3 | 17.08.2016 | jboyaquar | 7.0 | Upon the seventh anniversary of founder Misawa's death, the NOAH crew came to the ring with seemingly silverized wrestling boots to pay tribute to their founder. Is it me or is Taue's hair getting thicker as it gets greyer? Anyway, tonight's main event was the type of title defense that Shiozaki must love: he gets to play the proud, defiant Japanese underdog to a bigger foreign man and employ his strikes, chops, suplexes and clotheslines to get the job done as if he's mid 2000s Kobashi. No matter how obvious or repetitive S confines these types of matches, they're always quality and play-off of well-established wrestling tropes guaranteed to pull a wizened fan into the match. Despite the predictable denouncement of the Jr. Tag title bout, and that three of the four challengers are senior citizen JOBbers, there being two heel teams striving to spring the belts from the face 'Momo no Seishun' team made for some dramatic close-falls. In other action, I saw A Dalton WM weekend at VIP Texasmania; I enjoyed and was pleasantly disgusted by his work so I hope's not treated as a JOB-boy in NOAH. Taiji may have the smoothest/cleanest 450 in the business. The rest is obvious: any Sugs-Suzuki-gun six man will be good; anything with Yoda-Genba will suck. Finally, although the hyperbole annoys me, I am convinced of Lance Archer as bully. However I still think Davey Boy Jr sees pro wrestling as a fake game; I don't think there's any deep heartache with the loss of his tag title. |