The Navigation Log 3.09.08: A Changing of the Guard?

Onto the Navigation Log!

Morishima Wins The Big One
Last Sunday was a momentous occasion for the career of Takeshi Morishima. After a year of struggling to win that one big match that would propel him to the next level in Japan. To make him a bona fide star. He had moderate success in 2007, holding the GHC Heavyweight Tag Team titles for a spell with Mohammed Yone and made a huge splash as the ROH World Champion. He ended the year strong with big wins over Jun Akiyama and Naomichi Marufuji, but still the defining moment eluded him. When it was officially announced that he would be facing Misawa again for the GHC Heavyweight title, most speculated that this would end up being Morishima’s moment. Of course there were just as many expecting him to fail once again and set up a future Kobashi vs. Misawa match.

As we now know, Morishima lived up to expectations and handed Mitsuharu Misawa a rare defeat. For a major title no less. Trust me when I say that the list of men with pin fall victories of Misawa is an exclusive group of wrestlers.

In my opinion NOAH did the right thing in this case. While there are many who believe strongly in the “old ways” of puro (I somewhat fall into this category) there is growing sentiment that building a new generation of stars needs to happen sooner rather than later. No one is going to deny the places that the old guard of Japan have earned for themselves, but for a company like NOAH to survive they have to start giving chances to the young stars they’ve invested in. Morishima is one such star and he is now going to be given the ball. And the only way this is going to work is by NOAH getting 100% behind Morishima.

There’s two ways this can work. In the first scenario, Morishima does well as champion. His main event matches draw well, his bouts are well received, and he has a lengthy reign with defenses against top stars (Akiyama, Marufuji, maybe Misawa again, hell see if Kensuke Sasaki is willing to do a job). NOAH needs to do everything it can to promote Morishima as not just its champion, but as a true Ace for the company.

The second scenario would involve what I’ll call the “Marufuji Effect.” Morishima’s first couple of title defenses don’t draw well and the knee jerk reaction of the company will be to take the belt off of him immediately (as what happened to Marufuji in 2006). It is over-simplifying it a bit, but NOAH hasn’t exactly shown much faith in their younger performers. It could partly be blamed on the Takeshi Rikio experiment, where he defeated Kenta Kobashi for the GHC title and despite getting a mega-push he still couldn’t bring in crowds for his main events. Since then there seems to have been a strong reluctance to put someone on top who wasn’t big during the 90s.

If Morishima does well as champion it could signal a turning of the corner for NOAH. Morishima needs to be given a long reign. Even if he makes it through a few defenses against strong contenders, it will end up being for nothing if he drops the title to Misawa or Kobashi. Because even then, the message will still be that the old is better than the new. So what to do? NOAH has to show that Morishima is the real deal and if they want to establish that he needs to keep on the huge roll that he’s on. That means that he has to keep beating big names. While the chances of it happening in 2008 are somewhat slim, if Morishima defends successfully against Kenta Kobashi THAT will be a true signal of the changing of the guard.

2008 NOAH Global Tag League
NOAH went through what seemed like a lot of tournaments last year, though a lot of it had to do with injuries. Either way, I was burned out by the end of it all. Three months later, NOAH is back to running another Tag League and I’m ready for it again.

Ten teams are expected to participate are as follows:

-Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa
-Takeshi Morishima & Muhammad Yone
-Jun Akiyama & Takeshi Rikio
-D-Lo Brown & Buchanan
-Naomichi Marufuji & Takashi Sugiura
-Yoshihiro Takayama & Takuma Sano
-Bison Smith & Akitoshi Saito
-Akira Taue & Go Shiozaki
-Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima
-Team 10

The draw of this tournament has been how they’re going to be pitting former tag champions against each other. Misawa & Ogawa, Morishima & Yone, Akiyama & Rikio, Brown & Buchanan, and Marufuji & Sugiura are have all been GHC Heavyweight Tag Team champions at some point in NOAH’s history. This is a stacked tournament to say the least.

But this here is a case where booking can end up hurting the new champion Morishima. How would it look if the brand new champion were to lose here? Or if the current tag champions were unable to get enough points to even win a second place draw? With such a huge field one does have to wonder about these things, especially when NOAH’s main focus now should be on Morishima. Essentially the only way for it to work would be for the champions and Morishima & Yone to not lose at all and end in a draw somewhere. Protecting the champions (if they’re not going to win) should be a top priority.

A rumor was circulating that the team of Kenta Kobashi & Tamon Honda were scheduled to participate. This idea was scratched however, due to Kobashi’s doctors recommending against such a test of Kobashi’s health. I imagine that he will be participating at some point during the entire tour.

It’s hard to pick a favorite from this field. Obviously, the champions and teams of former champions are expected to do strongly, but the lower end of the field has some interesting possibilities. I could see Takayama & Sano being a dark horse team in all of this, as could Smith & Saito. I’d also like to see the Akira Taue & Go Shiozaki team get at least a single point, which they failed to do in the last tag league.

