The Navigation Log 7.13.08: Rising Rookies, New Champions, and Cram Schools

Posted by Matt Short on 07.13.2008

The young stars of Japan get a chance to shine when the Kensuke Office goes up against Kobashi and his students, Tiger Mask IV takes the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title, Dragon Gate prepares for its US show and Tozawa-juku finds some failure to balance out their success. Also, some thoughts on Mark Henry's new found 'net popularity.

The heat is slowly creeping back up. Dammit, I hate summer. But it is thankfully winding down and we'll be back to glorious winter. Plus, come winter I can start planning my move back to Japan for English teaching. If I'm lucky I can get there in December to see the annual NOAHful Gift on Christmas Eve and Indy Summit on New Year's Eve. It's a pipe dream so far, but truth be told, no one does New Year's like the Japanese. Never have I seen an entire nation as completely fucked up on the same night. Countdown shows for pretty much anything, music, sports, comedy, or television are top notch. Plus, people give you cash. Tell me that's not awesome.

Onto the Navigation Log!

NOAH's Endless Summer
We're getting into the dog days of the Summer Navigation as NOAH prepares for the big, two-part finale. It's going to be two great shows where we see Takeshi Morishima battle Kensuke Sasaki and then defend his GHC Heavyweight Title against Takeshi Rikio. But leading up to this, there was a show this past week which had a rather interesting main event that I thought I'd discuss.

Summer Navigation has been something of a war between freelance promotion Kensuke Office and Kenta Kobashi. It kicked off At GREAT VOYAGE when Sasaki and his protégé Katsuhiko Nakajima went to a time limit draw that turned into a brawl between KENTA and Nakajima afterwards. Since then Nakajima has been getting beaten up by various NOAH stars like Jun Akiyama. He's set to face Mitsuharu Misawa at the Budokan as well. This past week had another Kobashi vs. Kensuke Office match when Kobashi teamed with his long-time friend Tamon Honda and rookie Akihito Ito to face Sasaki, Nakajima, and Kensuke Office rookie Kento Miyahara. I don't think I've ever seen anything from Miyahara as the guy has pretty much been wrestling for under a year. To make a long story short though, Ito got the main event pin by beating Miyahara. I like that finish. Ito is usually on the lower end of things for the NOAH rookies, but it looks like here he got to pull rank over Miyahara.

I strongly approve this series of matches. Kobashi and Sasaki right now both look like father figures to their younger stars (well, that's pretty much Sasaki's gimmick) and having them mix it up is a great plan and opens up some fresh match-ups for all the rookies involved. The next big battle between NOAH and Kensuke Office will be on a SEM Show in August. Kensuke Sasaki will team up with Katsuhiko Nakajima, Kento Miyahara, & Takashi Okita will face Kenta Kobashi, KENTA, Atsushi Aoki, & Akihito Ito in an elimination-style match. Kobashi vs. Sasaki will be a given as will KENTA vs. Nakajima, but additional pairings with the rookies are why I care about this match. NOAH is using 2008 to push their young stars and that is great news.

The whole SEM show looks really interesting too. Aside from the inevitable Kobashi/Sasaki showdown in the main event, the legendary Ultimo Dragon will team with two of his students Takeshi Minamino and Amigo Suzuki against Naomichi Marufuji, Taiji Ishimori, & Ippei Ota. The bout is being called "Lucha Maniac in Korakuen." Fuck yes. SEM shows have had awesome line-ups this year.

New Japan: Tiger Mask Still Rules
New Japan ran a rather brief single elimination tournament to fill the vacated IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title that came down to Tiger Mask against Prince Devitt in the finals. Tiger Mask won, maintaining the momentum that he'd built up during his great run during Best of the Super Juniors. This is his fourth time winning the belt (not counting the previous incarnations of Tiger Mask), and he should prove to be a serviceable champion for the time being.

Also in New Japan, the final participant in the G1 Climax tournament is going to be All Japan's Satoshi Kojima. Kojima will be fresh off an injury and looking to really leave his mark on the tournament, but his chances of winning the whole thing are rather low. I'd prefer it if New Japan went with someone new, but there's still plenty of time to debate who has the right merits to win the tournament. Heavyweight tournaments are always fun as it means either awesome first-time meetings or sequels to classic one-on-one bouts from the past.

Dragon Gate: US Tour 2008
Dragon Gate is set to make its big United States debut on the west coast. They've already announced a part of the card for their show at John Anson Ford Park on September 5th. West Coast guys would probably be able to give a good idea of what the venue is like. These are the matches so far:

-El Generico vs. Genki Horiguchi
-Dangerous Comedy Match: "Hollywood" Stalker Ichikawa vs. Necro Butcher
-Taku Iwasa & Kenichiro Arai vs. Dragon Kid & Don Caras

The posters for the show are also advertising appearances by Masato Yoshino, Shingo Takagi, Naurki Doi, and BxB Hulk. Fans should also expect other well known talent as PAC and The Young Bucks are also on the ads. They're also announcing CIMA and a special appearance by Hayabusa. Hayabusa is there for autographs, which I expect CIMA will be doing as well since he's in no shape to wrestle at all. Stalker is going to be fucking murdered by Necro. As if his MMA debut match wasn't bad enough, Necro is probably going to break the jaw of that scrawny little… whatever the hell Stalker Ichikawa is.

