Sorry for the delay! Here we are with the fall & winter of 2002 and it is a doozy!

KENTA & Kenta Kobashi vs Kotaro Suzuki & Mitsuharu Misawa (09/01): We get our first appearance of KENTA in his true form Gone is the surfer hair, orange trunks & white boots. He's in his dark grey tights with kick pad boots...and he is kicking. I know that sounds weird but up until now KENTA wasn't doing his shoot style kicks. This is a good match that gives us some good Misawa vs Kobashi moments without making it all about them. This is way more about KENTA & Suzuki coming into their own. Unfortunately Suzuki is still green enough where coming into your own means taking a beating well. Therefore the middle of the match is like a store brand saltine...Nice to see Kobashi back!

Kobashi, KENTA, Shiga & Kikuchi vs. Akiyama, Saito, Hashi & Kanemaru (09/05/02): This is one I wanted to see but the YouTube video was deactivated. But dummy me, I actually have the clipped version on my 10/19/02 DVD! Holy cow! I've had this for over a decade and not known it. Anyway, like I said this is a clipped version with about 30 minutes shown out of 50 so not bad but there's no clean way to clip this. So we get the start and a few minutes before each elimination and probably the last 10 minutes uninterrupted. I didn't keep track exactly.  Anyhow this is Sterness vs Burning and from the get go this feels like the Sharks vs the Jets. Captain Fall elimination match so if Akiyama or Kobashi gets pinned at anytime, it's all over. But of course like I said this goes 50 minutes and other folks get eliminated. This is a blast to watch and legitimately looks like a great match. KENTA & Shiga are a focus with Shiga being the defector from Sterness and KENTA really starting to embrace his new style/gimmick. I think it's also a great showcase for Akitoshi Saito and is a excellent showcase for him. He has the best enzuigiri and spinning heel kick btw. And of course there's Kobashi and Akiyama who are as great as always. Great stuff.

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Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Yoshihiro Takayama (09/07): Great match! Takayama tries to annihilate Ogawa. He shouts "Hey champ! C'mon champ" at Ogawa laying on the mat like a pile of dirty laundry. Like talk about adding insult to injury. The champ does find away though and proceeds to target the giant arm like there's no tomorrow... and frankly there might not be if he can't slow the blonde behemoth down. This is all capped off by an excellent closing few minutes that cements this as a great title fight.

Yoshinobu Kanemaru/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. El Samurai/Masayuki Naruse (9/23/02) This match has a fantastic pace and is full of action. This really is how you build a junior feud. The execution was great and the timing was even better. It left you wanting more. Bitchin’ great match. An unlikely NJ team too...

Takeshi Morishima & Takeshi Rikio vs. Akitoshi Saito & Jun Akiyama (09/23/02): I actually watched this after the match below. I'm funny like that but I am glad I did because I thought this match topped the main event. It was a fucking intense battle from bell to bell. Saito and Rikio were just trying to destroy each other. Morishima comes in and brings it to Saito next. I'm thinking Jun, who's not always super stiff at this time would shy away but no! He was hammering on Morishima. Yeah I loved this thing. The pacing and intensity were just right. It could have been a sprint but Wild II are showing they can hang with the big boys. Saito is really coming into his own here...and that's being more of a bad ass. Some folks didn't like this but I'm not really sure why...I got the vibe that it was a comparison thing. comparing everything to AJPW 90's is only going to set you up for disappointment. I had to learn that lesson for myself. Just try to be in the moment, not analyzing and not comparing. I think if you're not familiar with everything going on in early NOAH, you probably won't give two shits about what anyone other than Akiyama is doing... but that'd be a giant oversight. You're not actually invested in these guys and early NOAH really is about pushing virtual nobodies from AJPW into the lime light. So early NOAH is not about trying to be AJ without Mrs. Baba. It's trying to be something different. It helps if you know this BUT this is such a simple beat-the-shit-outta-each-other match that I'm not sure anyone wouldn't like this...I thought this was a classic.

Misawa vs Takayama (09/23/02): This is probably one of most lauded singles matches for NOAH 2002. I have never seen it in full! I have a Misawa comp that has clips (for some reason) but I am really glad I saw this. It's very MMA influenced without trying to be shoot style or even Inoki Strong Style (not to be confused with Inokism which was going on in NJ at this time...shoot matches, more MMA guys in NJ...I do like Don Frye as a worker though as well as Kaz Fujita). So don't think of the match being anything like that. Takayama is more like a giant Kawada in this thing. He's hitting knees, head kicks, going for arm bars. As a result Misawa taps more into that by focusing on his elbow strikes, working holds on the mat and even throwing leg kicks. But...he still is doing his moves off the turnbuckles and dives etc. Honestly this was a near classic match... only held back from both guys being beat up (both bleeding) and I think Takayama ran out of gas at the end...so the more intricate things at the end looked sluggish. But fuck! they were going at it all match so I cannot fault anyone for being a bit sluggish after all of that. Also re-watched Frye vs Takayama which is also 2002. Man I miss Pride... back in the late 2000's on Spike they had a Best of Pride FC show (via UFC) and I had my favorites all DVR'd...I digress!

