[2006-12-02-NOAH-Winter Navigation] Bryan Danielson vs KENTA

[Loss]

Talk about it here.

[dawho5]

Early and mid-match were really good. Both worked smart and kept it simple. Then it falls apart for me. Danielson does a big dive and hurts his knee. He makes it exceedingly obvious that his knee was hurt during that dive. KENTA...decides we're going into a suplex nearfall sequence. Danielson is still selling the knee, and KENTA's one move that targets it is the Texas cloverleaf. Then we move on to more nearfalls. Actual finish and the few moves leading directly up to it was pretty god, but once again the need for big suplex nearfalls when the match had another perfectly logical way to go kills me.

[Superstar Sleeze]

I disagree with the finish ruining the match. After the big dive, Danielson sells the knee, but KENTA had taken more punishment up until that point. So Danielson started back on offense with the missile dropkick. The knee messes him up a bit and KENTA hits a guillotine DDT, which he usually does not expect his opponent to sell (ala the Harley Race piledriver) so he looks to follow that up with a springboard move, but Danielson catches him with a German and then goes to lock on the Chickenwing Crossface (having had worked on the arm). There is a great struggle and here at his first real chance to pick the knee KENTA does. He applies the Texas Cloverleaf and when Danielson does put on Cattle Mutilation he cant hold it because his bad knee. The next time KENTA gets on offense he goes back to Texas Cloverleaf, but gets countered into a pinnning predicament. After that Danielson is relentless with Cattle Mutilation. KENTA is able to bridge one into a pinfall. At this point, KENTA has solidly got his ass whipped. He gets an Ace Crusher and quite naturally starts bust out his big guns which are the his knee, kicks and G2S. I don't take meticulous notes, but I don't think he ever hit a suplex in the post-dive portion of the match. He was working the Cloverleaf, but almost got bit. If I am KENTA and I got my arm fucked and I don't really work the leg and I am getting my ass kicked, if I have an opening I am hitting my home run shots. My cross-court forehand in tennis is a lot better than my down the line. If I want to access to a righty's backhand, I need to hit a cross-court backhand or create a inside out forehand. There is a lot of time I want to work over someone's backhand, but it is a limitation in my game to work it over. When I start to get down, you best believe, I am hitting the big cross court forehand even if their forehand is pretty decent. I don't fault KENTA for relying on what brought him to dance. He gave it a try to work over the knee, but it almost bit him when Danielson got a two count on a small package.

KENTA vs Bryan Danielson - NOAH 12/02/06

This may shock a lot of people but the amount of matches I have seen Bryan Danielson wrestle as Bryan Danielson is probably only a handful and the vast majority are live. I was just never one to really ask my parents for money to buy wrestling or any item for me. Of course, my Dad would take me to the matches when they came to town and usually one 1-2 PPVs a year, but other than that not much. This mentality would continue into college. I always saw live events as special exceptions and would go to ROH whenever they were in town, but never felt that my limited college money should be spent on indy wrestling. I am hoping to change this in the near future and really hunker down and watch some golden age ROH. This match gives me hope that really is all that it is cracked up to be because Danielson was amazing in this match.

As I said in the SUWA review, the one constant in great KENTA matches is make KENTA work for it. Don't let him work his million mile an hour match, but make him sell and build up to that frenzy. What is interesting is I really feel like 2013 Daniel Bryan and mid-00s KENTA are really similar in working style. Bryan is better at building a match and slowing it down on his own accord. However, he has been prone to blowing off selling to get his shit in and his real selling point in the ring is his million miles an hour pace. Having not seen a lot of Daniel Bryan as Bryan Danielson, I was interested if they were going to try break the moves/minute record or something. I was very pleasantly surprised at how well this turned out.