In Japan now though, a lot of focus still seems to be going to Tozawa-juku, though it's not all good news. Akira Tozawa has given up his fat man gimmick. The Metabolic Bros. are no more as Tozawa has promised to go on a diet and wear the standard Tozawa-juku ring gear. He claims to have been inspired by the successes the stable has seen since Taku Iwasa, Kenichiro Arai, and Shinobu won the Open the Triangle Gate titles. Since El Generico has now joined the group as an exchange student, Tozawa wants in and that means losing the weight. Yuki "Katsuo" Ono is still holding out though.

But like I said, all is not well in the land of Tozawa-juku. In a match to decide the next opponents for Ryo Saito & Susumu Yokosuka's Open the Twin Gate titles, Iwasa & Arai lost to TOKYO GURENTAI members NOSAWA Rongai & MAZADA. Then to cap it off they lost the Open the Triangle Gate titles in their first defense to a Real Hazard team of YAMATO, Yasushi Kanda, & Gamma. They'll have to turn it things around again, but right now it seems like Tozawa-juku is on the right path. Tozawa is getting serious again while the additions of Shinobu and Generico add some extra depth to the unit. I prefer them having a resurgence than just breaking up. They are at this point the longest running unit in Dragon Gate and that's only because they haven't been broken up since their creation. No where near the longevity of groups like the Italian Connection, Crazy Max, or M2K but respectable considering there's a major unit shift every year in DG.

Despite being the former champions, Tozawa-juku will not be fielding a team to try to retake the belts. Instead they will be contested in a four-corners six-man war at the next PPV: it will be YAMATO, Yasushi Kanda & Gamma defending against Naruki Doi, Masato Yoshino, & Naoki Tanisaki for World-1, Dragon Kid, Anthony W. Mori, & PAC of Typhoon, and Masaaki Mochizuki, Don Fuji, & Magnitude Kishiwada of the Over 30 Set. I get a feeling we're either going to see a title retention or World-1 taking the gold.

Weekly Puro
We missed last week due to the praise of Japanese indies and the video of Shadow WX lighting himself on fire without realizing that fire is hot. So rather to change the pace, we're going with something from NOAH this week. I talked up this match enough that I think I should share it. From the GREAT VOYAGE, it's Kenta Kobashi & KENTA vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima. This is a match of the year candidate for me, probably behind CIMA vs. Masato Yoshino. Enjoy! Since we're past the mid-point of the year, I'm going to start putting up matches that I feel should be taken into consideration when talking about MOTY come December.

Pro Wrestling NOAH GREAT VOYAGE: Kenta Kobashi & KENTA vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima







At Home
I missed at least half of Impact this week, and I'm pissed because it happened to be the half with Doug Williams. Oh how I'd love to see the Chaos Theory on television. I guess the replay will have to do. The World X-Cup is winding down and I really kind of hope they don't go the predictable route and have Team TNA win it. That seems to be the case, though Team Mexico would be another safe bet too. They got some big stars for Team Mexico and I'm not quite sure CMLL would want their guys jobbing on American PPV to Curry Man. Nothing wrong with Curry Man, I'm a huge fan of curry, but he is a comedy act. I'm not so sure if they'd be as strict about it with New Japan or Dragon Gate. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't pulling for Team Japan and my hope is that they let Speed Muscle and Milano Collection AT really cut loose. I see them being great for the trios match, but have a slightly harder time picturing them doing the Ultimate X.

Let's talk about Mark Henry and his meteoric rise in popularity on the Internets. I won't claim to have been a Henry fan before his title win but I can say that I didn't hate on him as much as I have seen some do in the past. He was bland for the longest time and I just didn't have an opinion about him. I saw him have some good matches against the Undertaker and was really looking forward to some kind of blow off match to follow up on the Batista injury angle. But it never panned out. Henry's biggest problem was that he would spend weeks being fed jobbers in ridiculous squash matches and just as he was about to start impacting things farther up the card he would get hurt. He could never sustain momentum. Then in the lead up to his title win, he was barely even considered a factor. His placement in the match seemed like it was just unnecessary until he got drafted to ECW. Even in the build it was hard to care about him because it felt like more of the same. The biggest difference though: they let him talk. Henry isn't the greatest promo guy by any means, but damn all if he isn't good. His ECW Title reign is so far the most interesting thing they've done with the guy. Before when he had a promo it was really kind of just boring because his character was boring. The World's Strongest Champion gimmick now is perfect for him. People have asked for years why the WWE locked Henry into a long contract of why they still keep him around. His title reign now is why. Mark Henry is so far a great ECW Champion and is perfect to play the role of giant and I'm glad he's finally getting a chance to break out and get some recognition.

Short Takes
-The big question about the renewed Edge and Vickie wedding is going to be who's going to fuck it up. Smart money is on Triple H.

-Hawkins & Ryder are the worst toadies ever. Hell, at least The Bashems in JBL's Cabinet got to win matches and were being pushed as bad asses. What did Those Edge Guys do before La Familia? Suck, that's what. I know there's got to be a low man on the totem pole in stables, but damn they're just useless.

-I'm gonna have to watch AAA Triplemania XVI. Just because it's a big show and I need to watch more lucha libre. Jeez, why the hell don't I get Galavision?

-Domino had his best match ever against Mr. Kennedy this week. Too bad it was just him getting beat on, but he sold it well. Things were helped by the crowd hanging onto every move Kennedy made.

-How to add more depth to Festus: have other stimuli for him. Like if he hears an air horn he does a super hardcore or if he hears a whistle he turns into a technical wrestler. Book it.

That's all for this week. I'm fucking tired, so I'm gonna get a night cap or seven and hit the hay. Until next week then, peace!