things here are givens due to them having worked together so much, their work is smooth more often than not, and they do a great job with the near falls toward the end, it seems like either team could walk out of the arena with the belts.

Their biggest failing is that they needed to slow things down, they seemed too concerned with getting to the next spot or exchange and not making the stuff they’d already rolled out mean more. The most glaring example is the early work on Taguchi’s leg, Milano was great fun coming up with various holds and spots to work it over, and Ishikari even looked pretty natural, even though he was just playing along. But, Taguchi seemed to be anxious to start his comeback, rather than let them keep working him over and build up to the comeback and tag. Milano and Devitt get a bit crazy toward the end, blowing off some rather big moves just to hit one of their own, Devitt got a near fall with his diving stomp, but almost right after the count, Ishikari was on his feet and hitting his own big move on Devitt. Ishikari tried to scramble his brain with a big kick, only for Devitt to jump up and hit one of his own and then slump back down.

It’s really too bad they couldn’t slow things down a bit to sell more, because they really did have some great stuff sprinkled throughout the match, aside from the fun in them sharking on Taguchi’s knee, there’s some fun on the floor when both teams attempt to do a Doomsday Device, but keep thwarting one another, until Milano outsmarts Taguchi. The near falls and double teams toward the end are especially great, and it looks like Milano and Ishikari are only one or two big shots away from winning the titles after the hot near fall with the Armani Shoe Exchange, until Milano misfires the superkick and winds up getting cradled by Taguchi for the champions to retain. While I obviously can’t say that this is their best match together, I’d be very surprised (albeit pleasantly surprised) if they had a match that topped this, with how disappointing their two matches from early May were. ***

GIANT BERNARD/VAL VENIS/KARL ANDERSON/TOMOHIRO ISHII/JADO vs. MANABU NAKANISHI/TAKAO OMORI/WATARU INOUE/AKIRA/KAZUCHIKA OKADA

Ten wrestlers really need more than ten minutes to do their thing, but, with this many uninteresting workers in one match, it’s probably a good thing this is so short. Nakanishi starts off by no-selling chops from everyone, and Jado figures out that if fifteen chops didn’t hurt him, that a sixteenth probably won’t either, so he boots him in the gut. That doesn’t work though, and it allows Nakansihi’s team to have some fun with Jado in the corner. AKIRA tags in and then it’s CHAOS’ turn to have their fun in the corner, and the match starts to break down shortly after that. Nakanishi tagging in Okada telegraphs that they’re taking things home, although they deserve some credit for trying to create some doubt about it. Okada manages to turn a five-on-one into a one-on-one situation and avoids some of Bernard’s big shots, and even gets a near fall on him with an assist from Wataru (his lone contribution), but in the end, Okada doesn’t have what it takes and falls victim to the Bernard driver. Had they knocked this down to Bernard/Venis/Jado vs. Nakanishi/AKIRA/Okada it’d have probably been worth the time spent on it, given that those were the only six who really added something to the mix.

SHINSUKE NAKAMURA vs. TOMOAKI HONMA

Perennial jobber Honma had upset Yano earlier in the month in a singles match, but lightning sure isn’t striking twice for him. This is almost a total squash, and not a very good one. I’d hoped that turning heel would bring something new out in Nakamura, and I’m still waiting for it. The cocky sneer never leaves his face, but there’s nothing new in his work. He just sees fit to kick Honma in the arm a bunch to set up the eventual armbar submission. There’s nothing crafty or especially heelish about his work, he obviously shouldn’t need to pull out the big guns for Honma, but he could at least try to do something interesting, if even just to try to get the fans behind the underdog. Honma gets a couple of hope spots, in the form of his blockbuster and a nice counter to Nakamura’s flying armbar, before Nakamura finishes him off, but that’s about the extent of it.

