The Navigation Log 9.23.07: Tag Team Shake Up and Great Voyage Preview

But hey, this isn’t the movie section. On to the column!

Tag Belts Vacated
This happened last week, but being the idiot that I am forgot to put it into last week’s column. On 9/13, Jun Akiyama vacated the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team titles on behalf of himself and injured partner Takeshi Rikio. This means two things:

1) Rikio’s injury is serious enough that it warrants the belts having to be dropped.
2) Its probably time for yet another tournament.

Rikio getting hurt has really messed things up a bit for NOAH. Him going down in the Determination League may have altered the overall booking of the tournament. We probably didn’t notice since the whole thing came off so well in the end, but I’m sure there was a frantic moment as they had to decide what to do. Then there’s loss of a guy who is a viable main eventer for NOAH. They’re extremely short on believable challengers these days and while they’re covered for a brief period with Marufuji next weekend and then Samoa Joe in October. Rikio is the kind of guy that you can put out there any time and will be a good challenger. He’s come a long way from his first title reign which he really wasn’t ready for and would probably draw well against Misawa. Though that match would probably be pretty terrible as I think about it. It’s also rather disappointing to see Akiyama and Rikio’s run end now as I was finally getting into them more. But oh well.

The big question now is deciding how to find new champions. As I said before, there’s probably just going to be another tournament because there’s really no other way to do it. They should probably do it elimination style though, because I’ve got to say I’m a little burned out from all the round robins. Any possible contenders? Well, there’s Morishima and Yone, the guys that lost the belts earlier this year. There’s probably going to be a team of foreigners. I’d love it if NOAH could bring back in Nigel McGuiness and Doug Williams to team together and go for the gold. Kentaro Shiga and Kishin Kawabata will probably make a challenge though they’d be a long shot to win it. It’s pretty hard to predict how this will go until they announce how they intend to handle it. Even then tournaments are tricky things to predict. As we saw with the Determination League, something can happen and change the whole course of the tournament. They like to throw swerves into these things so that they never quite go the way we think the will. Which you know, is exciting and smart booking as long as it makes sense.

A Great Voyage Indeed
On 9/29 NOAH is having their Great Voyage ’07 in Osaka. The card is already announced and it is pretty solid.

Tsuyoshi Kikuchi & Tsutomu Hirayanagi vs. Shuhei Taniguchi & Ippei Ota
Kentaro Shiga & Kishin Kawabata vs. Tamon Honda & Mitsuo Momota
Takeshi Morishima & Masashi Aoyagi vs. Junji Izumida & Makoto Hashi
Jun Akiyama & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Yoshinari Ogawa & Masao Inoue
Akira Taue & Go Shiosaki vs. Mohammed Yone & Takashi Sugiura
Akitoshi Saito, KENTA & Taiji Ishimori vs. Yoshihiro Takayama, Takuma Sano & Atsushi Aoki
GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Kotaro Suzuki & Ricky Marvin (c) vs. Dragon Gate Team
GHC Heavyweight Title: Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs. Naomichi Marufuji

Unlike some Budokan shows, the undercard here looks pretty good. There’s enough pairings of different guys that I’m interested and it wouldn’t surprise me if one of the teams that you see up there joins up to go for the now vacated GHC Tag Titles.

Of course the two major matches are the title matches, so a discussion of each of them is in order.

GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Kotaro Suzuki & Ricky Marvin (c) vs. Dragon Gate Team
-Twice in the past a Dragon Gate team has tried to take the titles from Suzuki & Marvin and twice they’ve come up short. NOAH’s Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team champs turned away Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino and then Taku Iwasa & Kenichiro Arai. Dragon Gate gets another chance at the champs, though as of now, there’s no word on who they’re planning on sending. Iwasa & Arai would be a good choice seeing as they’ve just captured DG’s tag titles and are on a major hot streak. Or they could go with someone else. Ryo Saito & Susumu Yokosuka could make a challenge or possibly a combination from New Hazard. This match could very easily steal the show as Suzuki & Marvin against any capable Dragon Gate team is just gold.

GHC Heavyweight Title: Mitsuharu Misawa (c) vs. Naomichi Marufuji
-Marufuji’s been waiting for almost a year to get another shot at Misawa. Sadly, he’s probably not going to get it back here. I’ll admit, I haven’t seen their last title match but then I don’t really go out of my way to watch any of Misawa’s matches these days. They’re kind of depressing in a way. What I really dislike about Misawa’s defenses is that they’re just foregone conclusions. There’s rarely any drama involved, we just assume that Misawa will retain. As awesome as it would be for Marufuji to take back the GHC Title, it’s just not going to happen. Keep in mind also that the next title defense will be against Samoa Joe. While most people will agree that the better match to watch would be Joe vs. Marufuji, the real money is going to be in Joe vs. Misawa. And it’s really only fitting since Joe has called out Misawa in the past. Still, even that is an ending that’s easy to see through since there’s no way NOAH will let someone from TNA walk out with their main title.

