The Navigation Log 7.22.07: Thoughts on ROH in Tokyo

Behold faithful reader. You are looking at my last edition of the Navigation Log written from Japan. After this week I’ll be back home and a few weeks after that back to school. I’ll still bring the puro coverage, but I’m losing quite a bit of advantages. For one thing, I’ll lose being able to know the results of any Japanese wrestling show before anyone State side. So long time difference. However I gain the ability to watch WWE and TNA on TV again. But mostly I’ll not be able to go to another puro show for at least the next year. Tragedy, I know.

We’ve got a bonanza of show results from last Sunday’s Budokan show from NOAH and I want to give my full impressions on the ROH in Japan show I attended. Let’s get the lead out.

7/15 NOAH Budokan Results
1. Davey Richards, Thoruf & Akihiko Ito beat Masao Inoue, Tsutomu Hirayanagi & Ippei Ota
2. Takuma Sano & Junji Izumida beat Tamon Honda & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi
3. Yoshinari Ogawa & Shuhei Taniguchi beat Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Atsushi Aoki
4. Takeshi Morishima, Mohammed Yone & Go Shiosaki beat Nigel McGuinness, Bryan Danielson & Rocky Romero
5. Yoshihiro Takayama & Takashi Sugiura beat Akitoshi Saito & Makoto Hashi
6. NTV Cup: KENTA & Taiji Ishimori beat Naomichi Marufuji & Kota Ibushi
7. NTV Cup: Kotaro Suzuki & Ricky Marvin and The Briscoes went to a 30 minute draw
8. GHC Tag Team Title: Jun Akiyama & Takeshi Rikio (c) beat Kentaro Shiga & Kishin Kawabata (3rd defense)
9. GHC Heavyweight Title: Mitsuharu Misawa (c) beat Akira Taue (4th defense)

The big news from this show was KENTA and Taiji Ishimori winning the NTV cup. Reports of the match say it was match of the night. With The Briscoes and Marvin and Suzuki going to a draw KENTA and Ishimori came out on top with 7 points. It’s highly likely that they will get a shot at the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team titles sometime soon because of this win. Unfortunately, KENTA injured his knee in the match. I haven’t heard how severe the injury actually is but he missed both ROH shows and that’s not a good sign. Hopefully KENTA will be healthy soon, because he and Ishimori vs. Marvin and Suzuki is something I’d love to see.

The GHC Heavyweight Tag Team titles pretty much went as expected. I’m still interested in seeing it. I’m curious as to how close Shiga and Kawabata came to winning or if they were just outright squashed. Seems to be leaning toward squash, but I still love those guys. The main event really could have gone either way I thought. Which was being optimistic I guess. I would really rather have seen Taue take the gold since I think there’s just better match ups for him. Misawa is running out believable opponents it seems. So who’s next? Some people are saying Yoshihiro Takayama who I think would be a great opponent for Misawa. The other name that I’ve seen is Akitoshi Saito. Saito is currently competing in the ZERO1-MAX Fire Festival. If he has a strong showing there it would be a quick, easy way to build Misawa’s next challenger. Winning the whole thing would an even better case for him.

ROH in Tokyo: The Reckoning
While I haven’t been to too many live wrestling shows, the ROH in Tokyo show was easily the best. Maybe because it had the air of something special. Maybe it was the beer. All I know is, ROH tore down the walls of Differ Ariake. What a show.

The first thing I noticed was the type of crowd that this drew. From the other shows I’ve seen in Japan they tend to bring out the older end of the scale. Business men, ring rats (you can never guess how old they really are), and old school puro fans. This is the kind of audience that will sit on their hands for most of a show, no matter how good it is. Unless the match has built itself to a certain point of intensity they pretty much just respond with applause and “Oooh” for the big spots. The crowd for this however had a lot of younger guys there. ROH seemed to draw in a lot of high school aged kids. There was a sizable crowd waiting out front and when the show started they were LOUD. It was amazing hearing some of the familiar ROH chants being throw around out there. There were still quite a few of the old style fans who looked with a great deal of annoyance at some of the crowd. I don’t want to give the impression that this audience was acting like the type you’d see at any American ROH show. It was like some weird hybrid.

The opening tag match of Jack Evans and Kotaro Suzuki against Rocky Romero and Davey Richards of the No Remorse Corps was a great way to start. The NRC jumped Delirious at the start of the show, who was giving the welcome promo. A brilliant choice I believe since there is really no language barrier for lizard-men. Japan loves Jack, possibly because he speaks Japanese. In fact that’s probably exactly why. The NRC killed Jack and I was disappointed that Suzuki didn’t get a whole lot of ring time, but you take what you get.

The NOAH exhibition was a surprise. They had announced that they were going to do something with NOAH’s young stars, but didn’t detail exactly what that would be. Shuhei Taniguchi and Akihito Ito put on a good little puro-style match. It was treated as such, especially since they’re rookies. But I thought it came off extremely well and will probably make the ROH Video Wire. It wasn’t perfect, but it was fun.

Aah what can I say about Jimmy Rave and BJ Whitmer. It was fun to watch, I’ll say that. The wrestling wasn’t that great, but the crowd’s reaction to Rave was just hilarious. First, he got the toilet paper. That’s not supposed to happen any more since The Embassy broke up, but Japan can be forgiven as I think they really wanted to do it. Then they cheered for Jimmy a little bit. Then there was a small “Die Jimmy, Die” chant. Then some more cheering for him. Then “YOU SUCK RAVE.” No one really cared about Whitmer, though I did see a lot of people buy his t-shirt. I think had Whitmer brought out some of his nastier looking suplexes this would have gone over better. But some people just don’t gel in the ring.