YUJI NAGATA/HIROOKI GOTO/MITUSHIDE HIRASAWA vs. RIKI CHOSYU/MASAHIRO CHONO/JYUSHIN LYGER

Although this wasn’t anything offensive, it also isn’t especially engaging. The most remarkable thing here is that Hirasawa wasn’t there just to be the fall guy. Chono and Nagata start out with a cute sequence whey they dodged and avoided each other’s big moves, and then the legends team got to have some fun with Hirasawa, culminating in a finisher fest before Nagata made the save. After that the match sort of falls apart, there’s nothing bad (aside from Hirasawa taking a couple of cues from Nagata and forgetting he’d just taken a decent-sized beating), but they don’t seem to know where they’re taking the match. There’s a cute spot from Nagata where he counters the Riki Lariat into an armbar, and Goto and Lyger ape it for the finish with Goto ducking the shotei and hitting his rana to armbar, but it’s rather randomly done, since there wasn’t anything previous to make it work on any deeper level than Lyger getting caught going after the wrong guy.

HIROYOSHI TENZAN vs. TAKASHI IIZUKA (Chain Death Match)

This might go down in history as Tenzan’s last big win in New Japan (he disappeared after a less than thrilling G1 performance) but, at least his last win was a good one. This is fun, like their first chain match, because both Tenzan and Iizuka are willing to do whatever it takes to get the hatred across. Tenzan takes several chain assisted punches to the head as well as getting rammed quite a few times into an exposed turnbuckle. But it’s not just Tenzan’s willingness to take the punishment, his selling is also rather good. But, just when things start to look hopeless for Tenzan, he springs back to life and starts to return the favor and Iizuka is all too willing to return the favor in terms of taking abuse, receiving several of Tenzan’s headbutts flush in the face. Iizuka goes for the glove, which helped him win last time, but Tenzan won’t be denied this time and keeps fighting. Iizuka tries to handcuff Tenzan, but it’s Iizuka who winds up cuffed and Tenzan unloads on him with some headbutts and then chokes out Iizuka in the same manner that Iizuka choked him out in October. This is more enjoyable on a visceral level, watching them bloody and brutalize each other, as well as the fun in seeing Tenzan lower himself to Iizuka’s level to beat him. Not to mention that rarity of Tenzan being booked strongly. Of course, a month after this it was back to the norm for Tenzan and he hasn’t been seen since.

TIGER MASK © vs. KOJI KANEMOTO (IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title)

Wow, this might be the most uninspired match wrestled for this title, and that’s saying something with TM in there. They don’t seem to be trying to obviously make each other look bad, the way TM and Takaiwa did, but there’s no reason to truly care about this unless you’re a big fan of Koji or TM. In short, Koji does his stuff and then TM does his stuff and winds up winning with his Destroy suplex. There are a couple of fun touches, like Koji doing the ankle lock on the floor to try to get TM counted out, but they negate that when Koji slaps it on in the ring and TM flails for a bit and then easily gets the ropes. Neither of these two is much for selling beyond “that hurt” so there’s nothing to hope for in that department either. In the end, this is exactly what you’d expect from a match between these two, so I guess you could say they met expectations.

TOGI MAKABE vs. TORU YANO

Between the intensity, the blood, and the fun booking with the run ins and ref bump, this is certainly a fun match, even if it’s not that great from a wrestling standpoint. The bulk of their work is mindless brawling, although they both throw in some surprising spots that you wouldn’t expect out of them. Yano hits Makabe with a very nice German suplex, although Makabe seemed to think that it was a good idea to follow that up with him reversing a vertical suplex into one of his own to go back on offense. Yano is also enough of a dick to steal the chain and hit Makabe with his own chain lariat, and Makabe has his own nice moment with a very smooth looking DVD.

