[2005-04-17-NOAH-Navigation for Evolution] KENTA & Kotaro Suzuki & Naomichi Marufuji & Ricky Marvin vs. Makoto Hashi & SUWA & Takashi Sugiura & Yoshinobu Kanemaru (Captain's Fall Elimination)

[Vinnie B]

I've seen some people hate this, but I thought it was awesome for the most part. I am certainly a sucker for elimination tags (Survivor Series is my favourite PPV). It is certainly far, far too long, but for the most part it's great. The pace never really lets up, things do look like they have purpose, and there's never too much move spamming or repetition (with the exception of Marujufi's superkick and Sugiura's spear). SUWA was great and I'm looking forward to his match against KENTA. The beatdowns of Suzuki and Hashi that make up the meat of the match are really fun. I never know why Ricky Marvin didn't make it in the US as he's an absolutely great Jr Heavyweight. This does certainly start to drag after the 35 minute mark, but KENTA and Sugiura do some cool stuff in the finish to pick it back up.

I think any complaint you could make about this match would probably be valid, and you would be entirely justified not wanting to spend nearly 50 minutes watching this, but I had a lot of fun. I'd much rather watch this overly-long, masturbatory nonsense that 2018 NJPW's overly-long masturbatory nonsense. **** 1/4