The Navigation Log 9.28.08: G1 Tag League, Tanaka vs. Nagata, and GREAT VOYAGE Talk

Posted by Matt Short on 09.28.2008

Teams for next months G1 Tag League in New Japan are announced, Masato Tanaka prepares to defend his ZERO1 Heavyweight Title and the honor of ZERO1 against Yuji Nagata and Kensuke Sasaki defends the GHC Heavyweight Title.

The comment section last week kind of turned into a "what CHIKARA DVD should I buy" discussion. The correct answer is "any of them." Yeah, some are better than others but for pure fun value I haven't seen a show that I absolutely didn't enjoy. Especially with 2008 as the storylines have been top notch. The Vin Gerard story has been amazing to see progress because it has been full of things no one expected. I think maybe someday I'd like to do a full CHIKARA column. Like a once a month type deal to keep people up to speed. I'd have to get motivated though. But anyway…

Onto the Navigation Log!

G1 Tag League Teams Announced
I'm liking New Japan's G1 Tag League because they've put together quite an interesting group together for the tournament. I'll be using team names found on Strong Style Spirit because 1) I like the names and 2) easier to write out. I don't know if they're official names since in Japan when they list cards they do individual names like it's real fighting, but whatever.

G1 Tag League
-MVP (Togi Makabe & Toru Yano) –IWGP Tag Team Champions
-TenKoji (Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima)
-RISE NxG (Shinsuke Nakamura & Hirooki Goto)
-Big Mountains (Manabu Nakanishi & Yutaka Yoshie
-DETONATORS (Giant Bernard & Rick Fuller)
-Aogi-gun (Yuji Nagata & Mitsuhide Hirasawa)
-WK2 (Wataru Inoue & Koji Kanemaru)
-IRON HADES (Takashi Iizuka & Tomohiro Ishii)
-The World Class Tag Team (Jado & Gedo)
-NO LIMIT (Yujiro & Tetsuya Naito)
-Uni-ONE (Milano Collection AT & Taichi Ishikari)
-Caribbean Syndicate (Negro Casas & Rocky Romero)

It's a fairly diverse field this year. There's a good mix of heavyweights and juniors all mixed in along with a few outsiders like Kojima from All Japan, Yoshie from the Dradiation group and Negro Casas and the returning Rocky Romero. TenKoji will be on the war path against GHB teams, especially Makabe & Yano. They've been getting some measure of revenge for Tenzan in tag bouts over other GBH members, but it would be that much sweeter for Tenzan I think to ruin MVP's run much the same way GBH ruined Tenzan's G1 Climax run. WK2 and NO LIMIT are teams that I'm thinking could be coin flips in terms of their performances. They could either be jobbers or have respectable win-loss records at the end. Same could be said for Uni-ONE. This going to be fun, though I'm biased because I love both tournaments and tag team wrestling. The tournament will start up October 18th and end November 5th. I'll be following the tournament's progress as I usually do for these things.

Tanaka Aims For The Big Time
It's commented many times about the fact that Masato Tanaka has never really stepped up to the big leagues in Japan. He's probably one of the more recognizable Japanese stars to outsiders, mainly due to his epic series of matches with Mike Awesome in ECW, yet he's stuck to the independent scene. Currently, he's been dominating Pro Wrestling ZERO1, being the first ever ZERO1 Heavyweight Champion and won the Fire Festival for three consecutive years.

Tanaka's unquestionably been a big fish in a small pond with his run in ZERO1, but he's being given a big shot to not only elevate himself, but the ZERO1 Heavyweight Title too. Yuji Nagata is set to challenge Tanaka for the title at the upcoming New Japan show. ZERO1 and New Japan have been feuding for most of 2008 and this could be seen as the big showdown between the two companies. Nagata is one of New Japan's stalwarts and has been a rock against ZERO1. Tanaka has been the only member of ZERO1 to have continuous success against New Japan. It's going to be a battle of aces.

Strangely enough, Nagata winning the title would probably do more for the title than Tanaka retaining it again. ZERO1 could then book Nagata on their shows to help draw some extra people in. Tanaka can win no matter what the outcome though. From where I sit, all he has to do is be the Masato Tanaka everyone knows he is and he'll come out smelling like a rose. Inevitably, it all lies with him as to whether or not he goes onto one of the Big Three promotions in Japan. I have to say though, I'd love to see him get a shot at the IWGP Heavyweight Title or The Triple Crown someday.

