Thanks to www.purolove.com for the lineup.
This promises to be one of the best shows of the year. NOAH’s on a roll right now with a change in booking philosophy, and several of it’s wrestlers being on fire.
The top three matches are ridiculously good on paper. The NOAH vs. NJPW tag will look to continue where the Tokyo Dome left off, with Go Shiosaki and Milano stepping in for Misawa and Goto respectively. The two stars of the 1/4 match, Nakamura and Sugiura, are still in place though and will no doubt be fired up every time they cross paths in this match.
Nakajima and KENTA just put on a MOTYC three weeks ago and that will be hard to top, but these crazy S.O.B’s will no doubt try. KENTA is pretty clearly the best wrestler in the world based on form in the last three months. He has never looked better and considering some of his prior years, that’s really saying something.
The main event could be one of THE great heavyweight singles matches in a time where we don’t see many. These two have had oodles of chemistry every time they’ve opposed each other in tags. I expect them to really deliver on the big stage.
The undercard is ten times more interesting than the usual NOAH Budokan. This is spurred on by the new heel faction, CHANGE, who will be a part of matches 4 and 5.
NOAH, 01.03.2009 (NTV/G+)
Tokyo Nippon Budokan
0. Dark Match
0. Dark Match
1. Kenta Kobashi Return Match: Kenta Kobashi vs. Masao Inoue
2. Taiji Ishimori & Ippei Ota vs. Takashi Okita & Kento Miyahara
3. Akira Taue, Naomichi Marufuji & Atsushi Aoki vs. Buchanan, Roderick Strong & Davey Richards
4. Takeshi Rikio & Kotaro Suzuki vs. Yoshihiro Takayama & Ricky Marvin
5. Takeshi Morishima, Makoto Hashi & Akihiko Ito vs. Mohammed Yone, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Genba Hirayanagi
6. Akitoshi Saito, Bison Smith & Doug Williams vs. Mitsuharu Misawa, Yoshinari Ogawa & Shuhei Taniguchi
7. Special Tag Match: Takashi Sugiura & Go Shiozaki vs. Shinsuke Nakamura New Japan & Milano Collection A.T. New Japan
8. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title: Katsuhiko Nakajima (c) vs. KENTA
9. GHC Heavyweight Title: Kensuke Sasaki (c) vs. Jun Akiyama
Why are Roddy and Davey partners again? Theyre supposed to be feuding.
Those two mains look awesome though.
Because NOAH couldn’t give a fuck less about ROH’s storylines. And really, why should they?