NOAH “The First Navigation” 1/6/08
NOAH, 06.01.2008
Tokyo Differ Ariake
1,800 Fans - Super No Vacancy
1. Kishin Kawabata & Kentaro Shiga vs. Junji Izumida & Genba Hirayanagi **
2. Takuma Sano & Akihiko Ito vs. Tamon Honda & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi ***
3. Akira Taue & Masao Inoue vs. Doug Williams & Nigel McGuinness **3/4
4. Yoshinari Ogawa & Kotaro Suzuki vs. KENTA & Taiji Ishimori ***3/4
5. Jun Akiyama & Shuhei Taniguchi vs. Akitoshi Saito & Bison Smith ***
6. Atsushi Aoki Shining Magic 10 Match Series 2nd:
Atsushi Aoki vs. Davey Richards ***
7. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title:
Yoshinobu Kanemaru (c) vs. Rocky Romero ***1/4
8. Mitsuharu Misawa, Go Shiosaki & Ippei Ota vs. Takeshi Morishima, Naomichi Marufuji & Mohammed Yone ***1/2
I like NOAH, but their booking and their style in the ring can be a little stifling at times. They make up for it with good the great matches on a consistent basis. On this card, although there was nothing above a three star and a half star match, there was some great wrestling and a very small important ingriedient. A storyline. KENTA continues to have great matches at the strt of the new year and I like his little feud with Ogawa over respect. Doug & Nigel did really well. Bison Smith is hit and miss with his over the top histrionics, but he’s mostly hit in a fun sort of way. Aoki vs. Richards was good but Richards looks sometimes like he is just going throught the motions and not really stringing along any logic. Still a very athletic & fast paced match, as was Kanemura vs. Romero. The best was saved for last in my eyes, as the spectatcle of Morishima, Marufuji, and Yone took on Misawa, Ippei, and Go, and they had a wonderful match.
