The Navigation Log 11.11.07: Winter Navigation Bonanza Twenty-Aught-Seven

What’s the point of that rant? Well, judging at how much NOAH is going to be packing into their final tour of the year they believe in the whole “Christmas comes early” ideal too.

Mauritius Cup, aka YES, ANOTHER TOURNAMENT
When I first saw that NOAH was going to be running another tournament during the Winter Navigation I just about hurled my computer across the room. I’m a self-admitted tournament mark, but fuck even I have my limits.

After my initial smark rage, I calmed down and saw that there was some real sense in this tournament. For the second part of the year NOAH has run tournaments for Jr. Heavyweight tag teams, heavyweight tag teams, and to determine the number one contender for the GHC Heavyweight title. They’ve allowed stars from all weight classes and rankings a chance to shine and provided some great matches along the way. The Mauritius Cup is going to the other end of the spectrum though. The tournament is being held in the memory of Kazunaru Sonoda who died in a plane crash near the island of Mauritius. He had a part in training men like Misawa, Kobashi, and Taue. While not their main trainer, he obviously had a great impact on them enough that they will honor his memory through a tournament. This will be a chance for younger stars to shine, which is something that NOAH doesn’t often allow them to do in singles matches.

Through the Winter Navigation the tournament will follow the round robin rules that NOAH’s been putting to use all year. The competitors will be:

Tsutomu Hirayanagi
Akihito Ito
Ippei Ota
Atsushi Aoki
Shuhei Taniguchi
Taiji Ishimori

It will be quite interesting and you can bet that all of these guys will want to do their best to stand out. It’s hard to pick a favorite, though I’d have to say that Ishimori might have an advantage. I think NOAH might be more interested here in pushing guys like Aoki, Ito, and Ota. Taniguchi as well, he did a great job at the ROH in Tokyo show and if given a bit of personality could really make a connection with the fans.

Stay tuned, we’ll be following the battle of the noobs until we have a winner.

GHC Bonanza Twenty-aught-seven
The GHC Heavyweight title is not going to be on the line on this tour in preparation for Kenta Kobashi’s return. NOAH will be making it by having three other title matches throughout the tour with possibly more to be added.

First, is the Global Hardcore Crown. This title has had a storied past, first with Jun Akiyama making his own personal title. Then it had the stipulation that if the champion couldn’t beat a smaller opponent in a defense after 15 minutes they lose the belt. Then when Kentaro Shiga took the title it became a tag team belt as he joined forces with Kishin Kawabata. The two have been dominant in their defenses and even earned themselves a shot at the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team titles in the process. Shiga has been champion for over a year now.

These two have come a long way together, but they’ve decided that it is time to end their team. The two will face each other for the Global Hardcore Crown on 11/19. Not only will the title be up for grabs, but the loser will have to give up their hair. It’s going to be quite interesting, though there are very few people who think that Shiga will be losing his punch-perm anytime soon.

On the same night, 11/19 Ricky Marvin will challenge Yoshinobu Kanemaru for the GHC Jr. Heavyweight title. This one is a little hard to predict. Kanemaru does not really need the title right now. At the same time, it doesn’t make much sense to hot shot the title back and forth so much. I’ll be pulling for Ricky Marvin in this one, but this one could go either way in my opinion.

Ricky will be busy this tour because on 11/24 he’ll team with Kotaro Suzuki to defend the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team titles against the unified Open the Twin Gate champions Naruki Doi and Masato Yoshino from Dragon Gate. This will be Doi and Yoshino’s second shot at Suzuki and Marvin and look to add the GHC belts to their collection, which already includes the WAR IJ belts and the Open the Twin gate belts. It’s going to be an uphill battle for the Dragon Gate contingent as this really has been Suzuki and Marvin’s year. There is a possibility that if Marvin wins the Jr. Heavyweight title and loses the tag straps here it will set up a confrontation between Marvin and Suzuki at the Budokan finale. We’ll have to see, but it seems that the odds of an outsider team taking the titles are slim to none.

The last title match to be announced will be for the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team titles. On 11/25 Naomichi Marufuji and Takashi Sugiura will defend their belts against Akitoshi Saito and Bison Smith. This team had to drop out of the recent title tournament due to an injury to Smith. It’s an interesting set up as the team that never actually lost in the tournament is demanding their shot at the gold. It’s a big test for the pair of Jr. Heavyweights, but again playing hot potato with the belts doesn’t seem like a smart thing to do in this case. Especially if they want to get Sugiura over in the heavyweight division a big defense here would be just what the doctor ordered.

