BRM Reviews NOAH Navigation For Evolution 2005: Day 3

[Big Red Machine]

NOAH Navigation For Evolution 2005: Day 3 (2/20/2005)- Tokyo, Japan


KISHIN KAWABATA vs. MITSUO MOMOTA- 4.25/10

TAMON HONDA & KENTA vs. MAKOTO HASHI & MASAO INOUE- 6/10
KENTA’s lip got busted open on an early exchange and his face got worked over with the odd combination of the expected stiff forearms and the much less expected goofy 1970s territorial maneuvers like the “drag the guy’s face against the ropes” and “jump on him and stretch his cheeks with your boots on your way down.”
Once KENTA was able to tag Honda in we got a wonderful little sequence between Honda, the three-time Olympic wrestler, and Hashi, who is… not. Honda got down in the referee’s position and Hashi got behind him… and instead of trying some sort of amateur move, he grabbed Honda’s hair and just started punching him in the back of the head a bunch of times. And THEN he locked in a grounded headlock. Being a former Olympian, however it took Honda almost no time at all to escape from this headlock, get a rear mount on Hashi and give him some forearms as payback, and then lock in one of his own signature submissions.
I believe the submission in question was Rolling Olympic Hell XI. I know what you’re thinking, and no, he doesn’t really have eleven variations of Rolling Olympic Hell. That would be silly. Instead he has ten variations, numbered 0-7, 11, and one called the Rolling Olympic Hell Special, that ends in a cradle. These should not be confused with one of his finishers, which is merely called “Olympic Hell,” apparently with no rolling involved. Make this even more ridiculous is the fact that they have the same name means you'd expect them to at least be some sort of variation on the same hold; they aren’t. Most of them are variations on the arm triangle choke or fancy ways to get into it, but one of them is a grounded rolling fireman's carry floated over into a leg hook neck crank, another is a grounded rolling fireman's carry floated over into a cradle, and one of them is a freakin’ spinning to hold! I guess it’s possible the internet is f*cking with me, but at this point I think it’s more likely that Tamon Honda is the single least creative person in the entire history of professional wrestling.
Anyway, Olympic wrestler babyface Tamon Honda has the heel trapped in his signature submission hold… and then just lets him out. He then tosses him to the outside so that his tag team partner can whip him into the barricade. KENTA hit Hashi twice, then tossed him back into the ring. Honda whipped Hashi off the ropes… and then just caught him again and locked in a similar submission hold. Then he tagged KENTA in and KENTA locked in a Camel Clutch and started raking Hashi’s face and pulling at his nose. Did I blink and miss a double-turn?
Once Hashi made the tag it just became trading big moves and finishers for a few minutes and it was nice and exciting, but I was completely at a loss as to who I was supposed to be rooting for, with neither team coming off as particularly likeable. Honda got the pin on Inoue with a high-angle German Suplex while KENTA was holding Hashi back on the outside.

RICKY MARVIN & SUWA vs. TAKASHI SUGIURA & YOSHINOBU KANEMARU- 6/10
Ricky Marvin was the babyface in peril. He sold very well while he was the babyface in peril, but completely stopped selling after that point. The match was exciting, but Marvin’s lack of selling dragged it down. Fortunately the wrestling gods punished him for this by not only having him lose.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
SUWA turned on Marvin after the match and three guys beat Marvin down. Some other guy came out to save him. I don’t know most of these guys well enough to be babel to tell who it was and haven’t been able to find an answer on the internet. I even went as far as looking up everyone Marvin teamed with until the end of the year figuring that something like this would obviously lead to a tag match at some point but it didn’t seem to be any of those guys.
The guy making the save got beaten down by the heels and wound up getting hit with a diving elbow drop version of the WHAZZZUP! SUWA then began to cut a promo but Marvin got up and dropkicked him off the apron, and Martin and his pal then beat SUWA up… so where is the heat? And where are Sugiura & Kanemaru to help their new pal?

MISTUHARU MISAWA, YOSHINARI OGAWA, & KOTARU SUZUKI vs. TSUYOSHI KIKUCHI, TAKUMA SANO, & AKIRA TAUE- 6.75/10

JUN AKIYAMA & JUN IZUMIDA vs. AKITOSHI SAITO & SHIRO KOSHINAKA- 6.5/10
This was a very wacky but somehow fun wrestling match. I assume Team Jun were the heels because they were the ones who cheated (first Izumida trying to hit Saito with a chair and then with Saito having their young-boys climb up onto the apron and hit Saito with diving headbutts to the floor!). This match seemed to be an effort between Saito, Koshinaka, and Saito to try to have a match where they only struck each other with headbutts or hip attacks. Izumida even managed to WORK OVER SAITO’S LEG USING HEADBUTTS. When Akiyama got tagged in things were more serious, but by the time he got in I was hoping he would keep the wackiness up by only string the opponent with his signature flying knee strikes.

LOW KI, THE GLADIATOR, & BISON SMITH vs. ACE STEEL, DOUG WILLIAMS, & SCORPIO- 8/10
This match is the entire reason I’m watching this show. I was in the mood for some non-NJPW puroresu, and when I saw this match, I knew it had to be this show. Just look at it! Low Ki, Bison Smith, & Mike Awesome vs. Ace Steel, Doug Williams, and 2 Cold Scorpio… in Pro Wrestling NOAH… in 2005.
Thankfully the match delivered, with a sort of awesome chaos, switching from a regular Japanese heavyweight six-man tag to junior heavyweight stuff like the big running kick on the outside, we had a chair shot or two, the forced American spotfest dive-train, and so much more that was just guys doing moves to each other in combinations of opponents. I really can’t explain it other than to say that the initial feeling that drew me to this match was exactly what I wound up feeling while watching these guys wrestle for twenty minutes. I’m sure most other people wouldn’t rate this as highly, but I just loved this match.


KENTA KOBASHI, GO SHIOZAKI, & MOHAMED YONE vs. TAKESHI MORISHIMA, NAOMICHI MARUFUJI, & TAKESHI RIKIO- 7.75/10
There was lots of brawling here, but unlike in modern New Japan, they only had one pairing going far away from the ring at a time so that there would always be something going on in the ring for the referee to focus on. There was lots of good action here, as you would expected from (most of) these guys. Morishima and Marufuji in particular looked impressive, and Shiozaki looked very young.

This was a decent show from NOAH. There was some solid action, a lot of wackiness, and some great matches on top. I doubt I’ll return to this era of NOAH for a long time (especially for a full show) without a very compelling reason due to the… well… very boring undercards, but the matches I was hoping to deliver definitely delivered enough to make me feel like I didn’t waste my time watching this show.