wrestling / Columns

The Navigation Log 9.16.07: The GHC’s Future Challengers

September 16, 2007 | Posted by Matt Short

TGI Friday’s, you just made my list. I can deal with overpriced family resturants. I happen to love them. I love them all except TGI Friday’s. I think it’s got something to do with paying 25 bucks for a drink, side order, entree, and dessert and then feeling like throwing the fuck up. And it didn’t even taste all that good. Chicken fingers? More like Chicken failures. Meanwhile, Friendly’s is the greatest place on earth. And here’s why: I went to Friendly’s on my birthday, which just so happened to be 9/11. And rather than go “Awww I’ll bet you miss having a birthday since no one’s allowed to be happy on 9/11” they’re throwing free ice cream at me. Fuck yeah Friendly’s!

Now that I’ve bored you with American dining, on to the column. It has been a pretty damn eventful week for NOAH and has some big implications for the next few months.

Number One Contender Found
Outside of the finals of the Determination League tournament it sounds as if the 9/9 Budokan Hall show was uneventful. I’m mostly going to cover For those who were deathly interested in the full results here they are:

-Shuhei Taniguchi & Ippei Ota beat Akihiko Ito & Thoruf
-Yoshinari Ogawa & Masao Inoue beat Tamon Honda & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi
-Mohammed Yone & Makoto Hashi beat Junji Izumida & Tsutomu Hirayanagi
-KENTA & Taiji Ishimori beat Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Atsushi Aoki
-Yoshihiro Takayama, Takuma Sano & Takashi Sugiura beat Akira Taue, Kotaro Suzuki & Ricky Marvin
-Tatsumi Fujinami & Osamu Nishimura beat Mitsuharu Misawa & Go Shiosaki
-GHC Heavyweight Title Shot Tournament – Block A: Naomichi Marufuji beat Akitoshi Saito
-GHC Heavyweight Title Shot Tournament – Block B: Takeshi Morishima beat Jun Akiyama
-GHC Heavyweight Title Shot Tournament – Final: Naomichi Marufuji beat Takeshi Morishima

Just to note, guess who jobbed in the MUGA vs. NOAH match. No guess. If you said Misawa you’re a retard. Yes, Go Shiozaki tapped out to Osamu Nishimura, but something like that was to be expected. NOAH needs to start pushing Shiozaki and they need to do it now. It would really liven up the main event scene even if Shiozaki is still a little rough around the edges.

Now, the tournament. It was very interesting the way things went down as described by NOAH’s US page. First, Marufuji beat Saito as most people expected. It would have been a huge shock has Saito won, even if he did managed to beat Marufuji earlier in the week. The real upset of the tournament was Takeshi Morishima getting by Jun Akiyama as many who emailed me predicted. That’s a big win for Morishima and it was really awesome to see the big man booked like a top star in a Budokan Hall match.

Then came the finals. The final match started immediately following Akiyama vs. Morishima which Marufuji capitalized on. He’d had time to rest while Morishima was bleeding and favoring his back after the bout with Akiyama. From the way it is being described, Marufuji had full control of the big man in a way that you rarely see. Now there might be some out there who will complain about this. How dare they job the ROH World Champion like this! That is not the case, let me assure you. As I see it, the outcome of this tournament makes everyone look good. First Marufuji proved why he should be in the main event with two big wins in one night. He also solidified his stance as being a junior who is a master of being able to take on and beat heavyweights as he beat two top guys in NOAH in one night. In Morishima’s case he might have been beat, but he looks damn strong in spite of losing. First, he beat Akiyama one of the favorites to win the whole thing. Second, he was at a disadvantage because of the brutal nature of the previous match and still managed to give Marufuji a brief challenge. This will easily line Morishima up for another title shot in the future.

So it has been settled. On 9/29 Marufuji will get a chance to reclaim the GHC Heavyweight title from Mitsuhara Misawa. But the winner of this might have to deal with an even bigger challenge in the future.

Cue The Godzilla Theme
NOAH announced some good names to return to the promotion for their Autumn Navigation. Not the least of which are Doug Williams, Buchanan, and D-Lo Brown. Plus, Bison Smith is coming back as is Bobby Fish. Seems I’m missing someone on that list though. Give me a second.

