Ma Stump Puller

Part 3. ======== W/ Zack Sabre Jr (c) vs Atsushi Kotoge & Taiji Ishimori (05.07.2014) Ogawa's again been a little shit since rewinning the titles, so title defence happens here I guess. BRAVE are the generic high-flying babyface troop while Ogawa and Zack are the experienced champs who focus on their usual ground-game of matwork to try to edge things out. Ishimori is insanely light on his feet, him and Zack also have some solid chemistry that comes out well with their even exchanges: the bit where Ishimori tries for a big leapfrog and Zack springs for his leg mid-run is just so slickly done that it's almost unreal how fast they got that without any awkwardness or stupid telegraphing. He does a cool sliding moonsault to Zack on the outside, Ogawa in response just starts throwing lads into railings and/or the apron lol. The heat segment in the middle comes from Ishimori's bandaged arm being worked on by the pair with some typical stuff, so Zack goes for his bad strikes and fancy holds while Ogawa just generally has cooler and more effective spots to pull out of his bag. Also him just full on close-fist punching Ishimori while he's in a Cravat rules, more of that from wrestling please. Kotoge's comeback was generic shit, mostly just spots and superkicks, even if his big slide out of the ring into more stuff was cool. Ogawa bumps big for BRAVE but makes sure to get in the occasional counter or clever move to keep in the game like a flash backdrop or his cool dropdown low blow bit, stuff like that. Zack gets in his goofy kicks and holds with Ishimori and co; this bit was basically just tons of spots again with little actual meaning behind them, enjoyable but not much beyond that. Cool 450/Killswitch combo by the two for a near fall, Zack hits a Dragon Suplex on Kotoge for a no sell, random headbutt and second Killswitch gets the win and the titles back. Ogawa is pissed post-match and backdrops Zack, though they'd still team up afterwards. This was decent enough with some good bits in it, but a lot of this match just turns into really boring spot to spot to spot sequences without much tension or thought put into them. Some of the spots were cool but others just felt unnecessary, and Zack's tendencies to just spam as much as humanly possible without much rhyme or reason is felt immensely here: unlike in other matches where it was contained, he just let loose with just a wild assortment of shit being thrown at the wall and seeing what sticked. It felt like Ogawa's sections were the only bits where this felt cohesive and not just all about that. It's only really so high because I rather enjoyed what it was, even if it was pretty hollow; for a match with two teams with a big history and hate this just felt like a dime a dozen showing, and I really have to square that on BRAVE only for just not getting much fire out of this. RANK: Good W/ Zack Sabre Jr vs Genba Hirayanagi & Kikutaro (21.07.2014) Boring Kikutaro-style unfunny shtick for 10+ minutes, joy. I do like how Ogawa has none of this stupid comedy mess and just wrestles a regular match, just adding in more meanness by trying to take his mask off; it actually works, giving us a very rare look into Kiku without his mask on as he rages at the ref for not getting Ogawa off him. Probably the only funny spot was when Kiku got caught in a Tree of Wow and Hira tried to get him out, for Ogawa and co to trip him up and drag his ass right next to Kiku's face lol. Other than this could've been on any DDT undercard in the last 8 years and you'd be equally as unimpressed then as I am now, just lots of gross-out humor and groin grabbing. Finish was fun with Zack countering a La Magistral into his own roll-up to get the pin on Kikutaro to mercifully end this. It's a Kikutaro match, so automatically this is going to be low scored just because I don't think he's particularly that good at what he does. Ogawa and Sabre were all game to play along for the most though, so it was innocently bad at least. RANK: Forgettable W/ Mikey Nicholls, Shane Haste & Zack Sabre Jr vs Daisuke Harada, Genba Hirayanagi, Quiet Storm & Yoshihiro Takayama (24.08.2014) As per most eight-man tags this was a mess of people just coming in and doing stuff without much substance. At one point Takayama comes in literally just to do one move (a simple backdrop) and leaves; that's the level we are dealing with here. No Mercy beat down on Zack for the first half so that everyone gets in their shots, including Taka just dragging the lad outside to throw him into commissary tables and shit lol. Thankfully no one sold for Zack's shitty strikes so that was avoided, because oh boy some of them stunk here despite his best efforts. That's until Taka (of all people! ) takes a Vader-tier bump off a second rope Euro Uppercut that, of course, wiffed. TMDK came in for some fun Taka doubleteaming before No Mercy members caught up with them. They worked some house-show tier stuff with Harada and Hirayanagi that while entertaining wasn't that interesting ultimately. Ogawa finally got in one minute before the finish, and it was against Quiet Storm so erm, not exactly his shining moment. Hira works his usual comedy routine near the end as Zack and TMDK struggle with his special......groin grabbing. He gets bullied as you'd expect. Zack no sells a lariat to land a pretty bad PK for the pin, immensely flat reaction. Just par for the course for matches like these, there's some shtick but it's mostly just everyone working at half speed. Nothing interesting at all and I immediately forgot about it as soon as the bell rang. RANK: Forgettable Vs Jinzo (06.09.2014) ....the Yugioh card? No it's actually another future WWE guy (Cruz Del Toro in the fed) and this is his only NOAH run. Really robust sprint that barely went five minutes. This is about as close as you are going to get to a Yoshinari Ogawa lucha-match as he basically just went at full tilt for most of it, getting knocked around by his younger and faster opponent until smacking him with a punch mid-dive out of the ropes in a surprisingly brutal bit. Middle half is a quick control segment as Jinzo had his arm worked, he fought back, Ogawa even tried doing Misawa-style spinning elbows but got foiled with a big backflip kick. Jinzo does a awesome Coast to Coast dropkick while Ogawa was in the Tree of Woe position, looked sharp. He tries to out-speed Ogawa with spots until he gets nailed with the dropdown low-blow spot, and from then on in it was just a matter of backdrop, armbar, and a funky abdominal stretch reversal into a Nishimura-style cradle for the easy roll-up win. Nothing crazy about this, just a easy to watch opening match that went by in no time, probably because again, it wasn't that long. Quite enjoyable and both men worked well with the other, not much else to add. RANK: Decent W/ Masao Inoue vs Daisuke Ikeda & Mohammed Yone (21.09.2014) It's the battle of the wonky Engrish tag teams as "Mohammed Bombers" (unfortunate) fight against "Establish one's Styles" (???) in a goofy little match. As you might imagine it's a very Inoue-paced outing with him mostly being in the ring getting beaten up by the two. It was fun seeing Ogawa be the babysitter having to get Inoue though everything, trying to motivate his ass to actually try but of course failing massively. The comedy was enjoyable and we did get some decent work near the end with Ikeda and Yone being his usual janky self with big lumpy leg drops. There's a especially good bit near the end with Inoue setting up the lariat with his usual arm spinning, but Yone takes so long to actually get up that he hurts his arm doing it lol. Despite Ogawa's best efforts Inoue just can't get anywhere, and he eventually falls to a Kinniku Buster by Yone. Obviously this wasn't going to have any seriously great moments in it, however for what it was, I think it overdelivered in that regard. Everyone did their roles well and even though it was obvious that Ikeda was taking a big day off here, he still puts in at least enough work to not drag this down. Kinda a shame that he was working at such a low pace here and busting his ass elsewhere in Fu-Ten and the like. RANK: Decent W/ Pesadilla, Super Crazy, Zack Sabre Jr vs Hajime Ohara, Hitoshi Kumano, Kenou & Mitsuhiro Kitamiya (08.11.2014) Everyone else on the card is working the Global League, so this is thrown in the death slot as the random Jr heavyweight eight-man outing before the big matches. Only lasted nine minutes thankfully. Sadly they wrestled this in such a way that the guys who actually can wrestle worth a damn (Ohara/Kenou) refused to wrestle the first half, leaving the random rookie Kumano to get worked over. Ogawa and Zack have a solid control sequence as they bend and twist the arm in all sorts of ways, Ogawa especially playing up the dynamic by dragging Kumano's arm over to the two to tease them about refusing to tag in, dangling it like bait on a line. Eventually Kumano gets a comeback with a dropkick and Codebreaker and makes the hot tag....to Kitamiya instead. Him and Super Crazy don't work well at all as we immediately get a flub, otherwise Crazy just does his usual spots with no real input from the big guy. Pesadilla is a generic lucha-act that's only here because Crazy is his uncle and basically got him a spot as well; he's really unremarkable in the ring aside from some generic bits that really don't stand out a whole ton and he quickly falls into the background. Kita gets in a big comeback with two big spears on him and Crazy, landing the hot tag to Kenou who literally does a single kick before everyone just runs in to do signature stuff and brawl to the outside. Ref bump, Kenou and co use the kendo stick, but Pes dodges and Ohara eats it instead. We get a cool spot where Kenou uses the stick to trap his arms together so that Ohara can then land a running double chop before Kenou finishes Pes off with a fairly limp Dragon Suplex for the win. Fairly nothing match that was mostly there to get over Cho Kibou-Gun as asses, which you knew already. Rookies were a bit off but otherwise were decent in their roles as the whipping boys of the troop, Ogawa and Zack are probably the best out of the bunch here as they got some dedicated time to work their usual stuff into things while also really throwing themselves into getting over the heels as well when it came time for them to do so. Sadly I think this just wasn't worth the watch ultimately. RANK: Forgettable Vs Mitsuhiro Kitamiya (16.11.2014) Easy rookie squash for the undercard. Ogawa masterfully works this around the headlock for the first few minutes, actually making headlock takeovers and counters into headlocks look impressive. Honestly and not even kidding I'd say Ogawa is one of the GOAT's when it comes to working a headlock; he knows how to crank the hold when it matters, he never gives up position easily, he has a few nifty tricks to keep applying it, like he gets so much out of so little that it's actually crazy; this alongside the 2022 Kaito match are like the peaks of headlocks in wrestling in my mind. Kitamiya doing dropkicks and agile stuff was crazy to see given the brawling conventional work he's far more inclined to do these days. He's got a mean spear and a cool Cobra Twist variation in him as well, who knew? Ogawa gets the guy super over as well as he wiggles and struggles to keep control with Kita throwing and hurling the guy around despite his best efforts, he even counters the backdrop into a crossbody. Kita's mistake