BRM Reviews NOAH Summer Navigation 2007: Day 12

[Big Red Machine]

NOAH Summer Navigation 2007: Day 12 (7/15/2023)- Tokyo, Japan

Hello and welcome to BRM’s Monthly “This Day in Wrestling History” Review Series! Today we’ll be venturing away from my Shameful Shelf of Unwatched DVDs and travelling all the way to Japan for a promotion we haven’t looked at in a few years… and one we haven’t seen in their home country before. Join me as I hop onto the ark for NOAH Summer Navigation 2007: Day 12!


IPPEI OTA, MASAO INOUE, & TSUMOTU HIRAYANAGI vs. AKIHITO ITO, DAVEY RICHARDS, & THORUF- 6.5/10
Yeah. Davey Richards is teaming with Erick Rowan. Erick Red-Barely-A-Beard looked very good. The action was solid.

TAMON HONDA & TSUYOSHI KIKUCHI vs. JUNJI IZUMIDA & TAKUMA SANO- 5.5/10
The old men did their best.

SHUHEI TANIGUCHI & YOSHINARI OGAWA vs. ATSUSHI AOKI & YOSHINOBU KANEMARU- 7/10
Holy crap, there’s Gabe Sapolsky sitting on at a table at ringside with a headset on.
Taniguchi was a good babyface in peril, and once Ogawa got the hot tag, the match was quite fun (other than one spot where the referee turned around too soon and clearly saw Ogawa’s revenge low-blow on Kanemaru).

BRYAN DANIELSON, NIGEL MCGUINNESS, & ROCKY ROMERO vs. TAKESHI MORISHIMA, GO SHIOZAKI, & MOHAMMED YONE- 7.5/10
Nigel offered Morishima a handshake and wanted to start against him, but Morishima slapped his hand and turned away to go to the apron… so Nigel grabbed him by the shoulder and slapped him in the face! Then they just went at each other. Morishima eventually started to win and set up for the Backdrop Driver, but Danielson flew off the turnbuckle with a missile dropkick to make the save… or maybe just to take a cheap-shot at Morishima. They somehow managed to keep the intensity up throughout most of the match, no matter who was in there… but holy crap did it feel like it was at a different level whenever Nigel and Morishima got back in there together.

AKITOSHI SAITO & MAKOTO HASHI vs. TAKASHI SUGIURA & YOSHIHIRO TAKAYAMA- 6.5/10
This went thirteen minutes, which felt more like eighteen. And not in a good way. This dragged on five minutes longer than it needed to.

NIPPON TV CUP JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT TAG LEAGUE MATCH: Taiji Ishimori & KENTA(5) vs. Kota Ibushi & Naomichi Marufuji(6)- 8.75/10
This was the match that I had been meaning to get around to watching for years which was the reason I picked this show, and it was definitely worth it. This was a more athletic, faster, less finisher-heavy version of the current New Japan style… and without all of the stupid overbooking/refereeing bullsh*t that constantly infuriates me in those matches. The one thing I will say that the current New Japan style does (and usually does well) that this match didn’t is built up over time (they were essentially going at the same 8/10 on the pacing scale from the word go, and the placement of the big flurries in the match felt relatively random), but even with that downside, I’d much rather watch a match that doesn’t infuriate me with preventable dumb bullsh*t than a match that has a better pacing and build, but the way they get there is with sh*t that makes it hard for me to enjoy large portions of the match.
One more note: There was a spot where Kota seemed to be going for a Springboard Moonsault onto KENTA who was in the middle of the ring, but slipped on the ropes… and managed to turn it into a corkscrew legdrop that hit perfectly. That man is astounding.

NIPPON TV CUP JUNIOR HEAVYWEIGHT TAG LEAGUE MATCH: The Briscoes(5) vs. Ricky Marvin & Kotaro Suzuki(5)- 9.25/10
Holy f*ck! How do people not talk about this match? This was like the previous match with the pacing fixed and with more of a real tag team feeling as opposed feeling like a team of singles wrestlers. Yes, it did drag a little at times, by they quickly got things back on track and sucked me right back in. Even after I figured out where the finish was going, they sucked me in on all of the false finishes. Also, we got people intercepting each other in mid-air a decade before the Young Bucks were doing it! I can see people taking issue with Marvin and Suzuki getting screwed off of a ref bump the winners of the previous match almost backing into a tournament win via someone else’s draw, but the novelty of the ref bump in NOAH just made it more memorable for me and made it work better as a booking tool (it essentially delays the match that would have been the tournament finals to a point later in the year, not part of the tournament).

GHC TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Jun Akiyama & Takeshi Rikio(c) vs. Kentaro Shiga & Kishin Kawabata- 5.5/10
This really dragged. Like, a lot. Uch.

GHC HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Mitsuharu Misawa(c) vs. Akira Taue- 6.75/10
I’m a big fan of Taue because I’m a huge fan of chokeslams, but this was… disappointing. It was two old men just not having what they used to. There was a solid story with both guys working the head and chasing a finisher, but it was just… missing some energy. It felt slower than it should have, and like basic things took a lot more out of them than they should have. Taue would keep wrestling for another five and a half years, but this would be one of the last big matches of his career, and, sadly, that was probably the right decision.


This was an okay show from NOAH. The match I was really looking forward to delivered, and I even found a gem that I wasn’t expecting to find that surpassed it, but much of the rest of the show dragged. I’m definitely putting this down as another win for the “BRM forces himself to finally get around to watching a match he’s been meaning to watch for a while” function of this series, but next month, we’ll be returning to our original purpose and watching a DVD I bought many years ago but haven’t gotten around to watching yet… but we’ll be jazzing things up a bit by watching… a house show.