El Desperado, Taichi & TAKA Michinoku vs. Hitoshi Kumano, Yoshinari Ogawa & Zack Sabre Jr.

[6.0] "Exactly the kind of serviceable tag you'd expect from a show like this. Suzuki-gun spent most of the match getting endless heat and were occasionally interrupted by a short burst of offense from the face team. Kumano had a pretty decent showing here."

[5.0] "The beginning of Suzuki-Gun being a consistent plague on NOAH cards for the next few years, oh boy. We start off with Kumano getting bullied, but Zack ties TAKA up in knots as revenge with some cool arm-work alongside Ogawa until Taichi uses a chair to wack Zack with while he's coming off the ropes and cement their early advantage. The trio work the middle half on Zack with the usual comedy heel sthick, which while fresh right now will quickly get tired and old given it's the same shit you will be seeing from them from here on out if you bother watching back this far. Despy is nothing like his later self, instead being a slow, pretty plodding heel who doesn't really have much to interest in terms of moves or anything, really. TAKA and Zack have a alright back and forth as Zack apes some Saint spots to try to get the better of the guy before just going for his strikes instead. Ogawa's hot tag is awesome as he attacks the trio, gets Taichi pissed so he can drop-toe hold him onto TAKA's face, and then throws Despy right out of the ring in a big bump. TAKA eats a backdrop/eye poke and Enzuigiri, but lands a flush calf kick in response when Ogawa tries to capitalise. Kumano comes in for his 30 seconds of shine before the heel duo cut him off: I thought there was at least some drama with Despy getting caught in a few amateur-wrestling style roll-ups, but then he gets ganged up on, Despy lands a terrible spear before doing his old Guitarra de Angel powerbomb to finish things up. For a introduction to the Taichi/TAKA/Desperado trio it does the job, and Zack and Ogawa basically hard-carry most of this given the heel trio are far slower and resort to just goofing off than trying to win the match most of the time. Kumano is the obvious fall guy for them; I'd say he looked fine for a generic rookie and had some good fire in the end stages. All in all, alright but never got properly good sadly."