NEXESS

May 3, 2004

Yes, it’s another redo. Like those few NOAH reviews, I always thought this (and most of my 2004 NJ reviews) could use a second look. It’s no secret that I hated New Japan during the year 2004, but time heals all wounds. I’m doing this show first, since I’m remembering it being the worst of them.

Katsuhiko Nakajima . . . gets the tar beaten out of him in his New Japan debut match.

Kendo Ka Shin . . . winds up stealing the show, simply by being his usual, unpredictable self.

Shinsuke Nakamura . . . drags Bob Sapp, kicking and screaming, to the best match he’d ever have.

JYUSHIN LYGER vs. KATSUHIKO NAKAJIMA

I’ll never understand the logic of giving young wrestlers their debut matches on major shows like this. Lyger is actually pretty giving to Nakajima here, which is especially surprising because he was the GHC Jr. Champion at this time. Nakajima surprises Lyger with a big roundhouse to the head and Lyger drops like a safe (although I could have done without his big jumping Hulk-Up). The German suplex (which would become Nakajima’s finishing hold) also winds up being a decent near fall. Of course, this is still Jyushin “Thunder” Lyger, the king of the mountain, so Nakajima doesn’t escape scot free. Lyger puts him through quite the ringer, with a few good shots to the face, a big powerbomb (not Lygerbomb), and, of course, the crab hold, which is what always beats the rookies. Nakajima gets his own Hulk-Up of sorts, doing the big push up and crawl to the ropes, but Lyger just pulls him back, slaps it back on and Nakajima taps. It’s not bad for a quickie squash, but I personally don’t think that it belonged on *this*show, despite having a theme of the young generation rising up. But considering what they were going for, Lyger was the best opponent possible.

YOSHIHIRO TAKAYAMA/MINORU SUZUKI © vs. MASAHIRO CHONO/KAZUNARI MURAKAMI (IWGP Tag Team Titles)

The Murakami/Suzuki exchanges were nice, but that’s honestly, the only real positive aspect about the match. Takayama spends most of the match on the apron, and Chono/Suzuki aren’t exactly a winning pair. Suzuki is fun to watch thanks to his usual antics, such as the opening moments when he stands there and just sidesteps all of Murakami’s wild swings, and then calmly slaps him across the face. They take things to the mat too, and that’s actually pretty watchable, nowhere near BattlArts or UWFi levels of watchable, but it’s surprising since Murakami is best known for his wild and crazy brawler antics. There’s also a nice moment when Murakami traps Suzuki in a Cobra twist, and Takayama runs into break it up, and gets sent rocking back by a Yakuza kick, so Suzuki just escapes the hold himself.

Chono is a bore to watch on offense, but he adds a few nice touches. The Shining Black kick he hits on Takayama was nice, and when the champs give him their sandwiching roundhouse, he does a fine job putting it over. But those are more exceptions than the rule. Chono is much more often to be found simply throwing right and left hands at Suzuki. It’s almost like they were trying to make Murakami the weak link, with him having all kinds of trouble with Suzuki, but Chono has no problem with him at all. Indeed the finish plays off that, with Suzuki trying to ground and pound Takayama while he’s in his own corner. Suzuki just tags himself in, slaps the choke sleeper on Murakami, and gives him his piledriver (which they mess up, resulting in a back bump) to retain the tag titles. It’s got the fun Suzuki/Murakami stuff that keeps it from being completely terrible, but I’m at a loss to find a more boring IWGP Tag Title match.

YUTAKA YOSHIE vs. THE CONVICT NORTJE

When Nakamura beat Nortje the year before, it was considered a huge upset. Yoshie beating Nortje just screams ‘worked fight.’ Nortje hits Yoshie with a few shots and Yoshie comes back and knocks down Nortje and uses his weight to his advantage. I don’t mean that in a ground and pound way, I mean in the way he always does, butt drops. Yoshie almost gets the win with a full crab, and then gives Nortje a backdrop suplex, a big splash from the top, and a camel clutch (without any humbling techniques) and Nortje taps. I actually feel embarrassed for Nortje.

HIROSHI TANAHASHI vs. SEAN O’HAIRE

Considering that O’Haire actually has experience in a pro setting, this is a good bit better. They work a typical underdog story with Tanahashi fighting from underneath. The structure itself is fine, but there are times when O’Haire could have been a bit more interesting. The spinning kicks were a very nice touch, but other than that he more or less just uses generic heel offense, like running Tanahashi into the post, and power guy stuff like big tosses across the ring. O’Haire also tries time and again to give Tanahashi some sort of Fireman’s carry move from his shoulders (maybe a Finlay roll), but Tanahashi always finds an escape, which is how he pulls off the win. Tanahashi escapes the move and tries to take him down with a jumping kick, and Dragon suplex, but a simple roll up and segue into the Dragon sleeper earns Tanahashi the win. I can understand O’Haire being a K-1 representative here and probably not a big submission guy, but he shouldn’t have tapped out so quickly to a pro style submission. But I’m telling you anything you don’t already know.

