The Navigation Log 09.21.08: GREAT VOYAGE, CHIKARA vs. Big Japan, and IGF Awesomeness

Posted by Matt Short on 09.21.2008

NOAH heads to Osaka for a one shot show with Kensuke Sasaki defending the GHC Heavyweight Title against Mohammad Yone in the main event! We'l also look at who NOAH can throw at Sasaki for some decent title defenses. We'll also do a short preview of CHIKARA's Global Gauntlet against Big Japan's finest and a hell of a bout from Antonio Inoki's IGF that you have to see to believe.

I hope you'll all understand if this column isn't up to snuff this week. I've been helping my girlfriend with her pet rat this weekend. The dumb thing had an operation to get a tumor removed, which went well. But being that this thing is a rat she has to chew the sutures out. She managed to do it a few hours after her operation at the damn vet! Bled all over. So after a couple late nights, on Friday morning she finally managed to get one open. I've got to watch the little thing like a hawk because it's a huge pain taking her in every morning to be re-glued. Why to such lengths for a rodent? People love their pets no matter what. Rats are bitching anyway.

Onto the Navigation Log!

First of all, I wanted to say thanks for all the positive feedback I've gotten over the past few weeks. Didn't quite realize how many readers I'd attracted with this thing. That aside, seems like most people were in agreement that the finish, if not the entire Morishima vs. Sasaki title match was kind of down if not flat out sloppy. As I've said, I was enjoying the match right up until the finish. Morishima seemed to get less motivated as it went along. At the same time it would have been much more exciting a finish had he survived that first Northern Lights Bomb. Seemed like a match that just didn't click all the way through.

NOAH: GREAT VOYAGE in Osaka
The one-shot GREAT VOYAGE show is shaping up to be an interesting evening of matches. Takeshi Morishima is going to be taking Kensuke Sasaki's protege Katsuhiko Nakajima in a one-on-one bout. Not quite the same as taking on the man who took your belt, but hurting someone close to him might be the next best thing. Morishima doesn't always have the best luck against smaller guys though. Case in point: dropping a few matches to Marufuji last year. Main thing though it Morishima needs to get back on the winning track.

Also, a 2/3 Falls match between Naomichi Marufuji & Ricky Marvin against KENTA & Taiji Ishimori is set. KENTA & Ishimori are ridding high after their NTV Cup win and winning here will carry their success up to a shot at the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles. Marufuji &Marvin are an untested team, though they are both highly skilled fliers. If they mesh well they could be a threat, but I would highly doubt seeing Marufuji going after any junior titles. Seems like too much of a step down. Should be a very competitive match regardless.

New Japan is actually going to be represented at this show. In an interesting turn two of their rookies, Yujiro & Tetsuo Naito to challenge Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Kotarto Suzuki for the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team belts. Very unique match to say the least. The challengers are huge long shots, being both outsiders and relative rookies even in New Japan. Kanemaru easily dwarfs both of them in terms of experience and his team with Suzuki has been fairly dominant. Yujiro and Naito have both claimed that they don't care about the GHC titles and that there's no honor for them to be holding NOAH belts. They just want some titles to wear. Very nice kayfabe on their part, after all New Japan and NOAH are rival companies. Can't go around praising the others even if this is a friendly exchange on the surface. Kanemaru & Suzuki could definitely use this win after losing two in a row to KENTA & Ishimori in the NTV Cup finals and playoff, so expect them to retain. Is it too much to suspect a title change though? NOAH loves putting these on outsiders. Just look at The Briscoes, Speed Muscle, Shingo Takagi & BxB Hulk. And in case anyone starts to get ideas about a New Japan and NOAH working relationship... well, I wouldn't hold my breath on that. It's nice to dream though.

The main event is another interesting pairing as Mohammad Yone is going to step to the plate against Kensuke Sasaki. He even fired the first shot, by jumping Sasaki at a Kensuke Office show. Yone wants revenge for his friend Morishima's loss, which makes sense. While there's not many people betting in Yone's favor to win the match, there seem to be two schools of thought as to how it will go. I think along with a few others that it will be a quick and hard-hitting bout. As Yone is not expected to win and is a HUGE underdog in this, the odds are good of him coming hard out the gate and getting in a quick flurry of offense before Sasaki mounts his comeback and puts him down. I'm thinking along the lines of Yone's match against Jun Akiyama in late 2006. Then there's people who think it'll go longer, maybe around 20 minutes. I don't see it happening. They're going to devote more time to the big undercard matches previously mentioned and give this about 10-13 minutes tops. Even that is somewhat generous.