Oh right, Samoa Joe.

Yes, TNA’s Samoa Joe will be making his Pro Wrestling NOAH debut for two shows during the Autumn Navigation on October 25th and the Budokan on the 27th. While there’s no word on who he’ll be facing on the 25th, it has already been announced that Joe will face whoever is the GHC Heavyweight champion for the title at the Budokan. Well now, that is interesting.

Not going to lie, Joe vs. Marufuji would be amazing to see. But we need to look at this in a logical way and common sense tells us that this is going to end up being Joe vs. Misawa. And while there is some history to this in Joe calling out Misawa during his feud with anyone and everyone from Pro Wrestling NOAH. But that was all ROH stuff and Joe is being advertised as a TNA Superstar. That doesn’t mean that they won’t play this up and it really will make things a little interesting.

Let’s just make sure we all understand something. Joe vs. Misawa is going to be a bad match. It’s not going to be some kind of sequel to Joe vs. Kobashi. While it’s very popular these days to say that Joe vs. Kobashi wasn’t that great of a match, the fact is that while it might have been a standard Kobashi match with Joe taking head bumps it still has an aura about it that makes it special. The Budokan Hall match has many things going against it. Fans might not be nearly as rabid for it as the ROHbots were to see Joe vs. Kobashi. Misawa is also not nearly in as good shape as Kobashi was then (and he wasn’t 100% then either). Misawa is even worse, to the point where he really hasn’t had a good match all year. He’s been carried to good matches by the likes of Taue, but Misawa is only carrying the GHC Title on his own name.

And that’s all Joe vs. Misawa is going to be. It’ll be special because of the names involved, but it won’t live up to expectations. It can’t unless Misawa decides he wants to work his ass off that night. Don’t hold your breath. And there’s really no way Joe is going to win the title. NOAH isn’t going to let their main title get used as a prop on Impact like the (not real) IWGP Title was used. And before someone suggests that they can put the belt on Joe and that’s how they’ll get him to reappear in ROH let me just cut that off with a resounding no. Just no. Misawa in ROH is going to be more of the same thing I think, but that at least is going to have some fan support. But Misawa is going to have to bring his best for that, because the New York fans will turn on him if he does attempt to dog it like he’s been doing all year.

At Home
Unforgiven is tonight! Yaaay! Watch it if want, you might just see something you like. I know a lot of people were surprised at the quality of the show. But then that’s what TNA seems to do all the time. One PPV will completely bomb like Lockdown and then the follow up will be a huge improvement where everything seems to click. That was the case with No Surrender, where most of the matches just worked. And I’ve got to say, I like the idea of AJ Styles and Tomko teaming to go after the tag titles. It’d be pretty awesome if they were to win the titles from Team Pacman and then proceed to rub it in Christian’s face. And I’m also glad that they’re going to hold off on another Joe vs. Angle match. While it would make sense for them to keep booking those two against each other, I’d rather that Joe earn his spot again. Otherwise, you’d end up with the same situation they have with Batista on Smackdown.

But back to Unforgiven, WWE has a solid card. Triple H vs. Carlito makes sense from a booking stand point, but no one believes Carlito has any chance of winning this. Same with Mark Henry vs. Undertaker. But both of the tag title matches could be fun and the ECW title match has potential, even though Punk and Burke haven’t always lived up to expectations on PPV. Then there’s Cena vs. Orton, which could steal the show, but the odds of the title switching are slim to none. That doesn’t mean the match won’t be fun to watch as Cena has been absolutely great in his year long reign.

Short Takes
-This is where I insert my fanatical love for CHIKARA. Still got to watch their newest Pod-Per-View.

-My birthday was on 9/11. It was awesome. Not 9/11, but my birthday. I figure I’ll buy myself a DVD but I’m torn between King of Europe, PWG’s Battle of LA 06, of CHIKARA’s King of Trios. Taking suggestions.

-The Little Bastard being Vince’s son is hilarious. Who cares about a major angle, they’ve got no one new to push who didn’t get caught lying on national TV about using steroids.

We’re done. It’s the weekend so that means a few things. Property damage, movies, TGI Friday’s. All the usual shit. Peace.

NULL

article topics

Matt Short

Comments are closed.