Some people might complain about the interference from Ishii and others, but it added some charm to the match because it was carefully used, not just trotted out for no good reason. Anytime Makabe would seem to start getting some steam, Ishii would show up, take a bump, and Yano would ambush Makabe. Eventually Makabe catches on and doesn’t fall for the trap, but that’s right when the ref goes down. Makabe attempts the King Kong knee drop, which should KO Yano and give him time to revive the ref, but that’s when Nakamura shows up to give Yano the assist. Honma shows up (complete with a sling to put over Nakamura working over his arm in their match) to even the odds, and Makabe hits the chain lariat on Yano and finishes him off with the knee drop. This is similar to Tenzan/Iizuka in that it’s not the best *wrestling* match you’ll see, but it’s easy to appreciate the simplicity of it. Makabe, bloody and battered, but still standing tall and victorious makes a great visual as well.

You know everything you need to know about how this match is going to be after all of one minute. Tanahashi hits a disdainful slap to the face and Sugiura responds by taking him down and returning the favor several times over. It’s rather simplistic, but the simplicity doesn’t make it shallow. It’s easy to understand why Tanahashi doesn’t feel that Sugiura is worthy of being in the same ring as him. Over the last six months, Tanahashi had taken on all comers, only falling to Nakanishi in May, a loss which he quickly rebounded from in June. On the other hand, Sugiura had barely sniffed the main event scene in NOAH, a promotion that was in shambles at this time. Hell, Sugiura earned the title shot by beating Hirooki Goto the month before, someone who Tanahashi had already turned back several times over and who was firmly established as being a rung or two below Tanahashi on the ladder.

What makes this so much fun though is how Sugiura responds to the notion that the champion doesn’t take him seriously, instead of trying to wrestle the way Tanahashi does, he just decides to beat the respect into him by kneeing and booting him in the face. There’s a great moment early on when Tanahashi looks like he might be able to get something going, but Sugiura puts the kibosh on it really quick with an overhead belly to belly. He’s also really fun when working over Tanahashi’s midsection, which gives his usual suplex-heavy offense a real purpose. Sugiura also comes up with some rather nasty spots and sequences, the buckle bomb followed by the running knee to the face in the corner was especially brutal. There’s a few times they get a bit too into what they’re doing, resulting in some overly long slap exchanges that don’t particularly add anything to the match the way the early slaps did. But, they mostly keep that in control. The only other time it gets noticeably bad is the ankle lock sequence, where Tanahashi lingers for far too long before getting the ropes, but, even then, Tanahashi had tried to break it quite a few times, before finally getting to the ropes when he realized it was the only way to get Sugiura off of him.

Of course, Tanahashi didn’t get to the top by accident, he knows what he’ll need to do in order to pull out the win, and that’s what eventually winds up happening. He figures out early that he’ll need to take out one of Sugiura’s wheels. Tanahashi hits a Dragon screw very early on, and although it doesn’t completely halt his momentum, it clearly slows Sugiura down. Tanahashi surprises him a few minutes later with a dropkick to the knee that sends him to the floor and then hits a dive off the apron to finally get in control of things. Granted, Sugiura goes back on offense soon after that, but Tanahashi manages to keep the knee in the back of his mind, and catches Sugiura with another Dragon screw when he tries for another running knee, and then follows up with the Texas Cloverleaf. This leads to another case where they get too cute, with Sugiura countering the Cloverleaf to an ankle lock, which is a bit too out there to really be credible, but Tanahashi quickly breaks the hold. It was also great to see Tanahashi finding creative counters to the Olympic Slam than the same jumping counter that everyone else does, the Sling Blade counter was the best of them, and he was smart to follow that up quickly and hit his usual (annoying) sequence of his finisher and then his finisher again to put him away.

For Sugiura, this was a huge step in the right direction. Whether or not NOAH was planning on pushing him to the top is irrelevant really. He took it to the IWGP Champion, who at this time is unequivocally the top wrestler in all of Japan for the bulk of twenty-five minutes, and showed that he did indeed have it in him to be a top guy. That notion was cemented six months later when he finally got some of his own gold around his waist. ***1/2

Conclusion: Like most big New Japan shows, it’s easy to see that this isn’t bad at all. The only really strong in-ring performances are the two title matches, but add in the fun in the Makabe/Yano brawl and the chain match, and this isn’t too shabby at all.