The Navigation Log 11.16.08: NOAH's Christmas Plans and Hiroshi Tanahashi

Posted by Matt Short on 11.16.2008

NOAH announces their plans for Christmas this year with a huge 32 man tournament. Find out the details inside. Also, Hiroshi Tanahashi becomes kinda like Jesus for New Japan as they seek him out as their last hope to topple Keiji Muto!

I recently started a new job at Circuit City and boy did I pick a terrible time to start. Along with not knowing if I'm going to have a job in two months thanks to the company failing, I've turned into the only guy who can work mornings. This is thanks to two people deciding to up and quit in the past week. It wasn't a problem until it involved changing my hours when I was at my girlfriend's house and had to be up at 4 to make it to work on time. So if anyone in the Philadelphia area is hiring, I'm interested.

Onto the Navigation Log!

NOAH: The Tournament 2008
The Winter Navigation has kicked off with a somewhat uneventful opening show. The only matches of direct consequence were the opening bout of The Mauritius Cup and Atsushi Aoki's seventh trial match.

The M-Cup match between Kento Miyahara and Takashi Okita went the full 20 minutes and ended in a draw. Not all that surprising, as I was expecting the bookers to make good use of the 20 minute time limit to test these younger guys to see if they can go the distance. This show was taped so it could appear on various video sharing websites eventually if it was any good. I am hoping they show more Mauritius Cup matches on TV, because it seems fairly rare that the younger guys get to be the main focus in matches.

Aoki lost his trial match against Yoshinobu Kanemaru. Like all these trial matches, Aoki is expected to lose the bulk of them, but let us not forget that he is 6-1 in his trial series. By American booking standards, it doesn't necessarily make sense to job a guy over and over again to get him over. But there's some things to consider before jumping the gun on that conclusion. First, the Japanese mentality on these matches is that they're learning experiences. A guy like Aoki is in no way expected to beat Kanemaru one-on-one, but Aoki gets credit for showing fighting spirit. He is supposed to learn what it actually takes to be a winner in NOAH by learning from his peers. Second, it's not really all that uncommon in US booking to do similar storylines. The rookie fighting the veteran and coming up just short each time out is a pretty familiar story to wrestling fans. While the difference in this case would be a basic losing streak compared to an announced plan to essentially job out one particular guy, they both serve the same purpose of showing that the rookie wrestler does have what it takes to become a top player as he matures and refines his skills. It's essentially screaming to fans "WATCH THIS GUY." Case in point: John Cena's debut.

The main event of the night was Akitoshi Saito & Bison Smith taking on Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima. Saito of course has a title match against Sasaki at the Budokan finale, so this was an attempt to add some interest to that bout which from a drawing stand-point is pretty weak. Saito & Smith managed to win the match by pinning Nakajima which doesn't really mean too much other than Sasaki was prevented from scoring the pin. I can only hope that the interactions between Saito and Sasaki were good enough to get people interested. Otherwise… yeah I'm still not feeling that main event.

NOAH's Christmas plans are set. They always run two fan appreciation shows on the 23rd and 24th of December. In the past the first show has been considered the straight show while the Christmas Eve show will have a lot of comedy on it. For reference, here's a music video of last year's show:



This year, NOAH is having a massive 32 man tournament to take place over the two nights. The participants are going to be…

-Mitsuharu Misawa
-Jun Akiyama
-Yoshinari Ogawa
-Takeshi Rikio
-Akira Taue
-Takeshi Morishima
-Akitoshi Saito
-Takuma Sano
-Mohammad Yone
-Takashi Sugiura
-Naomichi Marufuji
-KENTA
-Taiji Ishimori
-Ricky Marvin
-Tamon Honda
-Masao Inoue
-Junji Izumida
-Kentaro Shiga
-Kishin Kawabata
-Makoto Hashi
-Tsuyoshi Kikuchi
-Mitsuo Momota
-Shuhei Taniguchi
-Atsushi Aoki
-Kensuke Sasaki
-Katsuhiko Nakajima
-Yoshihiro Takayama
-Mauritius Cup winner
-???
-???

The last two spots remain unannounced at the moment and could be filled by any number of names. The best bet would be freelance wrestlers and I've got to wonder if NOAH would go the extra mile for this and get someone like Kawada. There are also the foreign wrestlers like Bison Smith or the ROH regulars to consider. A real surprise would be a representative from New Japan and All Japan rounding out the field. The rules for the simply titled "The Tournament 2008" are pretty much what's going to assure that this thing moves along quickly and no one missed their train home that night. The first two rounds will take place on the first night and the match order will be done by lottery. Bouts will only be 10 minutes long and if the time limit runs out the winner will be determined by a referee committee. The quarterfinals, semi-finals, and finals will take place the following night.