NOAH in Osaka
NOAH's Osaka show wrapped up with not very good reported attendance, though that can be somewhat expected. It was an interesting card, but at the same time the main event of Kensuke Sasaki defending the GHC Heavyweight Title against Mohammad Yone isn't quite a nail biter. The match has gotten fair reviews so far, but the surprising thing about the match is that it went 16 minutes. Most people were predicting a squash, but instead Yone got a good chunk of time with the champ. I'll need to wait to see the full match, but I'm cautiously optimistic about how it came off.

The New Japan contingent of Yujiro & Tetsuya Naito aka NO LIMIT were turned back in their bid for the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Kotaro Suzuki were successful in their first defense, which is news to me because I could have sworn they had at least one defense prior. But no, that wasn't the case. They did win the belts right before the NTV Cup, so there wasn't time to squeeze a defense in. NO LIMIT's presence on the show definitely generated a lot of talk about a New Japan partnership with NOAH, specifically having NOAH wrestlers appear at New Japan's Sumo Hall show at the start of the New Year. The Japanese press love to stoke this fire for obvious reasons. New Japan and NOAH worked together in the past, but the relationship soured after awhile. But now it seems like there's strong effort to mend the old wounds and try again. This is definitely something to keep an eye on.

And some quick news
-Jun Akiyama & Takeshi Rikio have petitioned for a shot at Akitoshi Saito & Bison Smith's GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Titles. I smell a hot shot. It doesn't help that Saito & Smith have done nothing at all with the belts, which is total bull since they were red hot following the Global Tag League win.

-In Dragon Gate Speed Muscle reclaimed the Open the Twin Gate titles from Ryo Saito & Susumu Yokosuka this week. They're the first repeating champions with the belts and deservedly so I say. Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino are one of the best teams out there.

-NOAH wrestler Mitsuo Momota celebrated his 60th birthday this week. Things like that make me feel less old, but then I see guys my age on TV wrestling and I feel old again.

Weekly Puro
Daisuke Sekimoto's opponent for CHIKARA's Global Gauntlet was announced. He'll be facing "The Big Rig" Brodie Lee is what could easily be the stiffest fight of that particular weekend. So I thought I'd highlight him along with Masato Tanaka. Sekimoto is seen as a wrestler who is very much inspired by some of Tanaka's old wars and it seems fitting that they're rivals. This is their fourth meeting. Sekimoto had yet to score a win over Tanaka, though he had gotten a time-limit draw in their second match. He's looking to show he's grown since then. Tanaka is just Tanaka and is awesome. Enjoy!

Pro Wrestling ZERO1: ZERO1 World Heavyweight Championship: Masato Tanaka (c) vs. Daisuke Sekimoto






At Home
Still been doing bad with watch Smackdown and Impact. It's killing me this month. Damn my real life from getting in the way of my hobbies.

That gripe aside, I'd say Raw and ECW this week were pretty average. Maybe above average. The opening segment with Punk and Orton came off really strong and I can't wait to see those two go at it one on one. It felt like the kind of program you could build properly as a WrestleMania match. It would need a lot of time though. Over on ECW though I have to say that Ricky Ortiz is damn lucky he's got personality otherwise he'd have nothing. I think he's actually going to find his niche in the WWE. There's room for guys like him who have more personality than skill. I can see how his teaming with Evan Bourne can come in handy as Bourne can take the longer heat segments then give Ortiz the hot tag. Hides his deficiencies perfectly.

Short Takes
-Jack Swagger still scares the crap out of me, but at least he's not wear generic black tights now.

-Dolph Zeigler has a long way to go before he graduates from hand shaker.

-I wish our cable carried the ROH PPVs, but I don't know if I could watch them all the way through. I do sometimes get bored with some of the undercard matches and usually will just skip to the good stuff on their DVDs.

-I haven't mentioned the Honk-a-Meter here have I? It's hilarious, but I wonder if they have the balls to let Santino beat Honky Tonk Man's record. Not meaning that he's unworthy, but that fans might end up getting annoyed with it soon. A lot of fans these days aren't used to slow moving stories like this.

That's all for this week. I should write more but I'm completely exhausted after multiple nights of staying up all night and working most of the day. So by the time I wake up next week, I'll have just enough time to rush next week's column too. Peace!