Between all these title matches, Kobashi’s return, and the Mauritius Cup Winter Navigation 2007 is going to be a hell of a ride. Stay tuned!

Like a Raptor
The last bit of news from NOAH this week is the appearance of a very strange character who will be touring with the company. That being an American calling himself Raptor, after the fighter jet. Upon closer inspection Raptor is actually one Matt “M-Dogg20” Cross. This immediately caused many American NOAH fans to throw a fit that a spot performer would touring with the Japanese company.

I’ve mixed feelings about it. Cross is good at what he does, and will be able to get a reaction from the crowd because of his new gimmick and high flying abilities. He’s scheduled to have a singles match with KENTA during the tour which will prove interesting. But he’s not as bad as some people make him out to be. So to the NOAH workrate fans I say relax. Wait until he turns in as bad a performance as you think he will before you condemn him. Geez.

Your Weekly DDT
Apologies are in order for missing last week’s DDT feature. Time constraints forced me to pull the section last minute. As an apology, please accept this: A Locker Room Deathmatch between Sanshiro Takagi and Yoshiaki Yago. Takagi is the owner of DDT and wrestles using a Stone Cold parody gimmick. He believes in the lighter side of wrestling and isn’t that bad of a wrestler. Yago I mentioned last week as someone I wanted to see more of in the States. He throws heart punches. Hard. A lot of them. As for what a Locker Room Deathmatch is, well lockers are used as weapons basically. There’s some interesting uses of them in this match. Just check it out.

Locker Room Deathmatch: Sanshiro Takagi vs. Yoshiaki Yago

At Home
Watch Genesis. Christian vs. Kazarian in a Ladder Match should be enough to buy it regardless of the finish. Joe vs. Roode should be good as well, though it lacks any real motivation behind it. Those two match interest me the most out of the whole card to be honest. And maybe Abyss will completely destroy Black Reign and we’ll finally get the Abyss vs. Judas Mesias feud. Please?

I have not had the chance to watch the CNN special Deathgrip: Inside Pro Wrestling. I can tell from the title though that it was going to have some issues with it. The biggest one was CNN taking a quote from John Cena out of context. I can only say: what did you expect? There really was no way that they were going to portray the WWE in a positive light. Just look at the title of the program. And the mass media is notorious for pulling crap like this. CNN really isn’t any better than Fox News in that regard. You’ll never hear me say that there aren’t drug problems in professional wrestling, but attacking the WWE isn’t the way to fix the problem. What we can really hope for the most is that people will clean up on their own and that the WWE sticks to the Wellness as much as possible. Maybe that will encourage other future stars to avoid the gas as they work to break out in the business. It’s just getting all those other promotions to help encourage not using drugs too. Will it happen right away? Of course not. And I’m sure once Congress gets bored with it all things will just go back to the way they were. But one can hope things will get better right?

Emails
One email this week from Scott Sumner regarding my request that we see more NOSAWA Rongai in the US:

You mentioned that you’d like to see NOSAWA Rongai in the states. Actually, he spent a ton of time in the states earlier this year doing matches for ICP’s JCW promotion. He’s billed as the “Japanese Juggalo Sensation” because of his ICP related tattoos, and even held the JCW Championship for a while. The last time I saw him, he teamed with The Great Muta to take on Mad Man Pondo and Necro Butcher, in what was actually one of JCW’s only good angles. I’m sure that JCW couldn’t have been the only place he wrestled in the states though…

First of all, thanks for the letter Scott. Second, fuck ICP and their wrestling promotion. They sucked in their WCW run, they suck as musicians, and the JCW is to wrestling what KFC is to chicken (apologies to Lewis Black for stealing his joke). Sorry, that’s just how I feel about it. Now one is going to take JCW seriously and I can’t even watch the few clips I have seen of it. I don’t know if it’s the commentary but it makes me imagine driving a spike through my thigh.

That said, it is worth noting that NOSAWA has appeared in America for them because he likes their music. On the other side of the spectrum, he has appeared in TNA in the past as part of the Super X Cup and World X Cup tournament on Team Japan. I’d say that he’s long overdue to come back and compete there again. I could even see him being booked in other promotions like PWG or Chikara.

Short Takes
-I really hate ICP if you hadn’t noticed.

-Jamie Noble is all over TV recently. It was pretty cool seeing him and Punk go at it again on Smackdown this week.

-Chikara remains my favorite wrestling promotion in America. Congratulations to them for getting the DVD distribution deal.

-Genesis looks pretty good. Most TNA PPVs do look fine on paper, but the execution always seems to get fucked up.