Ambitious? Yes, but with the 10 minute time limit they can effectively cover the asses of the less mobile guys like Momota and give some upsets to guys lower on the card via judges' decision without having anyone take a pinfall. The main thing though will be having fun. With the information already released there's no title shot or anything on the line so it'll be about going out there and being as entertaining as possible.

New Japan: SAVE_US.TANAHASHI222
New Japan management is in a tight spot at the moment. When Shinsuke Nakamura failed to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Title All Japan's Keiji Muto made an ultimatum. Either name his next opponent by the end of the World's Strongest Tag League or he would boycott the January 4th show at the Budokan. Such an act would be a huge slap in the face of New Japan as they wouldn't be able to have their main title in the main event. So far Muto has defeated some of the very best New Japan has to throw at him and they are essentially out of challengers.

Enter Hiroshi Tanahashi. After Tanahashi failed to win All Japan's Champion's Carnival he had been resting off some bad injuries. But since coming back the former two time IWGP Heavyweight Champion has not been up to his old standards of performance. He did incredibly poorly in the G1 Climax and really hasn't had any success at all since his return. Tanahashi has decided to go to the United States instead on something of a soul search, and that is essentially the kayfabe reason he appears on TNA Impact every Thursday. But New Japan management is so desperate at this point that the president Sugabayashi has personally met with Tanahashi in Florida to offer him the number one contender's spot.

While you'd think Tanahashi would leap at this offer, he hasn't done so. Tanahashi hasn't found what he's looking for yet and while he might want to take up the title match, he knows deep down that he's not ready. Hirooki Goto couldn't beat Muto while on a massive hot streak. Nakamura could win after watching tape after tape of matches to find out where he went wrong. What we're getting here is a much more mature Hiroshi Tanahashi, a wrestler who knows what it is going to take to be able to win the title from a legend like Keiji Muto.

If Tanahashi doesn't accept the offer, then it is unclear what would happen. Potentially we would see a match between Nakamura and Goto with the winner going on to face for the title. This is a damn good little angle they're running here. It'll allow Tanahashi to finish off the year in TNA and let him shake out the cobwebs before getting his shot at Muto. I'd almost expect him to pick up a big win on TNA in the coming weeks, but he could perform well elsewhere not on TV. He'll get his epiphany and return to Japan, hopefully to win the IWGP Heavyweight Title.

At Home
I'm running late with this column as it is this week, so I've had to the Weekly Puro. It'll be back next week, hopefully with some matches from this weekend's Dragon Gate show. So let's talk about WWE this week. I've got to name Jeff Hardy as my MVP of the week. He absolutely dominated Smackdown this week with his Sting/Joker/Jigsaw appearance and major win over The Undertaker. Let's face it, Hardy looked like a star this past Friday. He opened the show with what was easily the best promo of his career, killed Koslov during the contract signing, and then beat Taker to top it all off. This is a damn good change of character for Hardy and if they keep this up he actually might be believable as a major main event player.

We had quite a few releases this week. The biggest was Elijah Burke, who as many remember was put over strong by Vince during the New Breed angle. It seemed like there were big plans for Burke, but then he sort of faded into the background and then disappeared. Seems like the story on this was that he lost the guys in creative who had the most plans for him and he lost favor. It's a damn shame on those grounds, but I feel like Burke is the kind of guy who can bounce back if he really wanted. He's got a load of talent, and with a little more seasoning on the indy circuit or maybe in Mexico or Japan he could be even better.

One other release I wanted to touch on is Lena Yada's. I believe the reasoning there was that she looked too much like Gail Kim and they didn't want to confuse people. Hey, WWE? Might want to be careful with stuff like that. People have filed lawsuits for less racist sounding things than that.

Short Takes
-CHIKARA's Torneo Cibernetico was this weekend and was won by Jimmy Olsen in what is being called a great bout. Like all past years of the Cibernetico the show was named after one of the Batman movies, in this case Cibernetico Begins. What happens after they do The Dark Cibernetico?

-I'm really looking forward to the Survivor Series match on the PPV. As long as it doesn't turn into a massive squash like Team DX vs. Team Rated RKO was it should make for some fun times. I do love team warfare and I've got to think that if stables were still popular in the WWE these days we'd get more interesting matches. But what are you gonna do?

-I'm still not sure about Orton's new sleeves. I guess they're something you'd have to see up close, but I'm just not feeling it.

-Santino has lost the Intercontinental Title. Some are upset that the Honk-a-Meter is over and done with, but I've got to admit the gimmick had run its course. Unless Santino was going to turn into a more serious wrestler (not dropping the comedy, but wrestling seriously) it was not going to last the full year. They had already had an appearance by Honky Tonk Man, there wasn't anything else they could have done I think.

That's all for this week. I'm tired and ready to pass out. Next week we'll have another update on the Winter Navigation, Dragon Gate results, and any other big happenings from the past week. Until then, peace!