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The Navigation Log 9.30.07: A Great Voyage Ends

September 30, 2007 | Posted by Matt Short

I hate weeks that are longer than they need to be. Wednesday feels like Friday and the knowledge that you have papers to write forces you to remain sober. If I had less academic integrity I’d write them all drunk. Blast my conscious. You can all thank me later for laying off the hooch long enough to write this one for you.

Great Voyage in Osaka is over. Rather than sift through the entire card of pointless tag matches, let’s focus on the two title matches.

Muscling In
In my preview last weekend, I reported how the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles were going to be defended in Osaka against a Dragon Gate team. It was decided over the week that the team of Naruki Doi and Genki Horiguchi from The Muscle Outlaw’z would challenge for the belts. This was Doi’s second shot at the GHC belts, having failed once before teaming with Masato Yoshino.

MO’z came up short again on Saturday as the champion team of Kotaro Suzuki and Ricky Marvin turned back the Dragon Gate challengers. Did anyone expect them to lose the titles? Didn’t think so. I haven’t heard any reports about the quality of the match. I will however guess that there were some big spots and the entire match was most likely fast paced. I know this from having seen several Suzuki/Marvin matches in my time.

Give this one a look if it comes up on YouTube. Dragon Gate has been having great matches with NOAH’s Jr. Heavyweight all year and I’m willing to bet that they continue the streak here.

GHC Rematch
The Osaka show was headlined by a title defense by Mitsuhara Misawa against the winner of the Determination League Tournament, Naomichi Marufuji. There was a solid build for this as Marufuji had won the tournament a few weeks ago after some very impressive wins of Akitoshi Saito and Takeshi Morishima. He looked as strong as he ever was to get a rematch against the man who took the title away from him last year.

However, as much as I would have loved to see Marufuji recapture the GHC Heavyweight title here, there was really no way this was going to happen. Why? The obvious answer is Samoa Joe. While I’m sure there are a lot more people out there who would rather see Marufuji vs. Joe headlining the Budokan, Misawa vs. Joe is considered to be the bigger draw. And probably for the conservative Tokyo crowd it will be. Even still the outcome of the Samoa Joe match is pretty damn obvious to everyone too. There’s no way Misawa is going to give his company’s title to an outsider much less a TNA representative. The only possible way Joe would win the title is if they somehow figured that if Joe held the title until Kenta Kobashi came back they can book Joe vs. Kobashi II. Which I honestly don’t want to see because Kobashi really should not be counted on to carry NOAH. He’s too beat up and honestly he’ll be lucky to return to the ring at this point.

Joe vs. Misawa is now set for October. Let’s hope for the best as far as that goes, but NOAH is going to need a new champion and fast. Great Voyage drew in some low numbers from early reports and some are taking this as a sign that Misawa just isn’t drawing like he used to. While it is outside of Tokyo, it is something NOAH is going to have to consider.

MIA
If you’ve been reading the column for awhile you might ask “Matt, isn’t there another title in NOAH? The Jr. Heavyweight title?”

Well, yes there is. Shut up a second so I can talk about it.

The GHC Jr. Heavyweight title is currently held by Mushi-King Terry. He won the belt back in April of this year. He’s defended it once against Rocky Romero I believe. Terry winning the belt was supposed to be something of a big deal a way to draw in young fans to see this character based off of a children’s cartoon. There even seemed to be plans to have Terry face off against Yoshinari Ogawa for the title. That seems to have just fallen through though.

The problem is that right now the Jr. Tag Team division is red hot. And Mushi-King Terry is portrayed by Kotaro Suzuki, one half of the tag champions. Suzuki is tied up in the tag division so much that his singles title is left by the wayside. It’s somewhat unavoidable since NOAH wants to make money and they’re going to make the most money having Suzuki in tag matches.