KATSUYORI SHIBATA vs. MUSASHI

This is a full blown K-1 Style Kickboxing match with rounds. Unlike the last two matches, it’s not obvious that this is worked. It lacks the big match sort of feel that Hashimoto always brought to ‘Different Style Fights.’ Shibata makes it clear that his key to winning is on the mat, he’s not able to land any notable strikes to Musashi, but once he takes him down, he traps him in a juji-gatame, Musashi escapes but Shibata transitions beautifully into a Triangle choke. The remainder of the first round is spent with Shibata taking Musashi down and trying to get him in various submissions, and Musashi outdoing Shibata in the strike department. Musashi starts to get close to winning, but Shibata is saved by the bell. They start the second round off with Musashi hitting a flurry of knees on Shibata that keep him down for a seven-count, and a second flurry ends in a KO win. I can understand why Shibata was put into this match, out of the three young guys getting the big push (Tanahashi, Shibata, Nakamura) he’s got the kickboxing experience. But I still question the wisdom of it. The Cro Cop loss on 12/31/01 killed Nagata dead in the water and ruined his push the following year. This loss wasn’t as damaging as that one, but there’s no way that Shibata could have possibly walked out of that match with any more credibility as a potential top guy.

GIANT MAJIN/SUPER STRONG MAJIN/NEW STRONG MAJIN vs. HIROYOSHI TENZAN/OSAMU NISHIMURA/SHINYA MAKABE

Here’s a pretty good indication of why I wasn’t a fan of NJPW during 2004. I’ll admit that I’m a Tenzan fan boy, but it’s hard to argue that he deserves better than this. His IWGP run was ruined by the sudden urge to give the young generation a megapush, and he’s stuck in a throwaway trios match on a major Dome show. The three Majins are slow, lumbering, and just vanilla, they show zero personality at all. They also don’t show much talent either, just doing generic big man stuff, mostly punching and kicking. Nishimura tries to go MUGA on them to no avail. The only one the NJPW guys have any real success against SSM, but even that doesn’t go for very long. The only real good spot the heels bring is your standard Dragon Gate heel corner spot, where they all take turns charging the poor sap in the corner (Makabe in this case) but it’s more like a Dragon Gate heel spot in slow motion, and Makabe is quickly finished with a Double Chokeslam from the two big ones, while SSM holds back both Tenzan and Nishimura, and Giant finishes off Makabe with a big elbow drop. At least it was short. When the best thing one can take away from the match is that at least Tenzan didn’t job, it’s not a good sign.

KEN SHAMROCK vs. JOSH BARNETT

Wow. This is just horrible. It’s billed as some sort of grudge match, which implies some sort of deep running hatred, but there’s nothing like that here. It looks like your average UFC match, they spend long periods of time laying on the mat working a guard and scrapping over nondescript holds, but they’re really just killing time. There’s only a few scant chances where it looks like one of them can really get the win, the best one being Shamrock catching Barnett in a Fujiwara armbar, and Barnett looks like he might be able to KO Shamrock with a roundhouse, but it takes two roundhouses, and Kenny jumps right up after the first one like nothing happened. A few Makai Club members jump on the apron and distract Barnett, which allows Shamrock to slap on the ankle lock, Barnett won’t tap, and Shamrock ‘snaps’ and starts to hit the ref and gets himself disqualified. Yes, they gave this triple nearly fifteen minutes with that finish. The crowd just boos the finish, but I boo the whole thing.

GENICHIRO TENRYU/MENG vs. DOLGORSUREN SUMIYABAZER/DOLGORSUREN SERJBUDEE

Talk about your dull and generic big guy matches. Serjbudee is also known as Blue Wolf, and is teaming with his brother. They basically chop and punch each other, and they don’t even have the decency to try to make it seem exciting like Kobashi/Kensuke did. Blue Wolf’s brother actually has the grapefruits to take Tenryu’s jab flurry in the corner and then stand there like he couldn’t believe that was it. You know this is bad when I’m wishing that Meng had busted out the Tongan Death Grip. The world really needed to see this instead of the junior trios match (Kanemoto/Ultimo Dragon/American Dragon vs. Tiger Mask/Heat/Marufuji)? Well it does need to see about ten seconds of it, when Tenryu does a big plancha onto Blue Wolf’s brother. They hit each other, don’t sell, hit each other some more, and then Blue Wolf uses the Mongol (Angle) slam, and a Mongol (Jack) hammer and pins Meng to put everyone out of their misery.

