Cero Reviews AJPW Champions Night 2021

[cero2k]

AJPW Champions Night ~ From The Land Of The Triple Crown Unification Flight To The 50th Anniversary
June 26, 2021
Ota City General Gymnasium, Tokyo, Japan

Triple Crown Championship Introductions - They brought out Aoyagi, Miyahara, and Lee, each carrying one of the three belts that make up the Triple Crown. Dory Funk Jr. sent a video, butchering the participant's names, and telling them to fight and go hard to show who the real champion should be. Gam-ba-te-ku-da-sai! He's as good as anyone else, but I don't know why it's always Funk Jr. doing videos for AJPW.

They gave out the random drawing to set up tonight's match order between the three. It'll be Aoyagi vs Miyahara first, winner takes on Lee, and so on until one wrestler defeats both opponents.

Jun Saito vs. Rei Saito - 4/10
This was weird, these two are not only brothers, but twins, and you would imagine that they had some chemistry since they've trained together, but this was like watching two robots wrestling. They have a Sumo background, so they kinda incorporated some of it into the match, which looked good and different. Their biggest weakness right now is definitely their striking, chops look ok because they're legit putting in the weight, but anything else looks incredibly robotic. Jun Saito won and you can already tell he'll be having the better career, he has a slightly better look (yes, they have different gear and hair in order to differentiate them).

I do believe this was their first singles match between them on an actual show.

SUGI & Tatsuhito Takaiwa vs. NEXTREAM (Atsuki Aoyagi & Rising HAYATO) vs Evolution (Dan Tamura & Hikaru Sato) - 5.5/10
This was good, but they went with the old timer team for the win. Why? I have no idea, I somewhat doubt that they're building SUGI to chase a title, so I think it would had been more productive to give the win to either other team.

Masahiko Takasugi, Masanobu Fuchi, Ryuji Hijikata & Shiro Koshinaka vs. Chikara, Osamu Nishimura, Shinichi Nakano & SUSHI - 5/10
This is a Jumbo Tsuruta memorial match, hence the old timers and all the schtick from everyone. This was good for a nostalgia match, but nothing beyond that. Match went less than 10 minutes, but felt like 20 minutes. Koshinaka pinned Chikara for the win.

AJPW TV 6-Person Tag Team Championship Match
Black Menso-re, Carbell Ito & Takao Omori (c) vs. TOTAL ECLIPSE (Hokuto Omori, TAJIRI & Yusuke Kodama) - 6/10
Ok match, this got less time than the old timers, so the match felt like these guys tried to pack as much as they could in. I did like that TOTAL ECLIPSE pretty much ran over the champions, who are more of comedy midcarders, and as usual for most TE matches, Omori got to show off and get the pin to win the titles.

Ryuki Honda & Shotaro Ashino vs. TOTAL ECLIPSE (Koji Doi & Kuma Arashi) - 6.5/10
This was a match thrown together when the main event fell out and TE took on Ashino and Honda instead of challenging for the tag titles as they originally planned. Because they were already going to challenge for gold, it made the result quite predictable, especially with Honda there. The action was great for the five minutes it got and I would most definitely watch a match between these four guys. Arashi pinned Honda for the win.

#STRONGHEARTS (CIMA, El Lindaman, Issei Onitsuka & T-Hawk) vs. Purple Haze (Izanagi, Shigehiro Irie, UTAMARO & Zeus) - 8/10
This was 100% a GLEAT promotional match, to showcase Onitsuka and remind you that all of #STRONGHEARTS are part of it. Irie for that matter is originally part of #STRONGHEARTS too, but he got to work under Purple Haze since this is AJPW.

This match was awesome, it gave me T-Hawk vs Zeus of all things, Lindaman was all over the place against Izanagi, and the rest were mostly coming in and out. This got about 6 minutes and it deserved double. T-Hawk got the win over Izanagi.

Different Style Fight
Yoshitatsu vs. Yosuke Nishijima - 2/10
This is yet another Yoshitatsu cosplaying Inokism match. I freaking hate these things. They're broken down into rounds, it's supposed to be legitimate mixed martial arts, but it comes off bad when Yoshitatsu is grappling a fighter with legit boxing gloves and the boxer manages out counter and escape grappling holds from Yoshitatsu. Anyway, they went 3 rounds until Yoshitatsu got the boxer in a rear naked choke and tapped him out.