The one odd thing to get out of the way is that the crowd is dead throughout the majority of the match. Was this one of Danielson's first tours in Japan? Were they just unfamiliar with him? The feeling out process is slower than I expected and very mat based where Danielson seems to have the advantage. KENTA looks to pick up the pace, but Danielson gets a hiptoss and converts that into a cross armbreaker. Excellent wrestling as KENTA is more as home with an uptempo pace so Danielson wisely slows it down and at the same time damages the arm. KENTA freaked out that Danielson almost got a submission victory actually slows down the match with a chinlock in a way to reset the match because he has been outclassed thus far. Once Danielson get back on top he is just working that arm relentlessly with all sorts of crazy submission moves. KENTA hits a snap powerslam and is still selling. Danielson's answer to KENTA is a Robinson backbreaker and a diving headbutt. I get a little worried here because they move quickly into a roll-up barrage when the diving headbutt was such a big spot. Danielson continues to go for home runs as he hits a huge splash to the outside over the guardrail on KENTA, but in the process hurts his knee.

 

After the big dive, Danielson sells the knee kipping up on one knee after a missile dropkick, but KENTA had taken more punishment up until that point. So Danielson started back on offense with the missile dropkick. The knee messes him up a bit and KENTA hits a guillotine DDT, which he usually does not expect his opponent to sell (ala the Harley Race piledriver) so he looks to follow that up with a springboard move, but Danielson catches him with a German and then goes to lock on the Chickenwing Crossface (having had worked on the arm). There is a great struggle over this hold and here at his first real chance to pick the knee KENTA does. He applies the Texas Cloverleaf, but Danielson makes the ropes and when Danielson does put on Cattle Mutilation he cant hold it because his bad knee. There is an excellent headbutt vs kick war and Danielson was throwing some Garvin like nasty headbutts. Danielson goes for the Crossface Chickenwing again, which would avoid bridging on the bad knee and almost assuredly secure the victory, but KENTA fights like mad to get out of it. The next time KENTA gets on offense he goes back to Texas Cloverleaf, but gets countered into a pinning predicament. After that Danielson is relentless with a barrage of Cattle Mutilation. He attempts to hit a Tiger Suplex/Cattle Mutilation combination, but KENTA is able to bridge one into a pinfall. Awesome spot! At this point, KENTA has solidly got his ass whipped. He gets an Ace Crusher and quite naturally starts bust out his big guns: Exploding Knee and Kicks. Danielson's last stand is a roll-up barrage, but KENTA is stringing together too many kicks at this point. He hits the Go 2 Sleep to secure the victory.

I love this match as a game of strategies. Looking at this from a kayfabe perspective, Danielson is a better all-around wrestler. KENTA thrives in the uptempo game and with his kicks. Danielson stymies him early and never really lets him get going. Danielson is working the arm effectively, but does not have the knock out blows like KENTA so he goes for big gambles like the diving headbutt and the big splash, but this costs him his knee, which messes with one of his best submissions: Cattle Mutilation, which requires bridging. KENTA goes after the knee, but he is not very adept at working over body parts and nearly gets burnt with a cradle counter to a Cloverleaf. So KENTA has a fucked arm, has been getting his ass beaten and cant really take advantage of the knee, but has an opening with an Ace Crusher. So he goes to what brought him to the dance, big fuckin home run swings right at Danielson's head. KENTA always has the puncher's chance and he landed some big ones late. Danielson should have stuck to the arm game plan, but got lured away with big gambles then ended up ruining his chances to apply Cattle Mutilation. If only he was able to get that Crossface Chickenwing. Larry Z would have been proud at this exhibition of the human game of chess. My match of 2006 so far! ****1/2

[Superstar Sleeze]

There is not much to add to my initial review, This match holds up really well as a well-done match that is focused around who is the best wrestler. The crowd was really dead, but Danielson did the best he could to make up for it with his verbal selling. I had forgotten how much I liked the beginning between Danielson's tricked out matwork and his armwork. I liked KENTA slowing things down at first to sort of reset the match after having his arm attacked only for Danielson to go back to it. I loved they took their time with things like setting up the surfboard. After the big Danielson dive, I have already chronicled how great the finish run is. Re-assessing, I would say Akiyama/Taue was a better match in 2006 and KENTA/SUWA is the best KENTA singles match of the decade. KENTA/SUWA and KENTA/Suzuki rely on face/heel dynamics to really hook the viewer in so I would say this is KENTA's best pure singles match. It feels like it should be for a championship, but alas it is not. It should be in the 20s. ****1/2