This should be quite an interesting tour when it gets started. I’ll be covering it in full as more information comes out about it. Stay tuned!

Dragon Gate: Road to GENERATION
The Dragon Gate promotion is preparing for a big PPV a couple of weeks from now called GATE OF GENERATION. The card has been set and I’ll do a full preview next week, but the events leading up to this show have been very interesting to say the least.

First, there has been the return of Dragon Gate’s prodigal son, Naoki Tanisaki. Tanisaki is a graduate from the Toryumon X promotion who worked Dragon Gate after the Toryumon split. He never found a great deal of success as a member of the Do FIXER faction before jumping to Blood Generation and Muscle Outlaw’z when that was formed, and still didn’t quite catch on in his heel role. Eventually, he quit the promotion intending to work as a freelancer. Since then he’s worked throughout the Japanese independent circuit. This past week, however, Tanisaki made a shocking return to Dragon Gate seemingly joining the Muscle Outlaw’z before turning on them. His interactions with New Hazard have lead to a match between YAMATO and Tanisaki. Interesting? It gets better.

Also for the PPV Shingo Takagi & BxB Hulk have a GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team title defense against KENTA & Taiji Ishimori. While the appearance of KENTA on a Dragon Gate card is a news item on it’s own, Ishimori is even more intriguing for followers of the Toryumon system. Ishimori is another Toryumon X star and his appearance against two products of Dragon Gate’s dojo in Shingo & Hulk. NOAH belts on the line at a Dragon Gate PPV makes for an interesting story and I fully expect the NOAH team to take the belts back.

There’s a lot more to talk about in terms of this PPV, but I’ll save a full preview for next week which includes number one contenders matches and Masato Yoshino taking on CIMA for the Open the Dream Gate.

Your Weekly Puro
A sad note from Japan has been the medical issues surrounding Yuji Nagata. Mr. IWGP was reported to have been showing “stroke-like” symptoms a few weeks ago. Recent MRI tests have found that there is cause for concern and Nagata will be sitting out the rest of the month. It’s always sad to hear about legends like Nagata falling ill, so I thought I’d pay him a brief tribute this week. No, this isn’t going to be one of his famous matches, rather it will be something from the lighter-side of wrestling. This match came from 2007 and was part of Dragon Gate’s Stalker Ichikawa last Bosou series. The premise behind them is that DG’s comedic mascot faces off against top stars from across Japan. He usually gets in some comedy spots in before he get slapped around. Someone will usually throw in the towel for him before he gets killed. This is Nagata’s match against Stalker. If nothing else, the ending is one of the funniest I’ve seen in ages.

Dragon Gate Kobe Festival 7-1-07: “Hollywood” Stalker Ichikawa vs. Yuji Nagata

At Home
Tonight is TNA’s Destination X! Of course that might not come as good news to some, since this has been viewed as the weakest looking card TNA has put on in awhile. Gimmick matches and odds storylines abound at every turn, but that doesn’t rule out the possibilities of some good match-ups. Elevation X might suffer from the common notion that “there’s no such thing as a good scaffold match,” but don’t forget that AJ Styles and Rhino managed to pull it off through some awesome psychology. Though, that was about all the match had going for it. There’s such limited things that can be done on a structure like that so the action ends up being slow and limited. I also just saw an ad for the PPV on TV while watching the Sci-Fi channel. Not once does the ad mention that Rhino and James Storm are in the match or why anyone would want to pay to see them. It’s all about the match itself, which is pretty backwards. You don’t pay specifically to see a gimmick match, you pay to see what two guys will do to each other in a gimmick match. It doesn’t help Storm or Rhino get anyone’s interest in their characters to not even mention them being involved.

The Booker T/Robert Roode match is another one to watch closely. So far Roode has done a great job opposite an established star like Booker and looked perfect in the jackass heel role. We know that heels are never meant to win and while this could potentially be seen as Roode being buried by former WWE talent, in this case he’ll look strong even in defeat. He’s played the dick-heel perfectly and hasn’t been made to look horribly weak against Booker. Hell, he’s even shown that he can think one-step ahead of Booker on occasion. Whatever happens, this is a rare case where TNA has been able to make an incoming, established star look good without burying TNA homegrown stars in the process.

Short Takes
-Kota Ibushi’s ROH line-up has been announced. I’m especially looking forward to his match with El Generico.

-Marufuji’s mid-air Shiranui Kai is possibly one of the coolest spots ever. It even tops Ricky Marvin’s mid-air hurricanrana.

-Colin Delaney-Olsen has the potential to become a WWE Tag Team Champion? That will be amazing. I hope he busts out his falling lariat sometime soon.

-Three hour Raw this week? It’s fine by me!