So I found a Japanese YouTube channel that has some more obscure/hard to find stuff for 2002. Most of it is clipped but I'm happy to see at least some of these matches. Looks like this person has a lot of Ogawa/Misawa/Wave stuff...and in turn more Wave vs Sterness so I'm pretty psyched. So we're going to kinda start back at the beginning of 2002 with these videos.

Jun Akiyama, Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs Mitsuharu Misawa, Yoshinari Ogawa & Naomichi Marufuji (01/16): 7 of 17 minutes shown but man this looked great. Kanemaru was on fire! If you can see this in full, I think you're in for a good time! There's some post match fighting too. Yeah this one is recommended. Oh and I watched the pre match video and it looks like there was dissent with Ogawa & Misawa leading up to this match which plays a big part in the finish here. At first the finish looked weird but it's actually pretty cool. 

Elimination Match: Mitsuharu Misawa & Naomichi Marufuji & Takuma Sano & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Akitoshi Saito & Jun Akiyama & Makoto Hashi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru (01/20): 1/3 shown with this mainly be a highlight format as opposed to joined in progress. We get to see everyone's elimination so that was cool. Akiyama has his shoulder taped up and braced in this match as well as the previous one. I think this would be neat to see in full.

Jun Akiyama & Makoto Hashi vs. Naomichi Marufuji & Yoshinari Ogawa (03/14): 9 of 17 minutes and definitely worth seeing in full. This reminded me of a Hayabusa era FMW tag in the best way possible. Lots of great action, no focus on toughness/fighting spirit, ultra stiff strikes etc. Sterness felt like the baby faces with Ogawa & Marufuji being crafty heels. Badass finish too! great stuff!

Mitsuharu Misawa & Naomichi Marufuji & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Takao Omori & Takashi Sugiura & Yoshihiro Takayama (03/17): Oh man, only 8 of 20 minutes shown. This was looking pretty badass! Misawa and Omori were laying into each other like it was a title fight. Ogawa vs Takayama was very entertaining as Ogawa was just too quick for the giant. And Marufuji vs Sugiura was excellent as always... Marufuji's, agility works so well with Sug's suplex & slam offense. 

Jun Akiyama & Akitoshi Saito vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Takuma Sano (03/25): An appetizer for the Akiyama vs Ogawa title fight and it delivers. 8 of 12 minutes shown and pretty much it only seems to cut Sano's face in peril segment. This was really really good stuff if you're not going into this expecting NOAH as AJPW. I've said this before but, early NOAH seemed much more like an indie than I think most Western wanted/saw as the 2000's went on.  NOAH as AJPW happens during Kobashi's title reign. But this first quarter of '02 with Ogawa vs Akiyama being the big thing is very fresh. 

Takeshi Morishima & Takeshi Rikio vs. Manabu Nakanishi & Yutaka Yoshie (04/07/02):
Here's one I found elsewhere. Reminds me of late 80's AJPW. I started watching it but realized these guys can't do a good match for almost 30 minutes. Who gave them that much time? This should have been 15 minutes. But hey, it's out there if you're interested

Jun Akiyama vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (04/07): I'm not sure this was the plan for the Spring of 2002 however Kobashi was sidelined for a few more months and I think they were going to do something with Akiyama & him. So this Akiyama vs Ogawa stuff takes its place. They tease at it in the January matches but really commit to it by March. Anyway, this is the payoff and it's a sweet one. It's only 4+ minutes and wrestled at a quick pace. Since it's short I'm going to spoil it just as a heads up. The finish works because Akiyama has Ogawa's wrist clutched for that exploder variation. So both guys are tied together in essence. So when Ogawa reverses the suplex momentum into a small package, Akiyama's tied up into the hold and it's enough for a 3...like a wrist clutch small package hold. They executed this perfectly and if fumbled a little bit it would have looked hokey and damaged the credibility of the people and the title. The fans in attendance were super pumped for the outcome... maybe just because its something different & unexpected. I can get behind that... I think we can agree that rotating the belt between the same 3-4 guys can get stale.

Akira Taue & KENTA vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa (05/09): Very joined in progress with only the last 4 of 14 minutes being shown. Nevertheless this was pretty good stuff. Taue and Ogawa works so well because neither are that peak NOAH wrestler. Taue is basically late 70's Baba in terms of mobility and Ogawa is an early 90's AJ junior who wrestles like a he's a mid 80's junior. But it works! And we see that here. KENTA brings the fireworks. while Misawa plays the more than competent #2 to the champ (I know!? Ogawa is champ!). Excellent lead in to their title fight. If you find this in full I'm sure it's a blast! Same with Misawa, Ogawa & Takuma Sano vs Taue, Honda & Mokoto Hashi (05/06). I didn't review it but similar vibes as this 05/09 match.

Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. KENTA (05/26): The channel I've been watching for these clipped gems of course had this clipped too but I was digging and found this in full. And really glad that I did! This was great! Perhaps this is the first big KENTA match...he actually did the work the body stuff...as did Kanemaru. It didn't lead to a finish but it certainly wasn't boring. Kanemaru even did a move off the run way to the floor - pretty sick too. I think he did a good job leading this match as well. His cutoffs of KENTA's comebacks were well timed and impactful. It never looked like he was just going through the motions. So when the K-man got an opening with a vicious release German, it felt earned. Again great stuff here...