is trying for another one as he ends up getting rolled up into a really good School Boy where Ogawa just throws all of his weight on to really make it look as effective as possible: it also got over just how desperate he was to finish this as quickly as he possibly could: a stark contrast to the start where he was hanging around in a headlock and toying with the prospect. Really solid for a no-stakes match like this, Kita is already quite well-ironed and Ogawa really works with him to get a solid performance here. Can't lie, majorly impressed. Ogawa really loves his rookie squash matches it seems. RANK: Good Vs Hiro Saito (Dradition 19.11.2014) I'm adding the promotion here because this is one of Ogawa's rare indie outings outside of his full-time NOAH commitments. Saito was obviously way beyond being able to actually hold his own in a match bar the very basics and a senton (I mean the guy was 53 here) so Ogawa had to drive this as best as he could, and we get a....more or less Dradition-tier showing as per standard. The first half was really slow protracted 80's style where they just grabbed holds and occasionally threw a strike to make the audience wake up. The two work a competent pace in that style for sure and there's some decent bits if you are a fan of that, but with Saito's lack of speed it just doesn't work for me at this point. Saito got to get his spots in as he runs over Ogawa with his scrappy brawling and looked fine, I guess. Ogawa had to cheat for this 50+ year old, which was definitely amusing if anything at all. I did like Saito getting his own back by just spamming eye pokes to spite the guy. Saito does a second rope senton, which was impressive for his age and wear and tear.....and that's about it for spots as Ogawa rolls him up when he shows off for the crowd. Pretty much just nothing, but if you like the more slower style that Dradition has and/or can enjoy Saito slowly beat someone up, this is probably for you and only for you at that. I found this pretty dull, more or less just Ogawa bumping for a vet until the finish. It's a bit annoying to see him only wrestle Saito and not someone like Fujinami, which would have been a interesting prospect. RANK: Forgettable Vs Naomichi Marufuji (23.12.2014) Was bizarrely amazing?? Maru was currently the big champ after nearly a decade and so he wanted to further put his stamp on things by beating his old tormenter in the form of Ogawa. For me, Ogawa is one of the few guys that can make Marufuji matches actually work for the most part (instead of just mindless spots and bad kicks, usually both). Sadly after some enjoyable early exchanges of holds we go right into Maru's usual clutches as he spams his chops, thankfully this is cut short as Ogawa leaves the ring and teases going altogether until he can try for a cheap shot; he's not playing Maru's game of standing around and trading. Maru gets caught with Ogawa's signature dropdown low blow when he comes off the top rope, and so Maru then leaves. Ogawa like a shithead doesn't stop the ref from counting but actually encourages it to try for a cheap win lol. We get more comedic shtick even with Ogawa working the bad shoulder of Maru, including arguing with the ref and using the ring bell to rattle the guy. The actual meat is really quite good as Maru gets thrown around a lot, but you can tell that Ogawa is desperate to keep control with lots of key locks and other nifty holds to ground this down to the mat, as well as anything dirty he can muster to keep Maru away from his chops and kicks, his most dangerous weapons. His stuff is especially scrappy as you know he's especially threatened by getting turned into red meat by the chops, which they establish early as vicious. When Maru explodes later on in the match with a few kicks Ogawa is spooked, quick to react with as many backdrops as possible to try to end things quick, but inevitably his best attempts only get near falls. It's really great to see how they showcase that loss of control as Maru just keeps pushing and Ogawa keeps trying to wrench the arm, but it's just slowly getting less and less effective as he pushes though to that exact breaking point where Ogawa's arm work isn't even getting anything done, he's just scrambling for nothing at this point, Maru has completely out-psyched him. Maru uses flashy stuff but it's to progress that exact point instead of just being there for the sake of it. Finish was fun as Ogawa tried to get a desperation roll-up but got outsmarted and rolled up himself for the pin. Really refreshing to see a logical Marufuji match where he doesn't look he's half-assing it; despite the comedy-driven start this got super solid quickly and we got to see a more protracted pace out of him where he had to think about things beyond "what's the next big thing I can jump off/flip?". That's all thanks to Ogawa who makes the match work as the crafty vet who only has his smarts to rely on alongside a not exhausted assortment of cheap tricks and his wide range of holds to try to save his ass from impending doom. It's the first match here deserving of Great status in my mind. RANK: Great W/ Hitoshi Kumano & Zack Sabre Jr vs El Desperado, Taichi & TAKA Michinoku (18.01.2015) The beginning of Suzuki-Gun being a consistent plague on NOAH cards for the next few years, yep this is not the stuff at all. We start off with Kumano getting bullied, but Zack ties TAKA up in knots as revenge with some cool arm-work alongside Ogawa until Taichi uses a chair to smash Zack with while he's coming off the ropes and cement their early advantage. The trio work the middle half on Zack with the usual comedy heel sthick, which while fresh right now will quickly get tired and old given it's the same shit you will be seeing from them from here on out if you bother watching back this far. Despy is nothing like his amazing later self: instead being a slow, pretty plodding heel who doesn't really have much to interest in terms of moves or anything, really. He doesn't even bother to wrestle without a shirt on. TAKA and Zack have a alright back and forth as Zack apes some Saint spots to try to get the better of the guy before just going for his strikes instead. Ogawa's hot tag is awesome as he attacks the trio, gets Taichi pissed so he can drop-toe hold him onto TAKA's face, and then throws Despy right out of the ring in a big bump. TAKA eats a backdrop/eye poke and Enzuigiri, but lands a flush calf kick in response when Ogawa tries to capitalise. Kumano comes in for his 30 seconds of shine before the heel duo cut him off: I thought there was at least some drama with Despy getting caught in a few amateur-wrestling style roll-ups, but then he gets ganged up on, Despy lands a terrible spear before doing his old Guitarra de Angel powerbomb to finish things up. For a introduction to the Taichi/TAKA/Desperado trio it does the job, and Zack and Ogawa basically hard-carry most of this given the heel trio are far slower and resort to just goofing off than trying to win the match most of the time. Kumano is the obvious fall guy for them; I'd say he looked fine for a generic rookie and had some good fire in the end stages. All in all, alright but never got properly good, mostly due to the slow middle and general lack of interest. RANK: Decent W/ Hitoshi Kumano vs Hajime Ohara & Kenou (24.01.2015) This was mostly to establish Kumano as a rising star, which is unfortunate given how his career goes. He still looked solid enough for a rookie and the Jr tag champs are generous enough to give him some room before dominating the middle half with the usual heel in control routine. They have some good stuff as they belittle and try to break down the rookie with deliberately basic moves like a single leg Boston Crab and the like. Ogawa gets in for a short hot tag before Ohara manages to tag him with a good tilt-a-whirl backbreaker. Cool seeing Ogawa be the one in danger as Kumano has to break him out of particularly dangerous holds. Kenou is awesome; explosive offence, but he also gets some big bumps, super animated in a good way. Cho Kibou-Gun pull out the ref bumps and usual weapon spots, but Kumano manages to of course escape from a kendo stick beating, and Ogawa gets some good reactions finally getting his own back with a few of his own to the pair. Stellar finishing stretch as Kibou-Gun pull out some brutal double team spots until Kenou gets the win with a running PK. Really quite high quality for a B-show as Kumano got to show off just how solid he was, and unlike a lot of Kibou-Gun outings the heel control work actually was varied and good for once, keeping a good steady pace without defaulting to just sitting in holds forever. Ogawa is more or less the glue that keeps everything on track as he works for the big comebacks and gets the rookie some good breathing space to shine for the crowd while throwing in his occasional bits here and there. Very well put-together, quite solid. This compared to the last match is night and day. RANK: Good W/ Zack Sabre Jr vs El Desperado & Takashi Iizuka (08.02.2015) Oh boy another short Suzuki-Gun match, sure hoping the quality is going be go-oh wait Iizuka is here never mind. It was funny seeing Ogawa and co attempting to do clean and measured arm work on the guy as he shambled around until he got a eye rake and Despy ran in for interference. Ogawa sells for ages as the duo do some typical lazy brawling and heel control shtick. Desperado is as crappy as usual with his long side headlocks and eye rakes, each taking turns to be the most overused in this whole thing. Ogawa eventually gets a decent comeback with a DDT and Zack runs wild with uppercuts and a fancy springboard kick. Big brawl, Suzuki-Gun lose via DQ after Iizuka gets the iron claw out and starts poking people with it. Dire, dire stuff. I don't know if I can even hawk any Iizuka matches in good faith with all of this shit under the surface. RANK: Forgettable W/ Jonah Rock & Zack Sabre Jr vs Hide Kubota, Masashi Aoyagi & Yasu Kubota (11.02.2015) Oh shit Masashi Aoyagi randomly showing up for a NOAH opener, cool stuff. He showed up for NOAH stuff for a bit as this was supposed to be his retirement year but in classic wrestling fashion he was still working cards until his sad passing last year. Kubota brothers are the usual plodding selves. Ogawa and Zack work their limb-targeting routines on them until Ogawa gets caught with a flush dropkick, and we get him vs Aoyagi! Actually this bit ruled, Ogawa got his ass kicked by Aoyagi's still sharp kicks and had to use a DDT to escape his wrath. Zack works against the Aoyagi twins with strike exchanges, which he inevitably loses. He gets worked over until dodging a top rope senton splash, with Jonah getting the hot tag and the win with a corner splash to both of them, a cool lariat, and then a really-off Flatliner for the pin, was a flat finish for sure. Anyway, it was fun seeing Aoyagi do his stuff, even if he was pretty old by this point and restricted to basically just kicking stuff hard, which fair credit to the guy, he can still do that very well. Everyone else puts on a competent performance, even if I think this was yet again another Zack/Ogawa carry given Jonah was more or less only here for the very end and the Kubota twins weren't really doing it for me as typical sleazy indie guys with baggy attire and less than interesting work. There's a better Aoyagi match coming up soonish that I think is WAY more valuable than this, needless to say. RANK: Forgettable ========

