Day 2 12/23/12 Part 2- NOAH Wrestling Show

We hauled out of Korakuen Hall to Ariake for the NOAH show. On our way out, we saw the ring trucks for New Japan arriving as they had a show at Korakuen at 630 that night.  It was sold out so that is not on the agenda. It`s around 45 minutes or so away by train to Ariake. The building is around a 1500 seat arena and the NOAH offices. We got there during the end of the 3rd match which was our goal to catch the whole match.

The match was Taiji Ishimori vs Kotaro Suzuki.  We walked in pretty much as Ishimori did a dive.  We stayed by the aisle way until the match ended. A minute later, Ishimori nearly lands on his head off of a superplex style move.  I go ``Ai Guey!" All of a sudden, I hear someone behind me go, ``Hey, where are you guys from?`` I turn around and it`s Ricky Marvin. We talked to him for a couple minutes as the match completed the 20 minute draw.

We had pretty good seats, but the place is small and intimate enough that I don:t think there could be a bad match. The next match to me was a throw away with Maybach Taniguchi (masked heel) vs Mohammed Yone. They then showed a 15 minute video with Ricky Marvin & Super Crazy going around the Asakusa Temples (which is around where I`m staying so I`ll be going there soon). It was funny as they were talking to each in Japanese the whole time. At the end, Crazy did an interview in Spanish and they just put it on fast forward after a few seconds.  It kept going and going and going. He must have talked for several minutes which they fast forwarded to until the end when he said thank you.

Intermission was next. Green is the color for the promotion so of course Heineken is the beer of choice which was nice. They had several guys again selling wares. It took a minute to figure out but for 500 yen, you get a ticket out of a box. The item written on the ticket is what you get. They had shirts, autograph sheets, Christmas cards from various wrestlers like Crazy, Marvin, Zack Sabre Jr (I guess they wanted all the foreigners to do it),& a Jun Akiyama figure. I got a Christmas card from Jun Akiyama! My friend said he would get the figure, and he actually did.  There must not have been many as the look on the guy behind the counter was like OOH Akiyama figure.

The rest of the show was the best matches. Well, the first was Takeshi Morishima (who is like 320) against little Genba Hirayanagi (fave of mine for sure). It was pretty much a 4 minute squash. KENTA vs Ricky Marvin was a really fun match.  They started really fast, and in the end KENTA won in like 4 minutes. Go Shiozaki vs Takeshi Suguira was the semifinal.  It was the best match on the show for sure. It was almost as good as Kenny-Generico at the DDT show. The main event was Jun Akiyama defeating Naomichi Marfuji in over 20 minutes. It was another good match, but it was hurt by the fact the crowd was pretty dead. It was their last match against each other so I thought the crowd would be pretty hot for this.  They gave speeches back and forth after.

The significance of this show is that this show & tomorrow`s show (which I`m not attending) is the last shows for several of the top guys in the company. They didn`t renew Kenta Kobashi`s contract. Several guys who are loyal to Kobashi are leaving as a result which include Jun Akiyama, Go Shiozaki, and a few others. It`ll be interesting to see the lineup for their next show on the 6th at Korakuen Hall.