NOAH, 25/10/08, Budokan results

NOAH "AUTUMN NAVIGATION 2008", 25.10.2008 (NTV/G+ LIVE)
Tokyo Nippon Budokan
12,000 Fans - No Vacancy

0. Tsuyoshi Kikuchi besiegt Genba Hirayanagi (6:17) mit einem Diving Headbutt.
0. Tamon Honda, Masao Inoue & Junji Izumida vs. Kentaro Shiga, Kishin Kawabata & Ippei Ota - Time Limit Draw (10:00).
1. Mohammed Yone & Akihiko Ito besiegen Takashi Okita & Kento Miyahara (4:44) nach einer Death Valley Bomb von Ito gegen Miyahara.
2. Yoshinari Ogawa, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Kotaro Suzuki besiegen Doug Williams, Bryan Danielson & Atsushi Aoki (4:36) nach dem Blue Destiny von Suzuki gegen Aoki.
3. Yoshihiro Takayama & Takuma Sano besiegen Akira Taue & Makoto Hashi (10:30) nach einer Northern Light Bomb von Sano gegen Hashi.
4. Takeshi Morishima & Takashi Sugiura besiegen Nigel McGuinness & Superstar Steve (6:56) nach einem German Suplex Hold von Sugiura gegen Steve.
5. Kensuke Sasaki, Katsuhiko Nakajima & Kota Ibushi (DDT) besiegen Mitsuharu Misawa, Taiji Ishimori & Ricky Marvin (16:13) nach dem Death Roll von Nakajima gegen Ishimori.
6. GHC Tag Team Title: Akitoshi Saito & Bison Smith © besiegen Jun Akiyama & Takeshi Rikio (13:39) nach dem Sickle of Death von Saito gegen Akiyama (1st defense).
7. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title & AJPW World Jr. Heavyweight Title: Naomichi Marufuji © vs. KENTA © - Time Limit Draw (60:00) (GHC 1st defense) (AJPW 1st defense).

Undercard looks good. Plenty of short matches featuring wrestlers who are good at working sprints. Alan4L will love the main event.

Does anyone here know why NOAH has such an obsession with tags? Just seems odd that most of the cards tend to look like this, two singles matches on a nine-match show.

AJPW used to have tag heavy cards too. it's to do with protecting wrestlers and such. A Baba thing I guess?

60 minutes is going to be fun if they just sprinted it all the way and didn't do any of this slow build bullshit that only works if you're Kawada or Kobashi in 1995.

At least they claimed more than the last time they were in the building.

Yeah, I get that, but NOAH takes it to an extreme that AJPW never did. Their card is so loaded up with big multi-man tag matches that sometimes if you squint you could swear you're watching Galavision. And it's not like Dragon's Gate where the entire wrestling style is based on sprints and spots, so there's no immediately obvious reason for it. Maybe Misawa just likes booking all these guys, can't bear to leave any of them off, yet doesn't want his shows to run until three in the morning? Just seems odd to me to have any non-lucha promotion which regularly has more six-man tags than singles matches on its shows.

If KENTA and Marufuji can do uptempo for the full 60 minutes, then so be it i dont care if it makes zero sense I will love it. If not, well fuck em.

If anything NOAH might actually have more singles matches.

Just look at he AJPW Budokan's from the 90's. And bear in mind this was BEFORE some of the undercard jobbers become entertaining in any way, shape or form.

I'm getting ready for LUKIE & PWL's heads to explode over it for being so "bad".

How often do matches in Japan approach the 60-minute mark?

Not often, especially not in this day and age. To have two in two months of each other hasn't been seen since I think January 1995 in AJPW when you have the Kobashi/Kawada 60 minute draw and then a week later the 60 minute draw between Misawa/Kobashi/Kawada/Taue.

You also had the Kojima/Tenzan 59 minute match which was followed very soon after by a Nakamura/Kojima 60 minute draw (*gulp*).

I watched the 60 minute jumpoff. Wasn't nearly as bad as I'd heard and was expecting. Basically Marufuji busting out a gillion nifty new moves to the delight of everyone. He was on offense for a good 90% of the match which was different. Not touching their 2004 Trial Series match, but definitely not horrific or anything, liked large parts of it.

Marufuji tore his ACL and will be out for 6 Months.

Ouch........

Actually I heard his right leg suffered from severe nerve damage from slapping it so much throughout the years. Similar to Kobashi's arm after throwing so many chops. It's really a shame.