Part 2. Forgot to rank some matches, will be added here. ========== Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (28.07.2013) I actually forgot to watch this the last time; namely because, well, it's a four-minute brawl to a No Contest, then a reset, then the restarted match lasts even shorter at only two minutes. Not exactly the most memorable. I get why given Liger and co were the champs and you don't want a overt loss for the challengers to be later down the line, so this was about the only thing they could have done. So yeah, this was basically almost all just brawling on the outside until the ref counts both teams out, Liger gets on the mic to talk shit, and then the match restarts. Ogawa had a lot of fun just throwing hands and going for a big sprint here. The crowd are also uber behind Ogawa as even stuff like mask-pulling gets big chants from them. There's a great little bit where Liger throws Ogawa to the ropes to set up a palm strike, Ogawa stops himself, looks around for a second like "heheh not falling for that one" but then eats shit anyway when he tries running at the guy anyway lol. I don't know if it was a botch or a actual spot, but either way the two covered for it really well. Liger and Ogawa have a pretty heated back and forth where Liger just uses vintage Fighting Spirit to power though all of his usual tricks, however Zack gets involved to stop him getting the spinning powerbomb. He works the last minute with Tiger Mask IV and.....eh it's ok. Mask hits hard, but he struggles with Zack's weird WoS spots and there's one or more times where things don't look particularly smooth. They work the Zack/Ogawa dysfunctional duo dynamic into this as Mask gets the Tiger Suplex, but then lets go when Ogawa tries to break it up with a lariat, hitting his partner instead. Zack is out, and with a few kicks and a actual Tiger Suplex he gets pinned easily. Ogawa....doesn't kick Zack's ass this time and actually helps him to the back, so at least there's progress in that regard. Anyway, it's basically four minutes of a fairly tame brawl and then a semi-engaging sprint, so.....not really that interesting, to be honest. The Liger/Ogawa stuff is great (man why didn't we get a actual match between the two?) Tiger IV is his standard self and Zack is quite good, mostly because he's selling (which he's great at doing given how lanky and light he is) and doing fancy roll-ups, both of which he's quite adept at. Nothing great, but a alright build to the title match above. RANK: Decent Vs Hajime Ohara (16.09.2013) Ohara is a complete and utter dick but sadly he's a very smooth wrestler at the same time; it's almost frustrating to see such talent belong to such a scummy guy. They worked the first half mostly purely around hammerlocks and Ogawa doing his dirty antics what with pulling on the tights and trying for a sneaky early flash pin. This stuff was crisp and the two were familiar enough to make such a daunting prospect (doing minutes of hammerlock transitions...and making them interesting at the same time) quite easy to watch. Ohara finds his mark working on the lower back, thereby we have a pretty simple dynamic around the two going back to these respective weaknesses for the advantage. I did like how they incorporated said work into the match: we'd have moments where Ohara would struggle with a suplex due to his effected arm, or he'd hurt his arm off just Ogawa kicking out of something, but have to ignore the pain to try for the pin again. Despite Ohara's big backbreakers and signature Tres Fleurs submission being successfully applied to work on said lower back, Ohara has to resort to roll-ups when all of that fails to get the job done due to Ogawa's general ability to sneak out of stuff. We get a really solid minute of just non-stop roll-up attempts until Ogawa hooks the leg off a attempted La Magistral in order to get in a sneaky three count and the successful win. All in all I'd say this was pretty great; it's wrestled in the standard Ogawa-low impact style but done in a way that still really gets the crowd into it near the end. Ohara still manages to shine well with his mix of lucha and puro elements blending nicely to really get this to the next level. All in all, fantastic. RANK: Good W/ Daisuke Harada vs Genba Hirayanagi & Hajime Ohara (05.10.2013) Starts off with Harada and Ohara doing some feeling out, but of course Hira is here so this immediately goes into comedy-shtick mode. Ohara and Ogawa work quite well together with some lucha/hybrid work between the two, while Harada goes for a more conventional hard-hitting pace laced with occasional heel work by the No Mercy lads. Harada works the middle from under, but when Ogawa gets in he can only squeeze out a few of his signature spots before Ohara takes over again with some really cool modified backbreakers. Ohara sticks on his Tres Fleurs until Harada breaks it up, he still manages to counter a Ogawa Enzuigiri into a good-looking Backstabber. Hira comes in basically just to eat the pin as Harada and co beat him up a bit until he tries for his usual groin spots, then having Harada land his hip toss into knee spot into a German suplex for the finish while Ogawa keeps his partner from getting in. All in all, pretty decent undercard work, even if I think Hira really drags down these matches with his few spots and minimally good work. Ohara despite being a scummy piece of shit is sadly a pretty good wrestler, probably being the best here in terms of looking good with both of his opponents. It is what it is. RANK: Decent Now we are back on track! Felt harder than it was. Vs Atsushi Kotoge (23.12.2013) Smartly worked match where Kotoge's speed is paced against Ogawa's experience. Kotoge has some cool spots and plays the generic Jr act pretty well. Ogawa in turn spends the first half struggling to keep his opponent in check until he sneaks in his signature dropdown low blow when Kotoge comes off the second rope, and then focuses on his leg for the middle half. Ogawa goes from bumping and desperately trying for a advantage with cheating to confidently torturing the guy in holds, because, well, that's his best feature. Last third were just the two going back and forth with signature spots until Ogawa tries for a backdrop, but is instead cleverly reversed into a fancy rolling half cradle for the surprise pin. Ogawa seems pissed, offers a handshake; Kotoge tries to beat him to the punch but Ogawa just beats his ass anyway. It's fine for a build-tag to the BRAVE series later on next year, however I don't think this was particularly that great, with both guys playing it safe bar a few cool moments as per standard for a Christmas show. RANK: Decent Vs Mohammed Yone (05.01.2014) Yone is about as interesting as plain white bread at this point in his career but Ogawa drags him to something half-decent. I do like how they got all of his shtick over right at the start just to establish that as just not being that effective on a huge heavyweight like Yone, so Ogawa instead had to use some underhanded tactics and good arm-work to try to equalise things. I liked how they both established how much of a advantage it gave Ogawa as he went from being pinballed around to being able to throw around Yone and keep control despite the size difference. If you like Ogawa control sequences then you'd probably just love this given there's like nine minutes of just straight control work and Ogawa keeping in charge with whatever he can throw out. Yone does his Korakuen Hall brawling shtick as per standard, goofy running lariats and all. Last third was disappointing as Yone pretty much no sold all of the arm work just to spam lariats and then win off a Kinniku Buster for a no-frills finish. I don't get why NOAH had this epic fixation in trying to push Yone when his huge Disobey push already failed, especially given all he really has at this point is a cool leg drop and a decent lariat. He's just really not all that good, and probably half of the reason why this was so Ogawa-dominated. His stuff is good and he works at a logical pace, but there's only so much he can do with this lump. RANK: Decent Bobby Fish & Jonah Rock vs. Hitoshi Kumano & Yoshinari Ogawa (25.01.2014) Jonah and Fish despite both having some considerable experience in tag matches have almost no chemistry with each other whatsoever, but it was fun seeing Ogawa be the dominant Jr tag champ that had to carry the rookie against two fairly dangerous threats. Despite some shakiness by the rookie Kumano as expected, the Gaijin lads carried him though their stuff and he didn't seem all too lost at the end of it, even getting a few moments to shine by his lonesome. Fish is just there as a typical indie worker of the time (pointless limp kicks, unfocused wrestling style, etc) Jonah was still reliable if not quite all together there by this point. Match as a whole was ok enough: Ogawa and Jonah have a cool David/Goliath situation near the end that was definitely worth watching, honestly Fish kinda dragged it down with his needless focus on kicks, of which the finish was just him limply kicking him with the tip of his foot for a "KO" victory. Sure. RANK: Decent W/ Mitsuhiro Kitamiya vs Hajime Ohara & Kenou (08.02.2014) This mostly exists to get over the new pairing of Ohara/Kenou as this is actually the first ever match Cho Kibou-Gun (the stable NOAH gave Morishima so he didn't have to work long exhausting singles matches) will have as a definitive unit. This is also a lot more brawl orientated to get over their new heel antics, with Ogawa getting that over as he tries and fails to fight off the pair in a pre-match scramble outside. They hone in on his mid-section as their target of choice with a mix of punches, kicks, and even some weapon spots, using kendo sticks to ram it further. Ogawa sells well and mixes things up to work a more scrappy Memphis-pace what with a focus on lots of punches and strikes, as well as some really great scrappy selling in holds. They also focus on the shoulder for some fairly slow stuff, but it never gets to the point of blanking out of the match completely. Ogawa gets occasional pockets of offence with some nifty counters, however he's still beaten up anyway. Ohara throws out his cool backbreaker variations, Ogawa gets a tricky comeback and we get a surprisingly enjoyable Kita comeback as he throws meaty slams and even a top rope dropkick. He still gets beaten up though as per standard. Ogawa comes in to save the day a few times, including a really crafty little spot where he hip tosses Kenou into the ref accidently, which was one of the more unique ref bump spots I've seen. Ultimately Ogawa is way too busy beating up Ohara with a kendo stick to care about the actual match, which ends flatly with Kenou just applying a bog standard grounded clutch submission to win the match. Post-match is really chaotic as a ton of Jr guys come out to brawl before leaving. This wasn't ever that impressive, but for a "small things" match where there was more of a focus on getting a heel dynamic over rather than fancy spots, it did the job quite well. Ogawa puts the two over big and he never really feels in control even when he's on top, especially when he ends up getting beaten down anyway. It definitely felt like his assignment was to get these two over as heels given they'd have a title match in a month, mission accomplished in that case. RANK: Decent W/ Zack Sabre Jr. (c) vs Hajime Ohara & Kenou (08.03.2014) The start was good as Cho Kibou-Gun run the pair down with a ambush, with Kenou using the streamers to choke out Ogawa. The duo work over him for a bit until he's able to turn the tables by shoving Ohara into his partner and allowing for the quick tag out, but Zack by his lonesome can't handle the two so he also gets beat up. A lot of the first half is slower paced, focusing around the heel duo working the numbers game alongside cheating to keep control of things. Their work isn't explosive, but it's still solid enough: seeing Kenou work in some nasty stiff kicks and a springboard foot-stomp worked to get over their meanness. Zack sells well, and his little moments where he uses his technical experience to escape or evade offence were effective in showing that he wasn't just helpless the whole time and actively trying to claw back. Ohara is massively overshadowed by his partner but he's fine as the reliable B-player. Kenou already is pretty good, showing a lot of personality in how he gloats and messes with the pair, throwing in some cheating when things get too risky for him. Ogawa gets in his usual shtick, his experience lends well to the smaller things: his apron work in getting outraged with the duo when they cheat, his hot tag, and his big selling for Kenou all work to enhance the general match as a whole greatly once you notice how much he actually does. The middle half has Kenou get worked over with a range of suplexes before he's able to slip out of the two with his fancy kicks. Zack and Ohara have a dumb Jr-style sprint, but I thought it was pretty awesome as Ohara tried to keep things under control but got wrecked by Zack's crazy