Takao Omori & Mohammed Yone vs Yoshihiro Takayama & Takashi Sugiura (05/26/02): A little bit earlier there's a schism in No Fear. Akiyama calls Omori out saying Takayama is using him...during the match Takayama wants to decimate Akiyama with double team moves (they do) but Omori says enough is enough and hit his partner with the Ax Bomber and splits. That looks to be on the 05/09 show. That sets up this match BUT I have some conflicting info that just shows Omori vs Takayama on this date. So Sherlock Badger checked the crowd and sure enough its the 05/26 from the above match (note the two guys in white shirts wearing ties etc). Anyways...this was some great hateful hard hitting wrestling. It boils down to two parts 1) Takayama getting his ass kicked 2) Omori getting his ass kicked. Yone & Sugiura were very secondary in their roles. Yone was especially stiff with Takayama...I've got to see more of his NOAH work. I would have liked a little bit better of a finishing segment but, we get 20 minutes of potatoes so I can't gripe too much. If you're interested in watching this then, you should!

Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Akira Taue (05/26): The lead in matches are so good and before the match, they show a clip from a match the night before. Taue beat Ogawa with a small package hold! He goes down and gets the title belt and throws it on a beat Ogawa and surely says something like, "take good care of this for me. I'll be back for it tomorrow night." Well this was a great match! especially if you've seen some of the lead in. There's call backs to those finishes. I think the layout and timing is really special too. If you're looking for that "once a year Taue is great again" match, I think this might be it!

Satoru Asako Retirement Match: Mitsuharu Misawa & Kenta Kobashi & Satoru Asako vs. Akira Taue & Masao Inoue & Makoto Hashi (07/26): Asako is back in his AJ green and Kobashi is back in the orange - that's awesome! Oh shit he's even doing some of his old AJ moves too! Asako is going all out. Inoue gives no fucks and clothesline'd the man of the hour like there was no tomorrow. Taue gave the soon to retire Asako a few good slams too. Yeah this was a blast at about 10 minutes. The post match stuff is really touching too.  There's no good reason to skip this one if you're an 90's AJPW fan. 

Now a big rant of sorts. If you're just here for match recommendations, we're all done for today If you're interested in a little shop talk about 20 year old wrestling then, read on!

I am really liking 2002 NOAH and I'm glad I found a bit more than what I had originally planned. This Ogawa stuff has been excellent and unexpected. He's not what you're looking for in a GHC champ especially if you're more familiar with 2003 to 2010's NOAH. But 2001-2002 NOAH in a different animal. I was looking over 2000 AJPW's matches and man! it's really clear that Misawa had a vision with Pro Wrestling Noah. 2000 AJ's under card booking was the drizzling shits. It's the same people but in matches that looked like they were booked using a lotto ball machine. Like random as hell...and maybe those were fun/good matches but Misawa gave folks a purpose, a place, a direction in early NOAH. This didn't really happen until '01 and I think hit its stride in '02. It is very much "we're not going to be a one match company." From watching mid 80's AJPW last year, I think Misawa really wanted a company where there's something for everyone AND something for everyone to do. 

The popular opinion is that Misawa lacked a vision and couldn't find someone else who could be on top. I disagree. I think his vision was to lift everyone else up rather than find a top star right away. I think evidence of this was Misawa being able to convince Baba on Ogawa as his tag partner in the very late 90's. In NOAH he continues this as Kentaro Shiga, Kikuchi & Asako get a boost out of under card swamp into high profile matches again. Outside veteran talent is given a chance like Akitoshi Saito, Aoyagi, Sano & Too Cold Scorpio as are "younger" outsiders like Daisuke Ikeda & Yone. Some of these folks were in 2000 AJPW...we can see Misawa wanted to shake things up. Inter-promotional feuds which were a staple of 90's puro/joshi could finally happen in earnest. And the young AJPW talent could get pushed into the lime light...Marufuji, KENTA, Morishima are all names we know if you're a 2000's ROH fan because of Misawa's vision. If you're a NOAH fan too then Rikio, Kanemaru, and Hashi are familiar to you. And Misawa knew to give Takayama the push he needed as well... not just a All Asia tag champ but as a main player in the heavyweight title scene. 

Now I'm not saying it stayed as fresh and exciting until his death. He definitely went into safety mode due to the economics of running a business for the main events(not that the wrestling was poor but it's not as fresh). The under card always stayed interesting and sometimes outshined the main events. That aside, 2001 & 2002 are the years where I think we might be able to see where NOAH was supposed to be headed. And I don't think fans were comfortable with it and he gave Kobashi a 2 year long title reign.. but I don't think he gave up on the under card but conceded that the casual fan (big money arena filling crowds) wanted AJPW main events. After the Kobashi reign they never went back to this more creative main event scene (we see a nod to it in the lauded on PWO Kobashi vs Ogawa match, and in Marufuji's 2006 reign). 

Maybe I should have put this at the very end of my 2002 posts (there's one more!) but having seen this much '01 & '02, it's clear that Misawa wanted to redo things. He didn't want NOAH to have these one match shows like AJPW had become. Having watched a good deal of Misawa era NOAH, he succeeded... I have always thought that their shows were very good from top to bottom. They don't always have the classic match main event but definitely are a blast to watch..many times having multiple great matches per show. 

Thanks for reading! Planning on wrapping up 2002 next week.