[2004-03-13-NOAH Navigation] KENTA vs Yoshinari Ogawa

[Ma Stump Puller]

KENTA is in his rebellious teen phase and I guess Ogawa is next on his big list of established guys he wants to put on notice. He blasts him mid-entrance with the usual stiff kicks and from there the match pretty much goes how you'd expect: KENTA is by far the superior striker alongside clearly has the advantage of youth on his side with his speed and agility but Ogawa's been the punching bag way too many times to get tripped up by this point. His experience directs him to trying to work on KENTA's legs to try to slow him down and get the match under control. The match itself in terms of macro elements is unspectacular but I feel like the little things this provides are where it gets really great. There's a solidified feeling of malice around this match: KENTA wants to prove in his heavyweight Trial Series (of which this is apart of) that he can belong with the big dogs of the company, that he can not only challenge them in terms of hierarchy (despite his relative size difference) but actually win matches to boot: his attitude shows that he's inching to be respected as someone on their level. Ogawa clearly would know what that's like, given he spent years and years jobbing it up in AJPW as the pin-eater for numerous different factions. Ogawa had to go the LONG way to even get a inch of the kind of thing his opponent wants right now. Even then in NOAH he's been one of those guys who has really respected the old Kings Road hierarchy, having to steal most of his victories against the likes of Taue or Akiyama with dirty tricks and roll-ups, never feeling like a equal to them in terms of stature. Despite being a heavyweight, Ogawa in almost all of his big matches never actually feels like one. Then KENTA shows up and does the same thing without needing to cheat his ass off? You really get the feeling here that Ogawa just wants to squash the dreams of this little shit trying to jump the queue so he can sleep better at night knowing there isn't a easier way of doing what he did.

Now despite the epic premise or the potential of these two to have a properly great heated outing with each other, this sadly never truly meets that dream all things considered. KENTA is still a bit shaky here and there and hasn't quite ironed out that killer persona that we'll see in later years. He's a bit unfounded, with him doing moves that, at times, felt rather by the numbers, more-so when he's trying to add in some obligatory Jr heavyweight spots of the time. I mean they aren't bad or anything; just not suited for what this started off as more of a heated brawl than a conventional Jr vs heavyweight back and forth. 

Regardless of the above there was still a lot of natural heat that stemmed from this, helped by KENTA pulling from the opponent's playbook of rollups at points: this further playing into him surpassing the guy who was formally known as the undersized giant-slayer, something that would ring true later on. Ogawa in turn really helped get this over as well as he really threw in some spiteful stuff to try to squeeze out as much as possible from this small encounter. Despite some incredibly stiff strikes and near falls, eventually the inevitable comes as Ogawa gives his opponent a truly nasty counter-powerbomb off a top rope Frankensteiner attempt and completely stomped on his dreams of heavyweight glory with a sequence of big backdrops (including a rather elaborate one off the second rope) for the pin, despite some last-second counters and attempts by KENTA to stay in the fight.

This was solid for sure but it just felt like it was missing something truly special to it. KENTA surely hits hard and has some already amazing offence. He also hasn't quite paced out his M.O. yet, so feels a bit green still despite all of his early success. As mentioned above, he didn't feel ironed out as much as he'd get even by the next year in terms of feeling like a tangible big deal, so a lot of his work seems a bit lackluster compared to then. Ogawa was, however, considerably great and really got a lot out of this despite the lack of big spots for most of the duration: a tough task when Jr-era KENTA essentially made his early career out of having bonkers spot sequences and GIF-heavy moments that were instantly copied across the world. instead his aim was focusing on easy and malleable mat-work and counters to ground this down and give a relatively different angle of his opponent than what we'd usually see while also making sure he looks pretty great with some big sells here and there. Is there better matchups between the two? Absolutely, this is still pretty solid tho