flips and submissions. Ohara's big shine moment of the match is doing these weird inverted backbreakers and shit that didn't look particularly great, but weren't terrible. Final few minutes have a ref bump and Kenou and co using kendo sticks with them even doing their own 3-count lol. Kenou gets bashed with the stick after Ogawa snatches it off him and Zack goes for a great Dragon Suplex and Sick Kick for a near fall. When Ohara kicks out they quickly scramble on the mat with Zack winning out with a inverted Fujiwara Armbar for the win. Pretty good for post-Misawa NOAH quality I'd say, with Kenou and co proving to be solid heel additions to the roster. Zack is a bit shaky in places but his submission spamming tendencies are kept to a minimum, instead being used sparingly to enhance the drama of the match. Ogawa kept things together and generally was as solid as he usually was, with a lot of good small bits to keep things going. The only big issue was that this was a heat-based match and this didn't have a lot of that, mainly due to the far bigger matches afterwards, but that's the reality of a Jr division sadly. RANK: Good W/ Zack Sabre Jr. (c) vs Atsushi Kotoge & Taiji Ishimori (21.03.2014) First match between BRAVE and the technical lads, and it's probably the most ambitious of the three matches given a lot of the early exchanges are just WoS sequence aping between the four men for a long while. Ogawa bumps for the two babyface flip dudes until Ogawa catches a kick off Kotoge on the outside and Zack hits him flush with a running apron kick in turn. From then on in the two control the pace of the match with lots of decent enough arm work on him, building up the hot tag. Zack is more conventional while Ogawa works more dirty antics, both are enjoyable in their own ways. Comeback is a bit weak with Kotoge randomly no selling after a dropdown low-blow to hit a calf kick, but Ishimori and Ogawa have a decent enough sequence where he runs wild with big spots until Ogawa throws him groin first into the ropes after a superplex attempt. Zack follows up with....more arm work! Shocker. His stuff was fairly good though as he twisted and bent Ishimori's arm in painful looking ways without it actually being that painful. Because of how light Ishimori is (keep in mind he's like 5'3 and super leaned out) Ogawa can just throw him around with ease, which is what he does via key-lock spamming for a great visual. Zack keeps throwing the guy in the air to wangle his arm more, and Ishimori uses that to get in a cool counter into a sunset flip in mid-air. The second half is more conventional as BRAVE go for spots while Ogawa and co start to settle for more impactful stuff. They play up Zack's usual tricky pins with the two babyfaces managing to get in some nifty near fall counters when he tries to get cocky and abuse his fancy mat-work. It's also really great how Ogawa incorporates tag psychology into things, spending a fair chunk helping Zack get submissions, setting up the arm for more work, interfering and brawling to protect submission attempts from getting broken up, like it isn't crazy complicated but Ogawa working proper teamwork into this is immensely refreshing as opposed to just running around. He works the last section as BRAVE are just all over the two with double team stuff, but he uses some smart counters to get around their speed. His hubris is his downfall as he lands numerous backdrops on Ishimori, but keeps delaying the pin to gloat and do more, and eventually he's is able to counter a fourth one with a flash pin for the upset and the titles. Post match has everyone shake hands until Ogawa just socks Ishimori with the title belt and busts him open hardway for a nasty look afterwards. Anyway, I thought this was fairly good: it lacked tension for a while but picked up once in the control sequences, with the spots paired up well with the intelligent grounded stuff. It's all paced around Ogawa being a shit and just not knowing when to quit, which has been his M.O. since forever. Zack is iffy but outside of his bad-looking strikes he was solid enough and worked well with the formula, especially with the faster duo where he could be a bit more creative. RANK: Good W/ Zack Sabre Jr. vs Atsushi Kotoge & Taiji Ishimori (c) (12.04.2014) Ogawa has been terrorising BRAVE for a rematch for the tag titles, so they ended up getting one while Zack noticeably didn't get involved with any of his antics. This match is a bit more chaotic because of that fact; there's some brawling at the beginning and things are generally paced around a more aggressive style as everyone gets involved trying to throw hands around. Ogawa spends most of the match selling and bumping for the BRAVE duo as they especially gang up on him, getting in lots of fairly decent offence. Ogawa is great as well as he throws in little moments where he'll just be a shit regardless of being on the wrong side of beatings. Zack gets in his usual weird mix of grappling with bad looking strikes, but he toned that down in favour of double team moves and more aggressive limb work, with a especially fun sequence with Kotoge's arm in danger from the two just bending and twisting it with a wide assortment of holds and spots. Not so much of a fan with Kotoge's really dull stuff; guy has a few spots in him but other than that it's just a lot of silly headbutts and the occasional big move. Ishimori's hot tag wasn't really that hot and his need for the big fancy spots does dull after a while. Will say him and Ogawa is a solid pairing as always, as is Zack as they battle for submissions against flash pins. Last five minutes were just a bunch of spots over and over, but I can't say it wasn't enjoyable seeing Ogawa pull out every trick in the book to try to steal this, and Zack's Chaos Theory variation into a Dragon Suplex was very lovely stuff. They repeat the spot from the first match where Ishimori counters the Ogawa back suplex into a roll-up, but that gets reversed into a cradle for the conclusive pin and the titles once again for the hotshot booking! This is probably the best match of the BRAVE trilogy: there's no big lulls minus the small brawl at the start and this never got crazy out of hand like the other matches ended up being. BRAVE are fine enough, I just can't get into the kind of stuff that they like doing, the wild spots with little psychology isn't that great after a few minutes and I tend to zone out after enough huge big spots are done back to back. Zack and Ogawa were reliable as always, with Ogawa especially getting some really quick and fluid work despite the dude being 48 here, if you can believe it. Zack looked good even if I always hate his leg-slap kicks he kept doing around this time; it'd still be a few years until he realised those just didn't go with his grapple-heavy style. RANK: Good W/ Zack Sabre Jr. vs Hitoshi Kumano & Super Crazy (20.04.2014) Fine enough for a opener. Kumano and Zack have a exchange that lasts for basically half of the match itself, working a lot of WoS-stuff as you'd expect, but Zack also is able to carry Kumano reliably though them and also get over the dynamic of the match; namely that his need to show off with more and more complex holds and transitions is costing him the advantage as Kumano focuses on reliable fundamentals instead. The middle work has Ogawa and co work on the head with a series of successive cravat variations, which I thought was really nifty for a control sequence and worked to their strengths without breaking the bank. Kumano gets a decent comeback as Ogawa bumps big for him and Crazy gets in to do his usual bit for a minute or so, moving well and getting good reactions with his spots. Zack and Kumano finish off with some basic work and even a few teases at a win for Kumano with some amateur-wrestling roll-ups, however Zack is just way too fast and experienced to be that threatened and quickly finishes him off with a half-Nelson suplex that Kumano just no-sells afterwards; not sure if that's just bad selling or what, looked goofy. Undercard match this definitely was, and it was fine enough as that: Zack gets to show off a good bit and Ogawa is as smooth a wrestler as per usual, so this was fine for a nothing showing. Crazy gets his stuff in and Kumano was fine for his experience level if a bit stilted in places. RANK: Decent W/ Zack Sabre Jr. vs Daisuke Harada & Genba Hirayanagi (27.04.2014) Obviously Ogawa and Zack aren't in much danger from the Jr goon squad of No Mercy and the match more or less is self-aware of that as Harada does generic hold-exchanges with Zack and Hira has to do dirty stuff to outclass Ogawa, but Harada quickly gets poked in the eye and dragged in the corner for some arm-work. The two do some cool joint control shtick, even having Ogawa do a modified jawbreaker using the arm as leverage (! ) which was awesome. Harada undershoots for a dive to the outside right after all of the arm sequence is done, but Zack is smart enough to still take most of the impact anyway by moving before the dude crashed on the outside. Hira working serious wrestling stuff is boring as sin, thankfully he isn't in for long. Zack lands one of his usual wacky running Sick Kicks to Harada mid-run, we get a Ogawa hot tag with a backdrop, but Harada counters the second and Hira interferes to bring things back in control. Ogawa and Zack both bump big for Harada and get him over, and he in turn gets to show off with a second rope double foot stomp and a funky hip toss into knee strike bit that was particularly cool. Hira comes in to do his weird DDT-tier comedy shtick all about balls and grabbing them...I mean sure? It's better than him working seriously so I'll take it. Ogawa gets his own back with the dropdown low-blow spot, Zack follows up with some truly terrible kicks (like these were especially bad, just woeful) before Hira catches one for a omega slow transition into a Dragon Screw. Zack looks much better when he's bending his hand off when he tries for a diving headbutt, and he bumps great for a top rope dropkick. Last minute and a half is just the classic "let's all just run in and do spots" routine, with it predictively ending with Zack tapping out Hira with his Jim Breaks Armbar after Hira tries escaping from a key lock. This match wasn't really that memorable, being more of a build-focused affair to Zack/Harada being a thing in a few months. Nothing here really grabbed my eye apart from some occasional nice moments, but otherwise it just felt a bit plain and by the numbers. Probably being a bit harsh here but this was so plain for the most part. RANK: Forgettable W/ Genichiro Tenryu, Shiro Koshinaka vs Hajime Ohara, Maybach Taniguchi & Takeshi Morishima (13.06.2014) Oh boy trio Cho Kibou-Gun matches, so enjoyable. Started off with a outside brawl (of course) while Morishima and Tenryu faced off. This matchup was awesome in 2005, decent in 2009, but in 2014 it's just really sad given Tenryu can barely get around with his busted hip and back, Morishima has completely declined from even last year due to his alcoholism. The first minute of this was just Tenryu leaning in a corner while Morishima struggled to climb up and land terrible punches, so you knew what you were going to get going in. And of course because this is a Kibou-Gun match there's endless interference, the ref doing jackshit, and general stagnation. I really liked how Tenryu sold with utter terror when Morishima tried for a early backdrop; he's not even pretending he's all cool about it now, he's just scared for his life and clinging to the ropes to survive. Morishima at least sells for the guy's still stiff chops and punches. Koshi was cool with a apron hip attack as well and seemed energised to be there. Basically this entire match is just Tenryu getting "worked" over with lots of laying in the ropes or laying down slowly falling to the mat. Someone more arty might be able to speak of the great struggle of age as Tenryu's spirit struggles against his failing body to battle against these three, but in reality it's just a lot of laying around and universal boredom. Tenryu finally gets the big comeback with a lariat and tag to Ogawa, who goes though his usual routine of bits. Koshi runs in for some fun hip attacks, great stu-oh wait Kibou-Gun just had another interference spot to slow this down again, joy. Finish has everyone brawl (well "brawl") and a cool trio spot of a Tenryu throat chop, Ogawa backdrop and Koshi hip attack and powerbomb for the win on Ohara. Basically just a nostalgia pop as Tenryu by this point could do barely anything but Baba-lean on the ropes and throw strikes but he at least tries to give the crowd something to bite on. Ogawa didn't really do anything special for this and Koshi was the only one who felt actually energised and ready to go, and his performance reflected that given how well he looked here. Heel trio were bleh, Ohara is bleh, Maybach is goofy, and Morishima is just sad to watch. Should be Forgettable but Koshi's superhuman efforts drag this up to something better. RANK: Decent ======== I'm watching a match with Kikutaro next time. Sigh