The match that I must stress that everyone watch from this show is Bryan Danielson vs. Go Shiozaki. This match was incredible. Danielson’s credentials speak for themselves, but I had some concerns about Shiozaki. The guy is good, but from his few singles matches that I’ve seen it’s been unclear how good. Maybe it could be chalked up to him just being in there with Danielson, but I think that he really held his own. He owned Dragon at the start until Danielson attacked the arm and was unable to throw his stiff chops. The ROH fans were loving it, but the whole crowd went crazy as things really started picking up. Danielson’s spring board dive to the outside got a ROH chant. They did an awesome no-sell series before and each man survived the other’s finishers before Cattle Mutilation finally put Shiozaki away. Great match, check it out ASAP.

The Fight Without Honor was what it was. Nothing too special or extreme given that this feud was something of a placeholder while Austin Aries was out. That’s what it always felt like to me. It was a decent match, and Delirious bringing out the ladder woke people up. There was one kid who had a real hard on for Delirious and sounded like he was having a seizure. Good match, couldn’t top Danielson vs. Shiozaki but had it’s moments like Strong backdropping Delirious through the ladder off the apron to the floor.

The six man with Marufuji and The Briscoes vs. Matt Sydal, KENTA, and Ricky Marvin hit a snag before it started. That was KENTA being injured and having to pull out of the match. He was replaced by Aoki and to be honest there are worse guys they could have picked. Aoki is good, just not on the same level as KENTA. He worked well here for being put in at the last minute, but the crowd was a bit out of it at this point. The popped huge for Marufuji & The Briscoes and Marufuji helping out on the Doomsday Device. Marvin didn’t get a whole lot of ring time, but what he did have was solid. He pulled off an awesome rope walk dropkick and a lot of his signature evasion moves. Good match, but definitely needed KENTA to have the same feel that they were all hoping for.

Nigel McGuinness vs. Takeshi Morishima. This really did have a big match feel. There was even a dueling chant! What really surprised me about this was how pro-Nigel the place was. Morishima was even getting heel heat which was weird. I would say this one was better than their previous encounter and the few high spots helped. Nigel giving Morishima the Tower of London from the top rope to the floor was incredible. Going into the match, I’ll admit I really wanted to see Nigel win, but this match made me a believer in Morishima as champ. He’s improved a lot and his quick matches fit him as the monster champ. Thus, when someone like Nigel comes along and lengthens the match it’s something special. Plus, the Backdrop Driver is SICK. He can be ROH champ for as long as they want.

I don’t know how well this will all translate onto DVD. But damned if it wasn’t a fun time.

Back Home
The Great American Bash! Tonight! And for as much grief as many people are giving the main event, this card looks solid. Very solid. First, you’ve got Dusty Rhodes returning to the ring in a Bull Rope Match against Randy Orton. It won’t be pretty, but you know Rhodes will make it entertaining and the build has been done well. Then Matt Hardy vs. MVP has the potential to be the sleeper hit of the night while we also get Umaga vs. Jeff Hardy for the Intercontinental title. And Umaga is awesome, let’s not kid ourselves here.

The show might not be the prettiest on paper, but it really looks like it could be fun. Sandman vs. Carlito in a Singapore Cane on a Pole match? Sign me up! They also just added a Cruiserweight title match where Chavo will defend against four other men. That has some potential, even if these multi-man cruiserweight matches haven’t come off so well in the past.

And while I’m not thrilled with everyone in the main event I doubt they will be as bad as some people think. Cena is the best worker on Raw and Lashley, while boring as sin, is capable of having good matches too. Then there’s The Great Khali defending agains Batista and Kane. Wow. I’ve send in the past that Khali should be as far away from a World title as humanly possible, but I’m strangely OK with this. Why? Smackdown has almost no one else to fill the void left by Edge leaving. What about Batista? Know something? To hell with Batista. While he has the good matches, he still doesn’t deserve to win the belt back yet in my eyes. I’d rather see someone else win it and it keeps Smackdown from looking like Raw. Meaning two face champions who are unbeatable. That was getting pretty damn old after awhile.

But check out the Bash if you want! There’s a lot worse things you could watch. Like Nancy Grace.

Short Takes
-I will never be able to get over how much Nancy Grace’s name crops up on this site now. Dammit, even I’m doing it.

-Monty “Marcus CorVon” Brown no showed ECW due to a family emergency. Jokes were made. I laughed. Yeah, I think we’re going to be fine.

-I’m planning on going to ROH on August 11th as a celebration for returning home without illegitimate children. Quack vs. Danielson will be great, make no mistake about it. They had a short match in the Ted Petty 2004 semi-finals that was pretty good, I’d love to see them with more time.

-I’d seen Morishima live before, but he was just a different animal at the ROH show compared to when I’d seen him with NOAH.

-Go Shiozaki will be a star some day.

Before I finish, I want to give my condolences over the death of John Kronus. We really are losing guys fast these days and there’s nothing to really say about it except it’s sad. It feels like we’re losing an entire generation of wrestlers at this point, all guys I grew up watching. I hope to God WWE is serious about the company being cleaner than it was back then because I don’t want to be here ten years later hearing about the deaths of Lance Cade or Randy Orton. And I do hate is that until the media gets bored of it, whenever a wrestler dies they’re going to beat it into the ground. But I will give kudos to New Jack for going on TV and not acting like New Jack. Peace!