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Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. KENTA & Takashi Sugiura (10/12/02): This was a pretty darn good match! It probably didn't need to be 23 minutes long but once they got cooking they didn't let up. Lots of creative offense and if you like stiff elbow strikes then this is a match for you! Never heard anything about this but yeah, this is recommended stuff.

Takuma Sano & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Kotaro Suzuki & Mitsuharu Misawa (10/12): Wave vs Wave, interesting...I believe Marufuji was injured at this point otherwise he might have been in Kotaro's place. Half shown but man was this fun stuff! The Ogawa/Sano team was really good... I'll have to keep my eye out for more matches with them together.

Kenta Kobashi & Kentaro Shiga vs. Jun Akiyama & Yoshinobu Kanemaru (10/17/02): I'm going to tell you this is the one & only match Kobashi uses his Diamond Head power bomb. It's basically a Dominator like Ron Simmons used to use. It doesn't look that cool though but what you want to see is Shiga vs Akiyama...that's great stuff...the whole match is really good. Burning vs Sterness!

I was also able to locate my review for Kobashi/Shiga vs. Akiyama/Saito 10/19/02 which is a match that's gotten praise but if you're only going on hype, it seemingly happened in a vacuum. Like you would think everything else they did prior & after sucked. Matches like this are what inspires me to do these projects. They aren't deep dives but attempts to push against conventional wisdom/old ideas. 

Kobashi/Shiga vs. Akiyama/Saito (10/19/02): This was a match I’ve sought after for a long time. It lived up to the hype for sure. It was great in showing Shiga’s heart as well as Saito’s evilness. That dude is a beast. Great long finishing run with false finishes and great moments for sure. Epic finish too. Bad Ass! People were psyched on this one throughout! It had to build a little for me but, at the end I was shouting and making noises right along with ‘em. Classic match!

Since I have taken so long to get this posted, I took the time and dug this DVD set out of storage. I'm looking for under the radar stuff so there's got to be a couple on this show.

Makoto Hashi vs KENTA (10/19): Good match and maybe a very good one if you ignore KENTA blowing off all of Hashi's good leg work. Hashi would have been a great junior talent had he debuted in 1986...and for that I really dug him in this match. KENTA is now the kicky version...but not the bad ass we see in ROH for instance.

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Donovan Morgan & Michael Modest & Scorpio vs. IZU & Maxx Justice & Richard Slinger (10/19): No doubt I skipped this match when I got the 10/19/02 DVD but not now. I'm all about a match like this. It's a lot of fun too! Scorpio and Richard Slinger do a really good chain wrestling opening and from then on there's a bunch of neat moves, some comedy and quality 6 man wrestling. Morgan and Modest added a lot to the match.

Kotaro Suzuki, Mitsuharu Misawa, Takuma Sano & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Akira Taue, Daisuke Ikeda, Masashi Aoyagi & Takashi Sugiura (10/19): Oh man this was a lot of fun! The last few minutes were especially good. Not top tier but there's some really exciting sequences that had me cheering. I liked the early focus on Aoyagi and by the end everyone was going off. I really dug this one.

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Yoshinobu Kanemaru/Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Gedo/Jado - (12/7/02) Oh those bastards. Team NO RESPECT!!! Jado & Gedo are some nasty looking dudes. So the match is kinda like NOAH style American wrestling. It was a ton of fun with Gedo and Jado heeling it up in all those fun US ways. This is stuff that we lost later in the 90s AJPW as the brawler was phased out because it resembled garbage wrestling. So, Jado and Gedo are a call back to that good stuff from the 70s-80s and 90-91 AJPW. And god knows Kikuchi is all for that again. Still this is 2002 wrestling so, there’s some nice moves from both teams. It’s a different match especially from this time in wrestling and it’s great!

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Kenta Kobashi vs Bison Smith (12/07/02): Great under 10 minute match! From watching GAEA, doing these shorter all action matches with the older guys would have been a good idea. Have the younger guys go longer. I would have liked a different outcome as I think it is Misawa playing it safe. Bison could have been NOAH's Dr. Death for the 2000's. He looked like an absolute monster for 3/4th of the match. Plus the Iron Claw work was excellent...it's a low impact move that can escalated into the iron claw slam. They did this here to great effect. Bison being pushed harder was a missed opportunity but it's still a great fight.

Yoshinari Ogawa vs Mitsuharu Misawa (12/07/02): I loved the beginning and middle of this match. It was actually wrestled and reminded me of early 80's AJPW. Eventually they brought this into the late 80's and early 90's. Then the final 3rd didn't set my world a fire. There was too many back drops and Tiger drivers...like do another move or even fight out of it. And they do maybe once but, it was kinda dull but then the very end got really good again. And overall the whole thing was very good but was on its way to be great.

2002 was an excellent year and maybe was the last year for the experimental stage of NOAH. Kobashi comes back full time (until 2006) and things change. Perhaps for the better? NOAH seems far less interesting as times goes on. And that is not a criticism... It's really quality stuff as we get into the Kobashi reign but it becomes more predictable than than in 2001 & 2002.

Checking out 2001 & 2002 NOAH has been a project that I have been wanting to do for years. Really glad I got to do it! Hope you have enjoyed it too

Thanks for reading!