Your best bet is probably his NOAH excursions where he was working a lot more tags than usual (namely with Davey and the like) remember those being quite well done for the time, if a bit of a product of that said time as well. That's a main weakness of Bryan as he's never truly been at that incredible quality in tags than he has in singles; it's the thing that leans over Terry over him for me, alongside Terry having far superior heel work (though that's way more personal as I simply don't like Bryan working heel most of the time lol)

Other Deep Dive stuff Introduction Ogawa is one of my favourite wrestlers ever, and while I'm really happy people have realised just how good he is in working smart and enjoyable matches, there's not a lot of in-depth GWE stuff out there for him! I've been stuck in for the last while with COVID, so I basically just sat down and watched a ton of Ogawa matches back to back lol. Mostly tried to cover NOAH from the more...forgotten years, namely mid 2010's, but there's some other stuff as well. Ogawa isn't someone who has epic GOAT-tier performances often, but consistently he's working at extremely impressive levels, which I hope to illustrate here. Don't expect this to be Complete & Accurate tier by any reasonable standard, but instead a wide assortment of matches that have generally fell under the radar for a while. I'll be ranking these matches on a grade of four standards: 1. Great (fantastic, must watch/MOTYC) 2. Good (worth watching, solid) 3. Decent (alright, does the job) 4. Forgettable (bad/not worth watching) This is more of a formality so anyone who's skimming these can get a quick synopsis of what to watch and not to watch without having to read through paragraphs or try to guess how good a match is based on other ranking systems. I'll try to pace out the matches being uploaded just so there's not a huge chunk being thrown on at once. ============ Atsushi Kotoge & Taiji Ishimori vs. Kotaro Suzuki & Yoshinari Ogawa (04.12.2012) This was marketed as the big return of Ogawa; he'd been under months of recovery after a botched Bison Smith Bisontenial badly damaged his neck in pretty terrifying scenes, especially given, well, you know. Ogawa would never be the same after the injury as he'd lost so much mass (presumably from not being able to work out normally/general inactivity) that he could only work Jr heavyweight matches from then on in, so this was set up as a debut match to get that over. The match itself isn't that special outside of that fact, I thought it was decent enough. They establish Ogawa as the big player with his vast experience, but Suzuki and co also get in the usual high-speed Jr sequences you'd expect and so this never gets down to a complete crawl. Ishimori and Kotoge have the dynamic of being two good acts by themselves, however not working great as a team as they regularly get outsmarted by Suzuki and co who have better chemistry. Outside of that though this just felt like a usual spotshow without much of a story or point to it; the stuff was cool but if you don't have anything there dramatics-wise to make it interesting I tend to zone out after a few minutes. Finish focuses around Ogawa being useful as he keeps Ishimori from getting in the ring and allowing Suzuki to get the win with a few big elbows after the spot work. Nothing that interesting here but if you like the usual big fancy Jr spots as per the style of the time, you'll get some enjoyment out of this. Ogawa is clearly still getting used to being back in a ring, he never looked overtly rusty and kept up well with the younger guys. RANK: Decent Akitoshi Saito & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima & Satoshi Kajiwara (09.02.2013) Kajiwara is the forgotten Kensuke student, probably because he wasn't really one but most people assumed as such given his deep connections to the Kensuke Office lads. He's not really much to talk about apart from some basic lucha hybrid work at half-speed Ogawa gets a bit of life out of a pudgy Nakajima alongside Saito going full gear with kicks, but inevitably can't go as braindead as his opponent in that regard. The bratty kids of Kensuke try to land Saito individually but he's way too big for either of them to handle for long, so they mostly go for double team dynamics instead. This works for a good while with some nice work until Ogawa is able to handle the two with some speed and snappy backdrops to even the score. The lead for the finish was pretty simple: Saito got it in for Kajiwara as they went for their own sequences, despite some (honestly pretty shoddy) stuff from Kajiwara, he got dropped after a Saito lariat, Death Cloak, and then a big Death Sickle kick for the pin. Pretty robust tag that was super designed around protecting Nakajima, which is fair enough given what they wanted to with him even this early. Kaji is the weaker link here both in kayfabe and in reality: he's fine, I wouldn't say he wowed at all here. Ogawa and Saito put in the usual work and didn't look half-bad getting the younger workers to something enjoyable. RANK: Decent Harlem Bravado vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (10.02.2013) You might know Harlem from his current work as Andre Chase in NXT. Him in NOAH is....well, certainly a weird thing to see (though unsurprising given the era we are in) but this wasn't terrible, namely because they focused on the fundamentals and Ogawa can wrestle those kind of matches while sleeping. This was focused around Bravado's youth and speed vs Ogawa's usual cheap tricks and nasty technical stuff, trying to get pins off bending the shoulder all the way in a hammerlock and pulling at Bravado's ears to get him off the top rope, just some really great classic bits on display. There's honestly not much for me to say: this was just a smartly worked small match with two very competent workers who got the memo pretty early. Ogawa makes sure to get Bravado over near the end as he bumps big for a lariat and other big bombs, including a nice top rope European Uppercut. Eventually Ogawa gets the advantage with his slick drop-down low blow when Bravado comes off the second rope, pushing him into the ropes and then kneeling down in order to literally trip the guy over for a sneaky Rat Boy special roll-up finish lol. Nothing special for this however definitely a fun watch if you want to see Chase do some actual solid ring-work for once, and Ogawa is obviously there to lead things along and make this better than it had any right to be. Good carry-job. RANK: Good Mikey Nicholls & Shane Haste vs. Takeshi Morishima & Yoshinari Ogawa (24.02.2013) TMDK? Babyface Morishima? It has to be weird pre-NJPW merger NOAH! This was a pretty solid tag, actually. Haste and Ogawa do some good sequences as he blindsides the vet with his speed, and Morishima is obviously the big threat here that TMDK immediately set about grinding down to the mat. Good news: this means we get some psychology! Bad news: it's more or less a excuse to sit in rest holds. Probably for the best as Morishima was steadily on the decline here due to his alcoholism and had lost a lot of muscle ; not quite as bad as next year where his matches are mostly sad EVIL-tier stuff where people are interfering every minute to disguise how little he can do but you can tell he's lost a few steps from his prime. The middle part is good as Nicholls gets beat down by the two for most of it, so Morishima doing big lumpy power moves and Ogawa doing mean Southern-style punches and brawling, always a enjoyable combo. Haste's hot tag is entertaining as shit as he just hurl himself all over the place to just lay it in for Morishima, and the two manage to really get over their superior teamwork by always having each other's back and knowing how to work off the other. Morishima of course powers though the two and even lands a top rope dropkick, even if it's a bit wiffed. Him and Haste have a big guy/small guy back and forth as Morishima just throws his weight around and Haste can do little but try to wear him down with his indie-riffic leg-slaps. Finishing stretch is good enough as Ogawa tries to get the sneaky win, despite Morishima's assistance he still ends up caught in TMDK's double team Tankbuster for the conclusive pin. Pretty solid stuff all round; even though this starts slow it gets good real easily, and TMDK are solid workers despite their tendency to overdo it at points with their stuff. Morishima was the usual lump he was around this time, he felt a bit more engaged and alongside Ogawa's varied and pretty slick pace, this was surprisingly great for the last half. RANK: Good Hitoshi Kumano & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Ricky Marvin & Super Crazy (09.03.2013) Cut up slightly as the first few minutes were missing on the TV edit. This was a early prototype of the later messy Stinger/whoever else rivalries as Ogawa and co face off against the Los Mexitosos duo, who were on a pretty long run with the GHC Jr tag belts at the time, even defending them in AAA. They immediately bully Kumano as he's the weak link rookie, getting some good mileage out of some nasty lucha holds to work the back. Marvin does a super sick rolling Mexican Stretch to really hammer in their dominance as Ogawa fails to tag in and keeps getting blindsided by the numbers advantage. Super Crazy was obviously a bit slow in places but did his job just fine if a bit off in places. Eventually Ogawa gets in regardless of the legal tag and runs wild with a good pace as he goes though his usual spots, but due to not being the legal man the ref is too busy getting Ogawa out to notice Marvin using his title belt to whip the guy in the face and steal a win with a roll-up. Nothing special for a undercard, I'd say everyone worked in some decent spots to make this at least somewhat decent, and it works to build up to later things down the line. Nothing really memorable about this though. RANK: Forgettable Takashi Iizuka & Toru Yano vs. Takashi Sugiura & Yoshinari Ogawa (21.04.2013) Good lord remember when Yano and Iizuka were GHC tag champions? Holy fuck that was the dark ages of NOAH, and sadly we are right in the middle of their reign, so this was as expected quality from these two. It was actually entertaining seeing Yano and co get blindsided for once as Ogawa and Sugiura immediately start beating the pair down hard, isolating Yano to take abuse by himself. The two get this going really well with a great burst of violence and some solid chemistry as they manhandle the CHAOS duo. Yano takes the advantage with hair pulling and this turns into the usual heel formula for the CHAOS lads as they turn this into a boring stretched out heat segment on Ogawa with lots of trash brawling and the like. I can at least say the crowd were into it and Ogawa was selling remarkably well, even if the ref just looked like a insignificant ass just standing there as the two cheated aplenty, even right in front of him. Sugiura's hot tag was crazy loud and he just abused and threw around Iizuka here despite the dude being all banged up by this point. The finish is the closest we ever get to a Ogawa/Yano singles match as the two exchange some surprisingly robust roll-ups, a extended backslide tease between the two allows Iizuka to run in with the Iron Finger, attack Ogawa, and for Yano to get the cheap win with said backslide. Nothing good here, I'm afraid. The NJPW guys are immensely limited and as much as I like Yano as a stupid tourney spoiler, he was pretty insufferable at this point given his limited ring-work and lack of actual heel heat for said antics, which were mostly cheap gags. That style works for a G1-style tournament; not for a daily week by week match standard, and Iizuka is.....washed, to put it nicely. Ogawa and Sugiura try to make this as solid as possible and it really felt like they were trying to showcase just how crappy their opponents were by contrast, but I can't in good faith recommend this. RANK: Forgettable Genichiro Tenryu & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Masao Inoue & Takeshi Morishima (11.05.2013) This was for Kobashi's Final Burning event, and of course it wasn't really all that serious given Inoue is here and mostly in the spotlight Tenryu is done physically by this point and can't do anything apart from hang on the ropes and a few punches, so this was all done to smart work instead of going full tilt, though that didn't stop Morishima trying to bust his hip with some of his huge spots. Inoue is great at his usual shtick as the match builds around him being a shit to Tenryu early with a sneaky eye rake on the apron and knowing he's fine because he has Morishima to fall back on, but of course the poor guy just can't keep it together to actually win a match so things quickly fall apart. Ogawa makes Morishima look like a complete monster as he just gets thrown all over the place, while he does the opposite with Inoue by bullying the poor sap for the most part. Inoue's comedy stuff is great, his selling is just so animated as he crumbles and falls over himself whenever there's even the slight chance of him doing something impressive. Him and Ogawa build up a second rope clothesline remarkably well as Inoue takes multiple attempts to land it properly, and when he does there's a good reaction. Despite Inoue even landing his goofy wind-up lariat, he easily falls to a Tenryu chop into Ogawa School-Boy for the conclusive pin. This was cleverly worked, but not that great unless you really like seeing Inoue comedy spots. Ogawa carried most of this given Tenryu was in no real condition to do much of anything, so that's a bonus. RANK: Decent Kyle Sebastian vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (17.05.2013) Cut slightly by about 3 minutes. Sebastian is a trashy Canadian indie worker who was picked up during the decline days of NOAH for only one tour, so this is fairly rare stuff. He does a silly dance sometimes and that's basically the gimmick. While it might work in DDT, not so much here. The start was generic arm work between the two and mostly there for Sebastian to get in some offence. The weird part is Ogawa's bit, which has him take control when Sebastian seemingly tweaks his leg off a leapfrog spot. From then on in Ogawa mostly takes control while Sebastian gets in the occasional bit of offence while no-selling the leg issues when he has to do his spots, typical sloppiness there. He lands some generic offence including a dropkick and a top rope crossbody, but despite his weak stuff Ogawa is still standing and keeps going back to the leg. This pays off in the finish as Sebastian tries for a flashy moonsault to dodge Ogawa's elbow in the corner but in doing so he tweaks it more and ends up stumbling to the floor, allowing Ogawa to snap on his Figure Four for the tap out victory. Nothing undercard showing and mostly Ogawa carrying with his pacing and general work. Sebastian isn't really that good (like, at all) for this standard of quality, feeling like a sore thumb by comparison. Didn't really get much from this at all. RANK: Forgettable Kyle Sebastian & Slex vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (30.06.2013) Pretty good for a opener. Slex is the guy most people know: Kyle Sebastian is a job guy they got from Canada. This is the first match where Ogawa and Zack are teaming up; they already have a fairly good connection given Ogawa trained the guy. Baby Zack is still iffy in places but him and Slex have a mostly smooth technical exchange, and Ogawa seems really energised here as he moves well and his stuff is fairly on the money to keep up with the faster pace. Slex and Zack by far have the best exchanges here though: these two really got something going here between Zack's slick technical pace and Slex's big bombs and spots. Sebastian's big thing was basically just spamming dropkicks, though he does do a cool moonsault at one point. Ogawa was the slowest, obviously, and he did struggle somewhat with the sprinty pace that this was going at, even if he was still quite good when it came down to it. They worked this into the finish as Ogawa couldn't get the job done and Zack's way too busy going at full tilt, ending up knocking out Ogawa with a Sick Kick attempt, allowing Sebastian to get a quick roll-up and the big upset. Ogawa shows his maturity by kicking Zack's ass post-match: for many tag teams this would be the end of their partnership, funnily enough this is just the beginning for these two lol. Good sprint, a bit too spot-focused and not much selling to find, but it did well in showcasing the shaky foundations of the Zack/Ogawa partnership as opposed to a more tight-nit duo, which will continue to endure for the next two years. RANK: Decent Roderick Strong & Slex vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (20.07.2013) Ogawa and Zack still aren't quite on good terms as Ogawa refuses to shake Sabre's hand during the pre-match. The starting sequences are good for separate reasons: Sabre has some nifty technical stuff and him and Strong work particularly well together while Ogawa has to eat shit as Strong destroys him with his signature hard chops. It's cool to see Ogawa try to do Kobashi spots where he's trying to push though the pain to try to get his stuff in, he's absolutely NOT Kobashi, he can't hit hard enough to do much of anything, and so he's sent all over the place and selling his ass off. Ogawa finally gets in something when he sneakily rakes the eyes on a pinfall attempt, but he has to quickly tag out after Strong threatens chopping him even more red than he already is. We get some miscommunication spots as Ogawa and Zack can't bring down Strong and knock each other over in the process, allowing the other duo to get in a big flying kick and Slex hurling himself over for a dive to the outside. Slex works over the back with some basic but fine enough stuff, Strong adds some great flavour with a big double Gourdbuster and nice strikes. They amp up the disrespect to really get the crowd rooting behind Zack as he bumps good and gets over the eventual hot tag. The hot tag sadly wasn't that hot as Ogawa's stuff is a bit meh; nothing bad by his standards but it didn't really have any fire behind it to really get anyone interested. I don't know what was up with Strong's arm as he kept looking at it multiple times: was he working injured or something? Not sure, but something was definitely up given he kept going back to it. Slex gets in to do a bunch of cool stuff before Zack jumps in for some awesome tricky counters and big kicks to the legs and arm to disable the guy and ground him for a armbar. Strong gets overeager as he runs all over the place to land moves while Zack uses all of the goofy WoS spots he can to keep him under control. I did like them reincorporating the miscommunication from before as Ogawa and co don't mess up this time, but Ogawa still gets mad when Zack can't get a proper roll-up applied lol. Strong and Slex have a awesome double team bit where Slex powerbombs Zack into Strong's knees in a nasty bump. Zack has to fight for the finish himself as he hurls huge strikes to save the day and catches Slex in a cross armbreaker/leg lock, forcing the tap-out. Ogawa is still mad post-match and beats his ass again as per standard. This was full of solid action and actual reliable selling as Zack gets a full showcase to essentially get over that alongside his technical work as well: he can be a bit insufferable in places with how little he communicates struggle for his bits, however he was tolerable here. Ogawa by design doesn't do a whole lot, but his work is also impressive for what it is as he gets over just how out of his depth he really was, and how dirty he had to get in order to survive. RANK: Good Masao Inoue vs. Yoshinari Ogawa (04.08.2013) Wasn't anything special but a fun little comedy match. Inoue is a guy I wish people would get a closer look on because he's really great at working ring psychology and knowing where to be a goofy idiot and when to get the crowd to rally behind him. He was never a "good" wrestler in terms of workrate, but that's not always needed to be a solid act. Him and Ogawa have a easy rapport that gets them a easy match as a result, based around Ogawa being a bully and Inoue being the underdog that has to rely on eye rakes and trying (and failing) to do moves. There's some great slapstick with Inoue getting his groin abused aplenty and stumbling over trying to get back in the ring to escape a count out loss when Ogawa tries to throw him to the very end of the arena. Inoue gets his shit in near the end with some clotheslines and a terrible shoulder charge from the second rope. When he tries again for one Ogawa just moves casually out of the way lol. It was cool seeing Inoue slapping on a rear naked choke, but Inoue is too dumb to notice that his shoulders are pinned to the mat and so loses the match. As I said, it's not really a workrate match: Inoue is way too gone for that: it's a functional comedy outing that never threatened being anything more than it was. RANK: Decent Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr. (07.12.2013) Ogawa and Zack's first title win, and it's a pretty flush match! It was fun to see Ogawa as a hometown babyface against the NJPW invaders, and they do a good job in balancing the heat of the NJPW duo with some actual good ring-work alongside it. Liger playing the cocky heel also rules as well because, well, Liger. He works to mock Ogawa by stealing all of his usual Ratboy antics, so he targets his leg and just keeps at it with nasty holds and stomps, even borrowing his figure-four to try and add the ultimate insult by tapping him out with it. Tiger Mask IV kicks hard and.....well that's about it, really. Him and Zack have a good little dynamic with the young lad consistently getting beat around the place whenever he tries to save Ogawa from a particularly mean submission, but outside of that the guy is his usual boring self. Zack goes mad and does a double suicide dive for his hot tag and almost brains himself on the mat because of how crazy he is, thankfully went off fine. He sticks mostly to his usual M.O. of arm work, especially given Mask's bad arm is a perfect target for it. Him and Liger do a cool top rope Frankensteiner reversal into a roll-up, which was pretty nifty. The lead for the finish is good also as Ogawa leads one last charge against the duo, but he finds himself overwhelmed by their sheer numbers by this point and takes some big near falls to get the crowd hot, including a big top rope Butterfly Suplex from Mask IV. Liger arms one last big palm strike, but Ogawa snaps on a last-chance roll-up where he pretty much just throws every bit of force left in his body to try to keep Liger to the mat, and it works! He cheats out a big win once again despite everything against him. This suffered from a few issues: Tiger Mask IV is just not that good, for one: and there's some definite lulls here. That said, this was still a good late-Liger performance, and Zack and Ogawa are a really consistently flush duo that definitely deserved the feel-good win given how much they threw on the table here. Probably the first Zack/Ogawa performance that was properly good on both ends in terms of them feeling like a actual unit, though it also isn't the last either. RANK: Good ======= That's pretty much it for the first part until I finish up my watching.

