Yoshihito Sasaki/Shinya Ishikawa vs Ryuichi Kawakami/Takumi Tsukamoto, BJW 1/2
Over the last couple of years, Yoshihito Sasaki has become a pretty good worker. The guy is constantly super-aggressive and pissed off, and he really fucking lays it in with stomps and elbows here. He wasn't taking shit from anyone in this match, not co-operating with basic moves like a snapmare early on, and when young Tsukamoto took a cheap shpt at him on the apron, you knew shit was going to go down. Unfortunately they took too long to get going, lost steam at the end, and never really reached the level of stiffness or asskicking you want from Strong BJ, so this was merely "decent".
Takeshi Morishima vs Makoto Hashi, NOAH 3/5
Fun opening match. Both men slap the shit out of each other. Hashi wasn't throwing Futen level strikes, but there were still plenty of nasty blows to the head and Hashi's KO selling was awesome (that or he was legit KO'd). The dude was just falling all over the place.
Jun Akiyama vs Yutaka Yoshie, NOAH 3/5
This was good but holy shit did it suffer from a bad crowd. Yoshie's fatguy offence is great and looks devestating, especially the splash off the apron, and Akiyama sells it well. Yoshie is a fat guy but healthy and in good enough shape for him to take some reasonable-sized bumps. I liked the sense of urgency behind Akiyama's comeback, and they did a really good job of building to the finish.
Kotaro Suzuki vs Katsuhiko Nakajima, NOAH 3/5
Hey, it's a lengthy puro juniors "epic" that isn't horrible! It wasn't anything great, but it didn't make me want to stop watching every five minutes, so that's something. Suzuki still isn't a good singles wrestler and the match kind of fell apart whenever he was in control, but atleast Nakajima kicked the shit out of him. Good lord those kicks were hell, and he put over Suzuki's elbows nicely. The crowd gave a shit and some of the nearfalls actually drew me in, but still, this kind of match is not my thing, and it still had too much dead air, went too long, and too many big moves were shrugged off, for me to say this was a great match.
Yoshihiro Takayama/Takuma Sano vs Go Shiozaki/Shuhei Taniguchi, NOAH 3/5
This was really good if you can get over the awful crowd. There were two main themes running through this, Taniguchi in the role your up-and-comer taking it to the established vets, and Go working with a hand injury. Taniguchi still has his flaws, but seems to be "getting it" and was appropriately fired up. I dug most of his power-based offence, he unloaded some brutal elbows and his throws and slams are impressive on a guy like Takayama. Takayama was fucking great in this, he was in full-on grumpy old man mode, just wanting these young punks to fuck off out of his yard, dishing out tonnes of punishment and working over Go's injury effectively. He also brought it into play at just the right times in the match, like when Go is building a comeback run and Tak counters a suplex attempt into an arm-breaker. Sano also looked good and him and Tak worked as well as a unit as they ever have done.
Best Of 2011
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