[2013-01-27-NOAH-Great Voyage] Takeshi Morishima vs KENTA

[Superstar Sleeze]

GHC Heavyweight Champion Takeshi Morishima vs KENTA - NOAH 1/27/13

Taking a break from New Japan to see what else is going on in Puroresu around this timeframe. It looks like NOAH finally caved and realized they had to put their top title on their biggest superstar, KENTA, even if he is undersized. Morishima has to go down as one of the if not biggest underachievers in the history of wrestling. He grew up in the red hot NOAH promotion, he has the size and athleticism to be the one to carry the torch. You can say what you will about Kobashi getting sick and Misawa dying, Morishima could not step up and he couldn't step up in 2008 either. Besides a randomly great match with Sasaki in 2008, he doesn't have much on his puroresu resume. 

This match is funny. Morishima is the one using movement to create transitions like a running hip attack or dropkick. While KENTA is the one standing up and striking his way through problems. A very interesting David vs Goliath dynamic to say the least. KENTA is very aggressive to start on his third combination he unleashes a furious onslaught of kicks that fell the Giant. Too early and too easy says I. Morishima uses the aforementioned hip attack to take control, but gets caught going to the top. Who is the heavyweight and who is the junior heavyweight, again? Morishima catches him on the outside and plants him with a Bossman Slam, good. Bodyslam on exposed concrete. Now we are taking. Morishima punishes him with some really good suplex slams. KENTA stars flying around and again some furious kicks knock Morishima down. I love KENTA's kicks, but this is too easy. A Morishima dropkick sends KENTA flying to the outside. They botch a DDT, but KENTA hits it again. They more than make up for the botch when KENTA nails a Double Stomp from the TOP ROPE TO THE FLOOR! WOW! That woke me and the crowd up. Countout tease to sell it. He nails a springboard dropkick and a Top Rope Double Stomp for 2. Great mid-match climax. This has been fine thus far. 

KENTA logically thinks it is time to finish the champ. He goes for Go2Sleep but get this...Morishima is too heavy...he tries twice, but hurts his back! Yes! Finally using size to tell a story, Morishima headbutts the back and starts going to work. Throws him a round, Camel Clutch, good Lariat for a nearfall. KENTA roars back head kick. He picks him up Go 2 Sleep. Fuck! Wheres the struggle? They are just going through the motions. KENTA uses the YESLock. After Punk/Bryan stealing his moves, good on KENTA to steal one of theirs. Nothing doing. GO 2 Sleep with exposed knee still nothing. Of course, you need drama which means nearfalls. So on cue Morishima nails a clothesline and two BackDrop Drivers they get the nearfall and then KENTA no sells it all to put him into the YESLock with ease for the tap out. There was no struggle. There was no emotions. Just two dudes following a formula and a bad formula at that. Some nice stuff here and there, it means it was average more than bad, but this was disappointing. I hear KENTA vs Sugiura is the NOAH match that gets more hype from this year. That sounds like two asskickers pelting each other with kicks so I will check that. Recommendation to avoid this.