I'll also vouch for RVD by saying that he was a guy who brightened up any AJPW match that included him, though that's speaking for a version of RVD that was more reserved, actually sold and got over stuff. He also made AJPW Shiga watchable, which is not a easy task! I also feel like Sabu is just a better version of him in all aspects, including the crazy spots. One thing I'll give him is that he's always entertained me somehow in every match he's been in, even if that's mostly due to just doing cool stuff for the sake of it. He's a fun videogame-like wrestler who just goes full tilt most of the time, that definitely can be appealing for a lot of people.

I'd rather have Bryan do that for the rest of time than Mox where half of the elbows don't even try to land

Ring IQ: Nishimura, Yoshinari Ogawa, Tenryu Athleticism: Jumbo, Vader, Tiger Mask I Control Segments: Hashimoto, Ogawa again (seriously that dude can work a arm or leg for 10+ minutes and still be fresh, somehow) Kensuke Sasaki Selling: Ishii, Hansen again, Tenryu again, Satomura, Kikuchi Highest Floor: Satoshi Kojima, Johnny Smith, Wilkins Jr, Jaguar Yokota (still outperforming talent even today) Highest Peak: Takayama, Tamon Honda, Mariko Yoshida....this one goes for way too long

This was a treat. Nakanishi is only 2 years or so in the business, still a Young Lion but he's practically already got his whole shtick downpat as a huge dude who throws weight around. Hashimoto establishes that well as he gets pushed around for the first minute or so in tests of strength before resorting to his signature stiff kicks to sort things out. Nakanishi tries answering with slaps but Hashimoto just beats the shit out of him whenever he tries to step up again. There was barely any actual wrestling bar a suplex for the first 5 or so minutes, it was just big Hash throwing stiff shots and his opponent having to essentially survive with occasional moments of resistance. Slowly yet surely Nakanishi gets more and more shots in and Hash has to resort to submissions to try to slow him down (including a nasty Fujiwara) but eventually he powers out of a front face lock into a huge underhook belly to belly that Hash jumps really big for, making Nakanishi look like a monster. Nakanishi has this kind of unpolish to everything that he does that makes his offence so much better: his spears are just basically him doing running headbutts to the stomach, his big lariats are just him ungracefully throwing himself at Hash to knock him down, and he has stuff like rapid-fire headbutts and wacky German suplexes that just add to the jank, really getting over his gimmick as a big dude who relies on power instead of technique. Crowd explodes for Nakanishi applying the backbreaker/Torture Rack but Hash elbows him in the cheek to get out. I love the subtle Hash selling: he's been in control for the entire match, looming over his opponent, pacing the match his way: just kneeling down and looking concerned gets the crowd all excited because they know he's going to have to step things up to end this conclusively. And he does, finishing the match quick with a side kick to the legs, a stiff rolling wheel kick and a great jumping DDT into triangle armbar for the win. This was a short beating essentially but for what it was, I really enjoyed it. No big epics here, just two beefy lads hitting stiff shots until one fell down. Hashimoto is one of the greats when it comes to getting squash matches over and Nakanishi even this early was real fun, despite his arguably underwhelming career.

Yeah the official graphics for the match have it as the same as well as shown (nine seconds into this upload)

15 minutes is within the time-frame of a good Suwama match, and Nishimura works well with his kind of smashmouth rampaging. He shows a different side here with his technical fundamentals coming into play against Suwama's sheer strength, a dynamic he's done aplenty. I also liked the narrative of Nishimura getting miffed about his opponent doing well and throwing in some dirty work to even the odds, namely some unclean breaks and the like. This quickly gets into a ugly brawl on the outside as the two land some stiff shots to the other before Nishimura goes back to his technical stuff, namely working on the legs. Good Inoki-style Enzuigiri to the Suwama on the apron, as well as Nishimura just no selling rough forearms and egging for more. There's a lot of that classical fighting spirit stuff in there that really makes this distinct from more scientific Nishimura bouts; here he makes Suwama throw tons to tire him out before honing onto the leg again, but at times he'll just start swinging with the punches, which is unusual out of the guy; he has a plan but sometimes that just goes out of the window because he really wants to settle into controlling the match by any means possible, which was a cool theme that ties right into the finish later. He really hones in on the leg of Suwama with a vengeance, even resorting to wacky caveman-lite headbutts to keep the holds maintained alongside just spamming knee drops onto it for added damage. The finish for this is particularly cool as Nishimura's obsession with keeping control on the young ace causes his downfall: he keeps trying for headlocks which are answered with big backdrops. Suwama spams out about six of these for the win despite some tricky roll-up attempts and near falls by Nishimura, but he just can't get over his need for the headlock and so eventually crumbles. This was perfectly paced around Suwama's better features, namely his strikes and bombs, which respectfully look pretty good here. He sells well and gets the crowd going in his struggles against Nishimura's fairly strong work, mostly focused around trying to ground him down. It's not mind-blowing for a 15 minute match, but manages to do a lot with what it's given and as such we avoid the dreaded Carny match filler for the most part in favour of some good dynamics instead. Solid stuff.