GAORA TV Championship Match
Shuji Ishikawa (c) vs. Yuko Miyamoto - 8/10
This was a great hoss fight between a brawler and an old school high flyer. They got a decent amount of time and made sure to use all of it. The match was mostly back and forward, Ishikawa would go for big impact moves or strikes, but Miyamoto would cut him off with some big move, go something flashy like a moonsault or running knees, and then Ishikawa would come back with another big move. Eventually Ishikawa landed a Splash Mountain that Miyamoto wasn't able to recover from.

AJPW World Junior Heavyweight Title Match
Koji Iwamoto (c) vs. Akira Francesco - 8/10
Really good match, I was caught off guard because I did not expect for Akira to win the title right here. Iwamoto JUST got the title less than a month ago, and while I knew that it was a matter of time before Akira would win it, I just didn't it see it happening here of all shows.

Story was mostly showing Akira as an underdog, Iwamoto is far more established and bigger, so it was a lot of him being under control and Akira having some showy comebacks. Eventually Akira's offense piled up on Iwamoto and Francesco got the win.

Post-match - Well, I guess I was wrong, SUGI is indeed challenging for the title. Akira accepted and showed me hasn't learned a lot of Japanese since being there since the only thing he said in Nihongo was that he was the new champion.

Vacant Triple Crown Championship Tomoe Battle Match
Kento Miyahara vs. Jake Lee vs. Yuma Aoyagi
As explained earlier, this is a series of matches and whoever manages to get wins over the other two first, wins the three championship belts that make up the Triple Crown. Miyahara and Aoyagi were drawn as the starting two, so Lee gets the benefit of taking on a tired wrestler, but also a wrestler that is already warm with some adrenaline going.

Kento Miyahara (0) vs Yuma Aoyagi (0) - 9/10
This was awesome, this could had been the actual title match and I wouldn't complain at all. It reminded me a lot of their CC match from this year, with two guys that know each other well and are willing to go all the way to win the title. The went back and forward, working each other's heads, and ending with Miyahara landing the Shutdown German.

They went about 18 minutes and the resting period is really just as long as Lee wants to give Miyahara.

Jake Lee (0) vs Kento Miyahara (1) - 6.5/10
Jake Lee came out dressed as a medieval Darth Vader, I take it he had this prepared for his big match with Suwama and wasn't willing to not use it.

With Miyahara tired of going 18 minutes with Aoyagi, Lee had a lot of advantage, and it only took him 10 minutes to put down Miyahara. That's not to say that Miyahara actually got a really great offense sequence in which he managed to hurt Lee a bit and get a couple of near falls, but it just wasn't enough and Lee got him with a knee and a Backdrop.

Jake Lee (1) vs Yuma Aoyagi (0) - 8.5/10
When Aoyagi returned, he looked tired, but also warm and ready to go. Lee on the other hand, even with the trouble that Miyahara gave him, doesn't look as bad. They also went about 20 minutes, but this was more one sided with Lee under control. Aoyagi early on had some offense working over Lee's arm, but once Lee cut him off, he mostly kept control. Aoyagi could have a couple of hope spots, but you could see Lee on his way to the win.

I did feel the final minutes slowed down the match a bit, Aoyagi was selling too much before he got his final big hope spot, getting Lee in a guillotine. It worked because it was a reference to how Aoyagi vs Lee at the CC ended. Minutes later, Lee would hit a Giant Killing and backdrop for a near fall, and a D4C for the pin. Jake Lee has finally won the Triple Crown Championship.

I liked how they set up the matches, while Lee does have some victories over MIyahara lately, having to wrestle him right after going 18 minutes with Aoyagi, gives us the idea that maybe a rested Miyahara could had defeated Lee, or at least gone longer so that Aoyagi could had won his match. Miyahara could have an argument for the future, saying that he wants a match where they're both fresh and ready to go.

Even if Lee won the title, Aoyagi was my MVP, he went about 40 minutes total, great stuff with both Miyahara and Lee,

Post-match - Lee was doing his winner's speech when Shotaro Ashino came out to challenge him. Ashino brought up that Lee defeated him at the CC due to tricks.

Ishikawa also came down. He said that he defeated Miyahara, Aoyagi, and Lee at the CC and wasn't in the match because he himself had a title to defend, but that he deserved a shot. It will come down to Ishikawa vs Ashino for a shot at Lee.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
You could tell this show was a mixed bag of changes. A 10 match card with one of those matches being a series of matches that at a minimum, would yield 3 matches. I think that forced a lot of undercard matches to go less than 10 minutes, and while I applaud getting everyone in the card, I do think that some of those matches could had been moved for other lesser shows.

Having said that, the final 3 (or 5) matches were definitely good and saved the show.