Here’s the issue. While Suzuki is getting insanely over in a tag team, the singles title is being forgotten. And it is never good for a company to ignore a title. Especially a belt with a history like the GHC Jr. Heavyweight belt. Singles titles are pretty damn important, but when one is sort of put aside it hurts the credibility of the belt and the guy who’s holding it. The way NOAH tends to operate they seem to forget about a title from time to time and when they forget it they’ll immediately hot shot it to the first possible challenger. This is what happened to the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Titles. They were all but forgotten until The Briscoes took them in January which set in motion Suzuki and Marvin’s current run. Terry’s win was made into a big deal by NOAH but they’ve failed to capitalize on it. Get Terry some defenses ASAP because if you’re going to make a guy like Suzuki work a gimmick like that let him actually do it with style while defending the belt.

Direct From Japan
A new feature that I’m trying out here at the Navigation Log is to try and provide you, the common non-Japanese puro fan with some quality matches. It’s hard to know what to look for and Japan offers a lot more than just NOAH, All Japan, New Japan, and Dragon Gate. And even still there’s great stars that don’t get the same kind of exposure that others do in America. So I’m going to star including matches from all kinds of promotions that I find here and there.

For all of October I’m featuring the Dramatic Dream Team (DDT) promotion. They’re an indy promotion that started back in 1997 that’s well known for mixing great comedy wrestling with some amazing puro style matches. They’re very popular as far as Japanese Indy feds go and have produced some great stars. DDT’s wrestlers have been featured in America in the CHIKARA promotion. They’ve sent teams for the Tag World Grand Prix and King of Trios tournaments. While they have some amazing matches, what draws a lot of fans in is the sheer insanity of some of their comedy matches.

Which brings us to this month’s feature. It is a battle royale for Ironman Heavymetal Championship. Think of this belt as the 24/7 WWF Hardcore title except on crack. Not only is the belt on the line all the time, but literally anyone or anything can (and probably will) win the title. In the case of this match, the current champion is Ladder. As in a ladder.

In this particular match you’ll be seeing some DDT stand-bys like Poison Sawada JUILIE, Mango Fukuda, and the world’s worst cruiserweight Gorgeous Matsuno. Enjoy!

Next week, we’ll look at one of DDT’s less comical matches.

At Home
So a five second TV spot airs with no explanation on Raw Monday night. What’s the IWC’s immediate response to this?

Save_US.222 is Chris Jericho.

Yes, after the viral marketing of ROH’s Age of the Fall comes the WWE’s version of it. Fans have jumped all over this in the mere seconds after the ad ended with theories and picking apart all the lines of file names for connections to Jericho. And they’re there interestingly enough. Hell, people have even found biblical references in the 222 number that point to Jericho. But then some other people think that the 222 points to Shelton Benjamin. Other ideas that have been thrown around have been a debut for the New Hart Foundation or Billy Gunn for some reason.

Still others think that those reading into every little detail of this TV spot are crazy and should be laughed at. Which I kind of feel, because while I think it’s cool I’m in no way planning on spending time debating every aspect of it. But what the WWE’s done here is gotten people talking about something other than steroids. If they bring back Jericho its huge and they have successfully brought in a major star with the proper fanfare. If it’s someone new they’re getting a hell of an introduction. Honestly, as much as I’d like to see Jericho back in the WWE (or in wrestling in general) I really want this to be a way to introduce some new stars to the company. I miss new guys getting some major angle to introduce them. This seems like a great way to get the New Hart Foundation over right out the gate.

Short Takes
-Faction wars are going to be fun on ROH. Trust me, just let them get started before you judge them

-The TPI might have lost some big names, but I’ve been hearing nothing but positive things about the show. Go figure, you don’t need Samoa Joe and Low Ki to put on a good indy event. You’d think people would have learned that after the 2005 TPI.

-People were really quick to think Randy Orton had been suspended this past Monday. Maybe he has changed his ways, but he’s going to keep the stigma of being a bag shitter.

I can’t breathe due to the fall allergies, so I’m going to bed. Fuck you pollen index.

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Matt Short

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