This match is fascinating but not for the reason you think: if this was just a regular squash I wouldn't be bothered. I'm typically not a huge Joshi guy but when I seen this, a early JWP taping of a match that happened in America (in the 90's, of all things) I had to check it out for myself. The match itself is just another Devil rookie squash, done a million times before, nothing special there. Kitamura is the usual rookie for the time: she's fine enough but obviously very limited, green, and not exactly amazing at much. They initially work it as per usual for the first minute: Kitamura is the snappy rookie who's throwing herself all over the place for Devil, trying to get sympathy with extended headlocks to control the dominant force, etc etc. Here's the weird thing: the crowd cheers for Devil, not for Kitamura lol. She's kinda taken aback by it first, then she plays up to it and the crowd love it. From then on in she's working as a dominant babyface squashing the jobber, and you can tell how she mixes things up to cater to them, though that's not hard when even the hair pulling gets strong approval from the crowd. When she starts throwing Kitamura's head into the turnbuckle they absolutely get behind it, and she in turn plays up to that by getting them to count along to her turnbuckle smashes, prolonged pauses to get them more heated, etc. It's so....weird. Kitamura still works her side of the match the same (and actually gets some boos for that when she starts getting stuff in proper) But Devil quickly gets back in control with the usual shtick. The finish has her land the usual big Devil lariat for the three count, but the reaction is HUGE: if you told me the reaction was for Hogan landing his Leg Drop on some random B-tier house show I'd be none the wiser, it was bizarrely awesome. Match wasn't anything much special though, I just thought it was really impressive that Devil was not only massively over here, but she had the sense to play up to that rather than continue to do a heel routine. It's not like everyone here got that same treatment either as the other matches on the card weren't nearly as hot (apart from maybe the last minute of the main event?) so there was definitely something there. Interesting oddity for sure.

This is during Suwama very mixed first reign with the Triple Crown, but I felt like this was one of his better bouts: it was clear the intent with this match was to get him over, and Nishimura is obviously the perfect man for the job there. First 10 minutes are basically just rest holds and grappling, with Suwama not being able to really do much against the far more accomplished technical worker, through he's able to transition out of Nishimura's holds rather well and is shown at least to be able to hold his own defensively, with some ring work in using his elbows and knees to dig in to Nishimura's joints during sequences, alongside his size to really keep things from getting too hairy. Suwama throws some strikes, but Nishimura answers with some great Euro uppercuts, but ends up flying to the corner after a big double chop and a big sell. Suwama tries for a top rope splash but Nishimura nails him with a flying kick, then plays dirty by smacking him with his own title belt on the leg and stomping on it. There's a solid figure four spot where both men battle for control, with Suwama having to reach the ropes through this doesn't stop Nishimura from grabbing on the hold as much as possible. I'll bring this up now, but I particularly love Nishimura's uncharacteristic heel work: he's not overtly going over the edge, but like a Bret-style performance, you can tell he's desperate to get the win and will most definitely bend the rules to do so. He failed once against Kawada four years ago, and that frustration at never getting the big one in all of his prior title matches is very much felt here. Suwama starts to use more of his bombs to get past his bad leg, nailing a great delayed backdrop by carrying his opponent from the ropes to the ring, as well as targeting the leg to even the score. There's great selling from Nishimura throughout as he braves the pain and barely is able to stay standing after a huge lariat, stumbling over himself. He teases pinning Suwama in the same way he did a few weeks back via a backslide counter but gets a big near fall, and a O'Connor roll gets the same result. He manages to grab on a Cobra Twist but Suwama powers out to the ropes. Nishimura plays to the crowd for a second one and they pop big, but Suwama gets another backdrop out. Nishimura counters a brainbuster into a small package for another near fall and then grabs on a sleeper after jumping like mad for Suwama's big bombs. Nishimura gets a final Cobra Twist on but Suwama counters it by rolling down into a front toe hold into ankle lock, then converting it to a big German suplex in a awesome transition. Suwama hits another backdrop into a Last Ride for the pin. Nishimura doesn't necessary "carry" Suwama into a great match (namely because Suwama was honestly already pretty good, just not being booked great with long matches, something he always struggled doing) but he definitely adds the suspense here in comparison to his opponent, selling for his stuff hard and making Suwama look like a unstoppable force when he's struggling through his submission attempts and leading into his bombs. I was a bit bugged by Suwama not selling the leg after the belt shot and latter limb work but I felt like he didn't make such a thing too obvious. This definitely felt like a match where Nishimura went out of his way to make the new champ look legitimate rather than a back and forth thing, and I would say that was accomplished here, at least for the moment. Solid stuff, one of Nishimura's all-out stronger main event showings, namely because it's a 35+ minute match that feels like 20 at best.

Classic Kid/Craig Classic is a nothing Gaijin act that basically showed up for virtually every Japanese company in service as a reliable but mostly undercard jobber act, nothing particularly interesting comes up in his career but he seems solid. KEITA I guess sees this as a challenge so he pushes the guy to a near 20 minute mat-wrestling clinic while having no ring, a super quiet crowd, and nothing more but some random Yoga mats to work with, all while still doing his weird TDK Joker act. KEITA for the first half mostly focused on trying to get to the arms, using a massive assortment of typically tricky technical displays while Kid uses mostly conventional stuff to handle the guy, holding his own for a while while doing so. KEITA cheats when Kid is in the lead before defaulting back to pulling out more insanely innovative showcases to show off. At one point he does like a literal cross-arm cross armbreaker and while it looks weird as anything it's also pretty awesome. His heel work is mostly focused around, interestingly, the eyes of Kid: raking at them, scrubbing his foot on them, punching them with knuckle-first strikes, or generally finding any opening to do more stuff involving targeting the eyes. It's almost like he was just trying to find as many ways humanly possible to do eye-work effectively as there was just so much on display here, way too many to go though individually. Kid sells for ages as he gets small pockets of offence to get his stuff in, but said stuff is mostly just aping Dynamite Kid/Benoit spots so I was glad of that, no thanks. KEITA pulls out all of the stops to try to get the win, including a dumb ref bump by using the ref to defend himself from a diving headbutt (which I'm 100% sure he just stole off Kendo Kashin) him doing a weird cartwheel senton off a chair (because again....no ring) and long drawn out attempts to finish the match with submissions into roll-ups and vice versa, just mangling the guy with weird ye-oldie Catch technique. The lead to the finish has Kid dominate at last as he is able to counter a Scorpion Death Lock into a Crossface, lands a chair-assisted diving headbutt, and is then able to win after landing a limp Tombstone and grabbing a Fujiwara armbar into Crossface transition out of KEITA's kick out, keeping it applied even when he tries to roll out of the hold into a cradle pin. Kid asks for their rematch to be a two out of three falls match, which KEITA agrees. This match would ALSO be recorded on Keita's other YT channel and it's a fucking bonkers crazy length as it clocks as a full 60 minute match, so I'm definitely going to check that out when I can spare a whole hour. Anyway, this is a great match: probably Kid's best outing ever as he sells strongly and gets good enough reactions for his ability to hold out against the onslaught of moves, for KEITA it's just another day rolling on sleazy mats in front of at best 25 people. Such is life.

It's a massive struggle between those two always lol. It typically comes down to A. How long is their longevity (is it a reduced workrate over time or the same, do they improve over time with experience and learn new things, their consistency with different opponents and matches) B. How great is the peak (is it really that great or is it more spread out, how much of a distance is it between that peak and everything else, how much is it down to choice of opponents, pacing and crowd reaction etc) Typically the greatest wrestlers as you say are nearly always present in their matches and balance the two effectively enough to keep audiences interested. Someone like Tenryu, for instance, is brilliant at both.

The people (oh god this just sounds like a "you people" promo now) who ranked the event on Cagematch typically averaged this out at nearly one star on the scale which I found to be just complete bullshit: this was a tremendous love-letter to classic British Catch wrestling, and unlike many matches where the guys involved are too scared to keep that going for the whole match and just default into regular stuff usually after a while, these madmen kept this theme going for the whole duration pretty much. Williams focuses in on the arm until trying for a fancy top rope moonsault in the corner, with Ogawa stomping his leg and causing the lad to crumple. What I loved about this was how they'd be consistently trying to get to their respective limb to work on, so you had moments when Williams would try for the arm using the ropes and turnbuckle and Ogawa would roll out of the ring and trap his leg in the ropes instead while he was arguing with the ref. Lots of great little smart moments like that where it felt like limb targeting was actually important and meant something as opposed to padding instead, so they wrestled like those mattered and as a result the crowd in turn was, shockingly, invested in the outcome. Like you can imagine these two have a excellent chemistry where they keep finding clever ways to outsmart the other on the mat or use their respective limb target as leverage, so Ogawa would strain the leg of Williams to get him down easier and Williams in turn could use the arm to neutralise Ogawa's usual tricky transitions and keep things under control. Near the end of the middle you have this terrific sequence where Ogawa kept pulling out these transitions to get out of a arm wrench, but Williams was such a dog that he kept just driving leverage because of how effective his arm work had gotten by this point, which felt right out of a WoS-era outing. Of course these two always pull out their usual signature spots, but they are in purpose to be used to keep driving home the limbwork advantage, never straying too far away from it. The last few minutes build on the two trying to bomb the other out, but Williams is always one step ahead and eventually snaps a cradle out of a hammerlock to steal the upset win when Ogawa lowers his guard when reaching for the ropes. Sure, was the crowd not super loud for this? Definitely: they cool down after a while given Williams and Ogawa aren't exactly crazy fan favourites and this had no crazy dives or spots/head-bumps to keep them occupied, instead being lots of slick technical wrestling worked at a realistic pace that respected fatigue, even if they pick up at certain dramatic moments and give a good response by the end. Doug Williams has historically loved working with Ogawa: it's the reason why he picked the guy out of everyone possible for his 2017 retirement match, after all: and it's not hard to see why as he can just nerd out with the technical work here and have someone who's also slick enough to make that work for a match. It's crazy to see just how this old-school side of Ogawa emerges here as opposed to his usual fun Rat Boy cheating antics, but it's fresh enough to keep interest and amaze given this typically never gets a chance to fully emerge. Honestly fantastic and a joy to watch, a great little gem.

Nigel is never wrestling in a million years lol. Love the guy but he made his peace with wrestling more than a decade ago, not to mention I wouldn't be comfortable seeing it in the first place

If it's like prior All Together shows, expect at best a six-man tag that goes 20/25 mins.