[supersonic]

KENTA vs. Danielson – December 2, 2006

Danielson got the early advantage by targeting KENTA’s left arm with various strikes and submissions, and honestly dominated this one in what seemed to be booking reciprocation from their Manhattan classic. While this lacked Manhattan’s dramatic atmosphere to put this into all-time classic territory, this was still an excellent contest nonetheless. KENTA truly had a chance in this match about halfway into it when Danielson dove at him in the audience. Danielson’s left knee and/or shin seemed to strike a chair, leading to a count out tease for both. There’s a striking difference in the drama between Japan’s standard 20 count and WWE’s choice to use a 10 count; in the former’s case, the ring announcer’s dramatic change in voice inflection in the last several seconds of the count truly add to the intensity.

Danielson almost fucked up a kip-up after a missile shotgun dropkick due to his left knee pain, so once KENTA was able to get an opportunity, he tried weakening that joint with Texas Cloverleaf submissions, making me sad we never got Danielson vs. Dean Malenko. I really appreciated around this point that Danielson had KENTA’s spinning back fist combo scouted, turning into a Regalplex near-fall. The biggest disappointment was the fault of neither competitor; the audience didn’t react in as dramatic fashion as I would’ve hoped when Danielson locked on the Cattle Mutilation. Perhaps many in attendance had not gotten around to watching the Manhattan match, although I’m 99.9% sure it was made available for viewing on Japanese television.

They were went out of their way to tease that Danielson would win this rematch with the Cattle Mutilation, as the ROH Champion even dragged KENTA to the middle of the ring for it, which made the crowd’s lack of electricity disappointing. The match was so intelligently worked which is why the crowd’s mostly subdued demeanor, which is usually something I appreciate when compared to how quickly audiences in other regions around the globe blow their loads too early on a card, was a detriment in this case. I loved that KENTA had the Crossface Chickenwing scouted, shoving Danielson as soon as his left arm got hooked.

Elbows to the head once again couldn’t put KENTA down, but instead of using the positioning to put Danielson into a fireman’s carry like in their prior encounters, Danielson stopped early and went for a cover for a near-fall. That was brilliant to ensure he didn’t put himself at risk of a Go to Sleep, while showing the confidence he had in his blows after finishing off many with it, including Roderick Strong and Nigel McGuinness. It’s a damn shame we’ll never get to see him bust them out to counter an F5 attempt by Brock Lesnar.

Since Danielson dominated this match, KENTA tended to waste no time when he’d daze Danielson on a cut-off attempt. That was truest when it mattered most at the end. After Danielson had some fantastic near-fall counters via an O’Connor Roll and schoolboy pin, they then hit a strike exchange with another counter near-fall pin tease. Instead, KENTA blocked Danielson’s backslide pin attempt and landed a few high kicks to the head, leaving Danielson both prone to the Go to Sleep and unable to kick out like had happened in Manhattan. As stated, an excellent match. ROH fans may as well in the last 3 months of 2006 just watched all Jimmy Jacobs segments and whatever KENTA was doing across various promotions, as this along with KENTA other matches during that time span were right on par with the majority of ROH’s 2006. ****1/4

[ShittyLittleBoots]

Bryan/KENTA II was an outstanding match w/ an outstanding performance by Danielson. I really liked the early mat work which was stopped by a slap to Danielson from KENTA. Now that's a way to get out of the mat. Danielson's dominance over KENTA was such a blast to watch - his work on top was so compelling to watch. And to add to that, he sold really damn well for KENTA, too. This was just a total Bryan Danielson show & I loved it. ****1/2