YUJI NAGATA/KENDO KA SHIN vs. KENSUKE SASAKI/MANABU NAKANISHI

The most watchable parts of this are due to Kendo Ka Shin, who’d have thunk it? Especially considering that Kensuke Sasaki was considered the MVP for 2004. Ka Shin doesn’t do anything special, he just acts like himself, the loose cannon type whom you’ll never quite know what he’ll do. Ka Shin and Nakanishi look like they’ll start off (they’re old rivals, which is the reason Nagata teamed with Ka Shin), but then Ka Shin quickly tags out to Nagata. That doesn’t stop him from taking a few cheap shots from the apron, or sneaking a shot or two in behind the ref’s back. That’s what keeps Nagata’s team ahead here, whenever it looks like the heel team is about to get the upper hand, Ka Shin will do something to stop that. When Ka Shin is legal in the match, he’s never in trouble for long, and he still manages to get under his opponents’ skin by knocking Nakanishi off the apron several times

It shows how important Ka Shin’s contributions to the match with how quickly it dies when he’s taken out. He gets sent to the floor, and winds up walking up the ramp to argue with either a mascot or just a guy in a silly mask. Nagata is on his own and the heels work him over. They’ll occasionally work in something interesting, like Nakanishi’s attempt at a Nagata Lock II or Kensuke dumping him with a big German suplex, but they mostly just stick to chops and forearm shots, and since Yuji has never been a great seller, it’s not very fun to watch. Thankfully, Ka Shin comes back, and saves Yuji from a Kensuke lariat by tripping him, and then saves him from an Argentine Backbreaker by kicking Manabu in the grapefruits. Ka Shin throws powder in Nakanishi’s face and that allows Nagata to hit a backdrop for the pin. It’s odd enough that Ka Shin’s doing his same old stuff wound up being the sole reason that the match didn’t totally suck, and it even makes me a bit sad that he basically faded away after the next year.

BOB SAPP © vs. SHINSUKE NAKAMURA (IWGP Heavyweight Title)

The booking didn’t matter here, neither outcome was going to be much good. The choices for champion were a shooter who was charismatic, but not fully committed to the company, and based on the attendance here, he wasn’t a draw (35,000 in the Tokyo Dome). Or Nakamura, a kid with about 20 months under his belt, and who’s fun to watch, but a bit of a one trick pony at this point. While the booking won’t be good, the match is (although it’s not great or anything), but the way they work it, it’d be hard to disappoint. They’ve both only got one basic skill. Nakamura can flash submission out of nowhere, and Sapp has his power moves. The match is worked in such a way that it’s basically a sort of contest to see who can outsmart whom. When Sapp grabs Nakamura and tries for something like a powerbomb, Nakamura will counter him with an armbar or Triangle choke. When Nakamura tries to take Sapp down and apply something, Sapp will power out of it and slam down Nakamura. The story isn’t anything too special, but the important thing is that they stick with it. The whole match isn’t about them countering though, there are times when they can actually do what they’re attempting, like when Nakamura walks into Sapp’s dropkick, or when Nakamura surprises Sapp with the Russian Leg sweep and then applies the armbar. Sapp even attempts some selling when he shakes out his arm and tries to crack his neck. It’s nothing great, but the thought is nice.

There are still some problems with the match though. Namely Sapp’s execution, he just looks so clumsy and lumbering, you’re almost afraid he’ll legit hurt Nakamura. Nakamura is better, but he slips up a bit too, one of his Shining Triangles wound up with his legs around Sapp’s waist instead of neck. The Beast Bomb kick out at one toward the end is another of their weird ideas. It makes sense in the vein of Nakamura using his last bit of strength to survive, but it’s a spot that would have been better utilized in the beginning of the match. Plus, that comes on the heels of Nakamura getting hit with a lariat, and taking a full back flip bump and selling it like death. But no matter, because Sapp just grabs Nakamura and plants him with a second Beast Bomb and pins him. No, it’s not great, or even very good. But it’s something that this show sorely needed, and it’s a bit unique, because neither of them could have this kind of match, with these sort of results, with anyone else. ***

Conclusion: A horrible draw, and a horrible show. Sapp vs. Nakamura was impressive, but that’s surely able to be found on a compilation tape. Recommendation to not only avoid, but if anyone else even mentions in passing they want to watch this entire show, stop them, tie them up and make sure to destroy the tape or discs.