I didn't think it was bad per-se, I just hated the pretentious film-school lite narratives about "oh Go is in the middle of the ring and Fujita is the outsider so he's not in the centre, it's a metaphysical battle between Inoki-Ism and Kings Road!!!" when people who actually watched NOAH regularly knew it was a regular occurrence in Fujita matches at the time that he just did for shits and giggles. It wasn't anything special, but because a lot of people who didn't see NOAH watched that match and tried to make something out of a 30 minute staring contest it got fairly popular as a result. It's more of a wrestling equivalent to a Rorschach test: it doesn't actually mean anything, therefore anyone could walk in and try to make sense of it. I'm not opposed to those interpretations but it was head-scratching. IIRC he started doing it way back in PRIDE, he did it in NOAH as apart of the Taniguchi feud, which included a honestly way better match/feud than Go/Fujita I'd heavily recommend that over it. The staring there actually means something. As for Fujita in general in NOAH, his stuff is more or less the same but noticeably more refined, and he excels in tournaments as the supreme spoiler who could beat anyone he's paired up with. His Hideki Suzuki match is controversial for being a big technical wrestling fest, definitely enjoyable for me though.

Nigel was a heel during this run (this was just after his Tyler Black match where he was shit-talking the guy and playing the heel about a week or so prior) but he's a face here, basically demanding that Sweeney just get in the ring and fight him for his RoH World title, and of course Sweeney is a cowardly shit so he's going to stall, stall, stall. Now the good news is that Sweeney is a solid heel and so these stalling segments are quite entertaining: he won't even share a ring with his opponent for the introductions and he spends a good few minutes trying his hardest to not get his ass kicked, but he gets caught a few times when he's too busy taunting fans instead of watching his back. Nigel wrestles like a 80's Southern babyface, throwing clean strikes but also getting in some scrappy hair pulling and getting hi-fives from kids while bashing Sweeney all over the place, it's great. It's still stalling but functional, and it easily showcases the dynamic of the match while letting the crowd get more heated in the process. I also loved that these two actually incorporated that earlier dynamic into some actual wrestling sequences, namely Sweeney getting consistently outsmarted by McGuiness's goofy British WoS spots and selling like mad for when he had to get over frustration, bumping big, or both. Of course you can't have a entire title match be a one-sided beatdown, and eventually Sweeney gets the advantage when his opponent gets sloppy and goes arm-first into the turnbuckle, allowing him to work on the arms of McGuinness. Nigel around this time had already been known for his extensive damage to them: he'd almost been stripped of his title in reality due to a torn bicep: would never be fixed completely for years and would actually only get worse as he ended up tearing both soon enough. You can therefore buy Sweeney using this to get some sleazy work of his own at last, and his stuff is pretty by the numbers but solid enough. Nigel sells really well and despite this crowd being majority kids and casual fans, they don't get bored of the hammerlocks and slower paced arm work, namely because of said selling, which is dynamic and pretty self-aware of the match itself, so you never really feel that Sweeney is in full control, any random strike that lands flush is a dangerous thing. Nigel also gets over his initiative, never just laying down and eating stuff but always trying to either hide his bad arm, crawling to the ropes before Sweeney even tries anything or throwing shots, poking at eyes, anything to try to survive. It's fascinating seeing what he used as a heel routine being used for the opposite instead, and it works pretty well I'd say. Comeback is good (despite more or less no real attempt to sell the arm) and they even get in some near falls as Sweeney just defaults to bomb-throwing to finish the job but eventually falls to a Tower of London and a lariat for the pin. This had some great shtick: Sweeney is no Cornette or Heenan but he clearly works off guys like them here as a sort of more competent version of their in-ring work as managers, playing the coward and only getting the advantage with cheap shots and the like. This wasn't a crazy workrate outing for McGuinness (and honestly, he needed something like this given the state of his body at this point and time) but as a throwback 80's style heel/babyface dynamic? Yeah, he was great. Not the most conventional but good for its own reasons, even if no one on this Earth actually thought Nigel was losing the belt here apart from maybe the nine year old fan in the crowd.

Idk I remember Fujita v Go being firmly all Fujita-based in terms of actually being anything worth watching. Not to say that being more interesting than Go is a GWE achievement, but still, something at least.

Yeah no the Bob Sapp match Sasaki has is probably one of my favourite low-key showings I've seen when I was interested in Sapp's stuff. The belt-hung lariat spot single-handily makes it one of the crazier displays he's had, including the fact he actually, like, sells and bumps great for Sapp to boot. He'd probably get on a top 100 just for that.

Dissing Hansen seems dirty, but given the complaint is more or less about his general match structure and not just about him in particular, I feel like there's something to it. When I was deep diving 1995/2000 AJPW, the main negative thing that stuck out about Hansen was that a LOT of his matches ran around the same dance of some brawling, but also lots of boring, aimless arm work; this was mentioned last page but it shone out for me when actually going though it because it was so prevalent. I totally get why it's there and it makes perfect sense psychology-wise, it's just that every second match just devolves into "let's work the arm" and then it mostly doesn't even get brought up in the finish bar maybe some small hints of selling, and it gets especially shitty when the UWFI guys come in and we get the suggestion of submissions being more dangerous: cross armbreakers are instant-death holds if applied fully, double wrist locks and other stuff are now enough to even threaten the top top guys on the card. Hansen does not play ball with any of this. There's a match he has with Tamon Honda around about 1996 where Honda works the arm for basically the entire match, Hansen sells great for all of it: probably one of the few times Honda seemed motivated as well: but then he just wins with the Lariat at the end. No drama, no nothing, it's just completely ignored. Even the cross armbreaker gets a flash of selling but it doesn't go anywhere. Honda just eats shit. It's not always the case (there's some good drama built off it in the later years, especially when Hansen doesn't have that big megastar booking anymore) but there's a good few times where this same formula emerges, and it's almost always boring because it never leads anywhere. Like a Hansen/Honda match "should" logically rule, but because of that formula it drags it down to a boring slog.

Naturally this is a squash, but Hansen is good enough that he is able to get the crowd properly into this with Honda's few big pushes and makes this into probably the best rookie vs vet showings of this entire card, because the gimmick was essentially just that bar the main event. Honda is SUPER green and you can tell that just by seeing the generic rookie offence moves they teach: the top rope knee drop, the body press from the turnbuckle, crappy chest forearms, scoop slam, you name it. Hansen does well at selling Honda's offence not by flipping all over or flailing, but solid match details, like him having to rope break off a tight headlock instead of powering out, which later gets him annoyed enough to start throwing strikes when Honda is able to catch him again in a headlock and by extension conceding the technical stuff, or Honda legitimately getting the best of Hansen in a brawl which annoys him so much that he smacks Honda with a row of chairs: all of these are neatly packed here alongside Hansen beating him down a lot, but it never feels contrived or hasty, which is always a positive of his matches. There's never a feeling that Hansen is "giving" Honda space to actually do stuff. There's some great strength spots as well for Honda as he gets a backdrop and some scoop slams on his far larger opponent, which impresses the crowd a lot. He misses the top rope knee drop, Hansen works on the leg until the ref gets in the way, leading for one last big bit of offence from Honda: namely, a DDT. There's a great sell at the end where Hansen counters the backdrop attempt right after this and hits his own. Afterwards, he sits there acting dazed and you almost think he was thankful he countered that: Honda the rookie managed to put Hansen in a little bit of danger, even despite his immense inexperience. He realises what he needs to do, and sets up a Western Lariat; game over. This is a short but very well put together match that makes Honda look great, even despite his near complete lack of moves beyond some basic stuff. Hansen naturally carries Honda to this bygone conclusion, but for what it's worth, Honda looks sharp and motivated, a far cry from his very dire AJPW stuff afterwards. Definitely worth seeing even as a oddity outing, but it's also a solid example of Hansen getting probably Honda's best outing in his early career (that was actually up to Honda, not just him being the pin eater in a six-man).

To be fair the Suzuki Hirohito gimmick got like, a minute of stock footage and quickly dropped afterwards. The goofy Heidenreich "frozen Nazi" gimmick was a idea a writer had at the time that even Vince (apparently) thought was too much and abruptly left when it was brought up This was the 2003/2004 era as well where they just went for maximum shock factor shtick as well, so shit like this was never surprising

Not as good as their 2021 classic, but this was still really quite something to behold. A 40 minute match for 98% of wrestlers over 50 would be a very daunting task, but Ogawa just casually does it on a random B-tier show. he's been a pain in Kiyomiya's ass since he lost to the guy last year, being one of the few guys who can reliably stop him in his tracks, including a time limit draw last year. This defines Kaito as learning from those mistakes and adapting through given he easily sends Ogawa flying with a bunch of high-speed offence early on and quickly shows off his improved ring skills. Ogawa has to play every trick in the book to survive, pulling out some remarkable spots for his age and showing some insane cardio by keeping up with the young lad for the whole duration of this match; he could've easily pulled a NOSAWA or Muto and sat on the mat for most of it with super slow paced stuff, but they didn't do that here. Ogawa is also a master of working holds and counters, always making sense from a in-ring perspective but maintaining a good rhythm throughout that keeps the crowd engaged in the action. Seeing him somehow get a ref bump from a arm wrench on the ground by pulling him into the hold, or making multiple headlock takeovers fresh and exciting by engaging them in different sequences of counters when Kiyomiya tries to escape in a multitude of ways, either with eye pokes or big leaping headscissors is just genius pacing and a lot different from simply sitting in a hold for minutes on end; despite the start being mostly holds, it goes by incredibly easily. There's also some great fire from Kiyomiya in the later halves as he endures Ogawa's tricks and manages to not just overpower him with his explosive strikes and offence, but he manages to finally outsmart the crafty vet at his own game, frustrating him to the point where Ogawa just openly kicks the dude in the groin out of frustration. While there's no real narrative for the start beyond Kaito being way too fast to handle, Ogawa eventually hones in on Kiyomiya's arm for leverage and works over it for a good duration here, with some pretty brutal work done throughout. As Kaito gets more and more fired up throughout this, enduring the submissions and firing back big elbows despite having one arm to work with, Ogawa has to pull out bigger and bigger moves to keep on top: hurling him out of the ring violently with a arm wrench toss, or slamming his groin into the ring post for a near count-out victory. Kaito eventually gets on top and Ogawa has to pull out some tricky counters to simply stay in the game, even calling back to his famous Akiyama 1998 sprint in places with spots taken directly from there in how he tries to creep some roll-up attempts: it all feels desperate, and the longer it goes on the more you can tell Ogawa is losing all control here and just resorting to anything and everything to keep a hold of things. Eventually Kiyomiya has to go to new lengths to obtain the win, focusing on brutal Tsuruta-style jumping knees and most remarkably, using a Cattle Mutilation as the finish. Fantastic babyface work from Kiyomiya throughout as he balances vulnerability with pure Kobashi-lite fire when Ogawa is tormenting him, as well as some great mat-work and agility. I would probably grade their first encounter slightly higher, but this is still really well paced and worked throughout, felt nothing like 40 minutes. Gritty, nasty technical masterclass that perfectly showcases why both men are so well regarded, even if there's no big "spot" to really go crazy about. It's just a very lean match that manages to pace itself perfectly, which in the age of 30+ "epics" that slog along is a godsend. Really stellar stuff.