[2006-06-18-Big Mouth Loud] Katsuyori Shibata & Kota Ibushi vs Naomichi Marufuji & Takeshi Morishima

[ShittyLittleBoots]

Shibata's interactions in the early stages w/ Marufuji & especially Morishima are all kinds of awesome. His stuff w/ Maru has some really great back & forth exchanges, and his stuff w/ Morishima, my goodness. Really made me bummed out that we never got a singles match between them during this time period, as they were involved in 2 excellent tag classics on the opposing teams. Ibushi is very much treated as an afterthought by Maru & Mori, as he had only been in the business for about 2 years around the time this happened. Love when Shibata & Mori are trading blows, and Ibushi tries to join in by striking Morishima from the back, Morishima just completely ignores him. He doesn't feel the strikes by this young flippy fella. That leads to a great FIP segment w/ Ibushi getting beaten & stretched by Maru & Mori. Great stuff. Shibata's hot tag is great too, he runs wild on Marufuji for quite a while until Maru tags in Morishima, which leads to him & Shibata rocking the place again. Once Shibata tags Ibushi in, the lad FINALLY gets to unleash his offense on Morishima - he shows him that he is no joke as he manages to briefly stun him. That doesn't last for long though, as it ultimately lead to Morishima just crushing him with a DISGUSTING Lariat & a Backdrop. Amazing stuff. ****1/2

[G. Badger]

This match had a lot of potential but, didn't live up to it. The early stuff with Shibata and team NOAH was great. Unfortunately, Kota Ibushi was totally disregarded to the point where it was a 2 on 1 match. And this wasn't done in a clever or meaningful way.

 

They brushed him off in such a manner that it didn't matter who was in there with Shibata. That's alright if that hubris by the NOAH team comes back around to bite them in the butt. For instance, hot tag towards the end to our ass kicking ace Katsuyori. Ibushi recovers and gets to hit his moves etc. and we get exciting nearfalls and little Kota is more than a whipping boy.

 

Or! They actually pay off the Morishima & Shibata stuff and we get a decent believable end segment. I get no one except Ibushi gets pinned here for political reasons but, man this match just kinda ends outta nowhere. Kota never looked like a threat and gets mauled by the mop headed mammoth.

 

Its stiff as heck but, all in all, that's about it. No sequences of note between Ibushi & Marufuji, only 1 section of good grappling with Shibata & 'Fuji, and no meaningful portion with 'bata & Morishima. It felt like they left a couple minutes of the end off. Below what they were capable of for sure.

 

I'd still recommend it since its 16 minutes and they really hit each other pretty good

[Edwin]

This was good, not great, but def. good. Marufuji is by far the worst guy here and really added nothing aside from a cool takedown he pulled out on Shibata at one point and getting slapped in the face by Shibata. The focus of this is on Shibata vs. Morishima though and Marufuji and Ibushi are just along for the ride. Shibata and Morishima really bring the hate against each other and Morishima does a pretty good job at using his size advantage in the exchanges with Shibata. He also does a great job at holding back and not selling a lot of Ibushi's early offense as at the time Ibushi was a small Jr. guy from DDT which means in the rankings Morishima had no reason to really put him over at that moment. Given later on once he had already been worked over and was tired he did put over Ibushi's offense and went down a couple of times after a series of strikes. Pretty good stuff.

[superkix]

Well, this was a hot mess. Marufuji and Ibushi weren’t at their bests here, with Ibushi looking especially ungainly. Marufuji just didn’t seem to care much at all. That being said, I loved the shoot interactions between Shibata and Morishima. During the match, Shibata tags in Ibushi but Morishima completely blows off Ibushi’s kicks to continue fighting with Shibata and when Ibushi finally gets his attention, Morishima clobbers him with an elbow and tags out. Team NOAH work on the lower back and legs of Ibushi for a bit, keeping him at a distance from his partner, but once Shibata gets the tag, he goes completely nuts on Marufuji with strikes in the corner and poor Marufuji doesn’t have a prayer. It’s an awesome moment in an otherwise not-so-awesome match.