But was there no one else for Sasaki's first defense? And who could possibly be after Yone? Well then...

Opponents for Kensuke
Mohammad Yone: Not a terrible choice for a first opponent. True, he lacks the momentum to win the title right now, but he's tied with Morishima and thus is invested in the title hunt at the moment.

Takashi Sugiura: He had his first GHC Heavyweight Title shot against Morishima and came up shot. Yet he managed to get the best defense out of Morishima. He's be okay down the line, but he needs to be rebuilt again for it to be believable.

Takuma Sano: Had a great title match with Misawa last year, but hasn't done shit since apart from a surprise team with Yoshihiro Takayama in the NOAH Heavyweight Tag League. Huge long shot though and a big risk as far as drawing.

Yoshihiro Takayama: A freelancer, so it's not an impossible match to set up.Takayama vs. Sasaki would probably draw well, though with Takayama's age it might not come off as well as some might hope. Regardless, I'd like to see this.

Bison Smith: NOAH needs to bring Smith back. He was on a roll when he and Akitoshi Saito won the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team titles. Last I heard of him he was working a promotion in Puerto Rico. When he finishes there perhaps "NOAH's Top Gaijin" would like a shot at Sasaki?

Akitoshi Saito: Same as with Smith. He was on a roll, but seems to have fallen off the map since winning the titles. He'd need some proper build, but would make a nice challenger.

Mitsuharu Misawa: I feel they'll eventually go with this, but it'll come much later. If Misawa comes to work it could be great.

Jun Akiyama: Fuck yes, I would see this.

That's not even scratching the surface really. NOAH will need to be creative with how they handle Sasaki's run. As I hypothesized last week, it really felt like they wanted to run a Sasaki vs. Kobashi title match. But with Kobashi on the injured list again, NOAH will have to stretch things if they want that to ever happen.

CHIKARA vs. Big Japan
It was back in August that CHIKARA sent out a challenge to various promotions all over the world to assemble a team of their best wrestlers to face a team of CHIKARA's finest in the Global Gauntlet. Groups as big as All Japan and AAA were offered the challenge, but the company that accepted was Big Japan Pro Wrestling. While CHIKARA is famous for blending all kinds of styles from lucha to puro to US wrestling, BJW is known for the art of the deathmatch. While I've no great love for them, an argument could be made that Big Japan has perfected the deathmatch beyond simply fire and light tubes. To where it means something. While I can plead ignorance to many of the BJW team members the guys I am familiar with range from good to awesome.

Captain Ryuji Ito: An unquestionable ace in Big Japan, Ito is famous for his deathmatches. Don't be fooled though, because he's more than a one trick pony. We'll see how well he can do outside the deathmatch in CHIKARA.

Daisuke Sekimoto: Big man, big mullet. Sekimoto is currently one of the rising Japanese indy stars out there and plays the power game well. He's already had a series of great matches with Masato Tanaka. He's not just someone to watch in the Global Gauntlet, but in Japan as well.

Jaki Numazawa: Another deathmatch guy, though I'm not as familiar with him as I am with Ito. I think he carries a chainsaw and I've seen clips of him outside the deathmatch setting during the regular Indy Summit shows in Japan.

Yuji Okabayashi: I have no clue who he is.

That's all so far for Team BJW. Night One of the Global Gauntlet is going to feature five one-on-one matches between BJW and CHIKARA guys then Night Two will be a seven-on-seven gauntlet. Last team standing wins. CHIKARA is going to be captained by Mike Quackenbush himself, who has admitted that he needs to reach across to the rudos for CHIKARA to make this work. Quack will face Ito on Night One while he had tapped for Team CHIKARA Ultimo Breakfast to face Okabayashi while UltraMantis Black will go up against Jaki. Ultimo Breakfast is an interesting choice, seeing as it might be hard to prepare against Okabayashi. Ultimo is just as hard to prepare for, since last year he was a communist cow and the rest of the time is a formless entity known as Create-a-Wrestler. UltraMantis Black, though very evil is a very good choice for Team CHIKARA against Big Japan. He actually has deathmatch experience and is well-versed in the Japanese indies. So while he might seem out-matched against Jaki, it's more equal than you would initially think. I don't know yet who will make up the rest of the teams, but I'd like to hope for Eddie Kingston vs. Daisuke Sekimoto. Please.

