[2008-10-25-NOAH-Autumn Navigation] Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima & Kota Ibushi vs Mitsuharu Misawa & Taiji Ishimori & Ricky Marvin

[GOTNW]

A fun mess. Match starts out with Nakajima and Marvin, and while you may expect them to do some contrived junior sequences they instead proceed to just slap the taste out of each other's mouth, setting the pace and the heat for the match. And it's not like it was hard for them to sustain that-you get Ibushi pinballing for Misawa, Misawa and Kensuke slugging it out, Kensuke destroying juniors, all intriguing ideas that were executed well (I loved MIsawa saying fuck it mid-strike exchange with Kensuke and tagging out). Misawa is at his most Giant Baba-ish here, at the end of the match he can't even run halfway across the ring, but anyone other than Kensuke that gets close to him gets elbowkilled. Marvin and Nakajima were unfortunately the heat killers too, as Marvin tried to use more of his more juniorish offence in their next match-up and Nakajima didn't really know how to react. In an interesting turn of events Ibushi and Ishimori were the ones to get the heat back by doing even more junior stuff, but with fluidity and good execution. It being a six man tag also allows them to incorporate more complicated spots easier without ridiculous set-ups, like Marvin's ramp run and Ibushi's sudden Springboard to cut-off the double 619, you don't even notice that stuff when there's simulatenous action going on. ***1/2