Storming the Gate
Dragon Gate just had a big show in Tokyo this past Saturday. It had the feeling of an important show and in some ways it was. Three titles changed hands and there was a shake up in the heel faction Muscle Outlaw’z.

First in comedy styles, “Hollywood” Stalker Ishikawa was upset and lost his Open the Owarai Gate title to legendary funny man and Great Muta enthusiast Kikutaro. If you’ve ever seen either of these guys before you know what they offer in bringing the comedy and some good wrestling too. I want to check this one, particularly since Ishikawa’s mother made an appearance to ask Kikutaro to not take the belt away from her son.

Next title to switch was the Open the Brave Gate title. Yasushi Kanda lost his belt to Masato Yoshino. The rest of the Muscle Outlaw’z attacked Kanda after the match which prompted DG veteran K-ness to make the save. Odds are he’s going to be in line to feud for the title next.

The last title to change hands was the WAR IJ Tag Team Titles. This match has been getting rave reviews as Tozawa-juku’s Taku Iwasa and Kenichiro Arai upset the champs Ryo Saito and Susumu Yokosuka. This was the show stealer and CIMA said after his match later that he felt nervous having to follow it. Iwasa & Arai will move on later to face Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino to unify the WAR IJ titles with the new Dragon Gate tag team titles.

Elsewhere, CIMA retained his Open the Dream Gate belt against Doi while the team of Don Fuji, Masaaki Mochizuki, and K-ness kept their Open the Triangle Gate titles against SHINGO, Cyber Kong, & Kota Iibushi. There was also a banishment match between crooked referee Kinta Tomoaka and Gamma, with the loser having to leave the Muscle Outlaw’z. Kinta won and Gamma, one of the MO’z leaders is gone leaving Naruki Doi alone at the head of the faction.

At Home
ROH Driven played when? Friday? I’m a little out of the loop right now since my TV is pretty much non-existent at the moment. I can always catch WWE and TNA programming through various sources, but ROH has become harder as of late. It looks like an amazing show and Danielson vs. McGuiness is being called a must see. Only one way to find out really. Watch it and judge for yourself.

Unforgiven is over and boy did people hate it. It didn’t help them much with a good portion of the roster being suspended for their various drug infractions. I think they did the best with what they could do in terms of making a card, but the matches just didn’t fall into place. I’ll give them credit for putting on two tag title matches on the show, though they didn’t come off as good as they could have been. No Mercy will hopefully do better and maybe we won’t get a shit finish to Cena vs. Orton. I’d actually really like to see Orton take the belt now, but I just don’t see it happening.

Sometimes I think people pick weird things to complain about. Take the example of TNA’s Bound For Glory. It seems to me like what they’re doing is planning out the booking a little ways in advance for once. Announce everything early, build to that match and then continue a storyline from there if it’s necessary. It makes a hell of a lot more sense than just throwing a card together at the last second. That’s always been my problem with TNA’s PPV’s. I never know about half the matches until we get to the Roundtable previews and then I have to make up some shit about a match that has no back story. This works fine. Sting vs. Angle is an awesome main events and the only bad spot I can see on the card is the Reverse Battle Royale. Even that can have some exciting moments provided they get through the opening moments without causing too many people to groan.

EMAIL!
I got an email last week from 411’s Mike Campbell with his thoughts on Misawa’s upcoming tour of the US.

Interesting column, as usual, Matt. Only a couple of comments for you.

Mike Campbell

Listen to Mike, folks. He hit the nail on the head in regards to the markish nature that some ROH fans treat their visitors from NOAH. True, I’d say they’ve had reason to so far given the awesome matches KENTA, Marufuji, and Morishima have put on. But Misawa is a different animal altogether. He’s a huge name, but the odds of him pulling out a 5 star match based on anything but crowd reaction is a long shot. I’m not saying that New York fans should shit all over Misawa right away, but don’t expect a high caliber match. Don’t even expect it to be at the level of Joe vs. Kobashi.

And I just happen to find the tag match to look better than whatever singles match Misawa gets in New York. He’ll be well protected and while I’m sure he’ll do about as much as he does in his NOAH tag matches it’ll be more interesting to watch for me. Plus, I love the pairing of Morishima/Marufuji and I hope they get paired together in ROH more.

Short Takes
-What is CHIKARA going to do now that they’ve run out of old Batman movie titles for their Cibernetico? Cibernetico Beyond? That’s pretty good actually.

-The Ted Petty Invitational is coming next weekend I believe. Oh sure, the card isn’t nearly as stacked as it was last year and nowhere near the level it was in 2004. But Too Cold Scorpio is in it and that’s enough for me. I’m hoping Mike Quackenbush makes the finals this year.

-Still have not decided on what DVD to get myself as a belated birthday gift. Right now it’ll be either King of Europe ’07 or PWG’s Battle of LA ’06. Of course I could just invest in some Dragon Gate and check out the Arai/Iwasa vs. Saito/Yokosuka match.

-The Punjabi Prison match is at least my favorite name for match if nothing else. Isn’t it funny that it’s Great Khali’s “specialty” but he’s never been in one?