And here's some quick news items:

-The small independent group WRESTLE GATE got some time to show off during an All Japan show. The result was HANZO& HANATA beating SUSUMU & Hot Man. I recognize none of these guys apart from SUSUMU who appear as a member of Team Japan during CHIKARA's King of Trios.

-In a play off of the scare when Akira Raijin collapsed in his farewell match, Suwama again made his opponent faint from strikes. MAZADA passed out after a slap, though this appears to be an angle to get over Suwama's strength as opposed to a scary situation.

-Naomichi Marufuji is going to be appearing on an All Japan show next week, wrestling for the All Japan Jr. Heavyweight Title against Ryuji Hijikata. That will be a fun match and then some.

-Awhile back it was reported that Yuki Ono aka Katsuo had resigned from Dragon Gate to take independent bookings. Almost immediately after a fat wrestler wearing a body suit and Cyber Kong mask debuted calling himself Cyber Kongcito. In other words, Ono didn't like being told by the rest of Tozawa-juku to lose some weight.

Weekly Puro
I wanted something simple this week, and I think I've found just that. I haven't often been a fan of Antonio Inoki's IGF promotion on the grounds that it usually sucks no matter who gets booked and the bullshit with Angle winning the 3rd Generation IWGP Title on the first show was just... to much. But this goes a long way to redeeming the group I think. First, you have Kendo Kashin the winner of ROH's Best of American Super Juniors in 2005 and received a "Don't come back" chant. Then you've got Necro Butcher who is Necro Butcher and delivers a very rambling promo at the start of this video. Then there's Rob Van Dam. Yes, The Whole F'ing Show himself. You can start with Wellness jokes any time you want.

IGF Three-Way Dance: Kendo Kashin vs. Necro Butcher vs. Rob Van Dam






At Home
Rat watching has robbed me of so much free time this week, so I've missed both Smackdown and Impact this week. Raw was a fine show, but I thought the cage match opening the show telegraphed the end a bit. They could have done it near the one-hour break and divided it up, then still have had time for Jericho to come out to celebrate. But the final set-up for the ladder match as well as the promo with Randy Orton, JBL, Batista, and Glamarella were both great segments. ECW was a fine show as well and I thought that specifically Jack Swagger looked much less generic. Sure, he still scares the shit out of me but at least this week he didn't look all that bad. And he got to kill a Natural in the process. Now Dolph Zeigler. Well shit, I hope he gets some good booking behind him soon because with a name like that and being introduced just with a handshake and a "Hi there" I can't see this guy catching on in a hurry.

Now there's the whole Jeff Hardy incident. I leave home and don't check the Internet for two days and what happens? Reports come in about Jeff Hardy being taken off an airplane in handcuffs. Then there was something about Matt Hardy making a blog post and GASP not mentioning it. Then last I heard it wasn't nearly as bad as initially reported. From what I last heard and the least dramatic of the stories, what happened was Hardy was drunk on the plane, was removed from the plane, then took a later flight. Don't know about handcuffs or what. Details are so sketchy I barely even know it happened. If public drunkenness ends up being this huge of a problem for Hardy or if the incident is as bad as some are saying then I can see it hurting his main event future. Especially in light of his past issues, this is definitely a bad sign for him. It'll suck because there's a lot of people out there who are clamoring for a title run. And the amount of people who want that is probably making the WWE more than willing to pull the trigger to cash in on that. Since nothing has changed as far as the No Mercy card yet, let's hope things go well.

Short Takes
-I think since returning and making his short appearances, Randy Orton has become a much more interesting figure. I liked him well enough before, but didn't really care all that much. His character is much more compelling now for some reason and the crowd reaction is proving this.

-I hate how Manu is wearing the generic tights Umaga wore when he started. He debuted wearing the white, yellow, and green tights and I guess they changed it so he wouldn't match with Kofi Kingston. But still, he doesn't look as interesting now as he did at Unforgiven.

-I kinda marked out a little for Jamie Noble's armbar on Monday. That was pretty swank.

-I know ROH is this weekend and that Kensuke Sasaki and Katsuhiko Nakajima are both involved. Also that Bryan Danielson won the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title. I did not forget, I'm just being lazy.

-Hey, old school SNES RPG fans! I don't know how many people who read this fall into this category, but Earthbound is the shit!

That's all for this week people. I've got to get back to rat-sitting because I don't want to deal with another drive to the vet's office this week. Until next week then. Peace!