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New Japan January 4th Show Featuring TNA
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04-01-2008 1:01am#1I hope nobody's allergic to images, I just couldn't convey my excitement using only words
New Japan have their big annual January 4th show this Friday afternoon Irish time so I thought I'd do a bit of a preview thread for it. I'm really looking forward to seeing this one and I'd say there's a few others here who might be interested in seeing the TNA guys but don't know much about their opponents, so maybe this will help a little
1 - Prince Devitt, Minoru & Milano Collection AT vs Christian Cage, AJ Styles & Petey Williams
This should be a good opener, Devitt had an excellent year in 2007 and is moving up the ranks. Minoru and Milano are still at a level above Devitt and they're both great junior heavyweights. The story to this one is that Devitt and Minoru lost a match to Senshi and Christopher Daniels in November, so they're out looking for revenge on TNA. Minoru also has a back story with Petey: about a year and a half ago Petey eliminated Minoru from a battle royal in TNA and Minoru wasn't happy about it
During a press conference in Japan two weeks ago, AJ said that he's going to have a big party after he wins and that he's going to make New Japan's president pay for it. That didn't go down well with the fans or with Minoru
I'm going to predict that Devitt pins Petey for the win. Devitt is involved in about 80% of the finishes when he's in a tag match (whether it be winning or losing) and it would be good for him to get back a win for New Japan over TNA
2 - IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title - Wataru Inoue (c) vs Christopher Daniels
Inoue only won this belt last month, his first reign with the title. He's in his mid-30's now and it looked like he'd never get the title as there have been a lot of talented junior heavyweights emerging in the last couple of years. He managed to pull it off though and this is his first defence of the title
Even though Daniels is "fired" from TNA, New Japan has this built as another New Japan vs TNA match. Depending on how long Daniels is gone from TNA, he might win the belt here. He held the IWGP junior heavyweight tag belts in the past, with Bryan Danielson. My money is on Inoue retaining though, and barely getting by each challenger that he faces
3 - Manabu Nakanishi vs Abyss
This match is being billed as the Japanese monster vs the American monster. Nakanishi competed in the Olympics 16 years ago in amateur wrestling and was trained by Karl Gotch and Dean Malenko's brother, so he's got the technical background. I expect this to be a brawl though. Nakanishi says that he has developed a new style of German suplex for himself to use on Abyss and he showed it off to journalists last week. Nakanishi also worked as Kurasawa in WCW about 12 years ago if anyone remembers him
Abyss didn't look anywhere near as good in 2007 as he did in 2006 and hopefully the airport customs stopped him from bringing any thumbtacks over to Japan. Those things were overused about nine months ago yet they seem to pop up in every single match Abyss has had since then. This'll be interesting as we'll see if Abyss is still capable of performing as good as he used to. It just hasn't worked out for him lately at all
I think Abyss will get the win here
4 - Takashi Iizuka, Koji Kanemoto, Tiger Mask IV & Ryusuke Taguchi vs Masato Tanaka, Tatsuhito Takaiwa, Yutaka Yoshie & Katsushi Takemura
Bit of a mouthful to say all those names! The first team are all New Japan guys. The first two guys from the other team represent ZERO1-MAX and their two partners represent the newly named DRADITION group, which was called Muga World up until last month. Don't worry if you don't follow, it's not that important
The New Japan wrestlers are all mainly veterans apart from Taguchi, who held the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title until the current champ, Inoue, beat him last month. TNA fans might remember Tiger Mask IV from a PPV that he worked for them last year
On the team opposing New Japan, Masato Tanaka is the best known. He's a former ECW champion and appeared on one of WWE's One Night Stand PPVs. He's still a very good wrestler. Takaiwa has held the junior heavyweight title in at least four different promotions. I don't expect this to be the best tag match on the card
I'm going with the non-New Japan team to pick up the win here
5 - Hardcore match - Togi Makabe & Toru Yano vs Team 3D
This I'm looking forward to. Makabe is just awesome, he's got a real presence about him and you have no idea what he's going to do. He's a violent man and often uses his chain in matches. It's not often that he'll get disqualified for using the chain, but the refs sometimes will refuse to count the next pinfall for him. No such danger for him in this match as it's no DQ
Yano was a very successful amateur wrestler and feuded with Makabe at one time, but they're on the same page now. They actually won the tag team of the year award in Tokyo Sports, as voted by journalists
Makabe has promised a "blood festival" in this match and I don't doubt him. Himself and Yano have prepared for this by going to Big Japan Wrestling, a "death match" style promotion, and beating some guys. Team 3D give as good as they get, and this should be a complete war
I'm going with Makabe and Yano for the win, I can't pick against Makabe cos he's just too fun to watch
6 - Jado, Gedo, TARU, Shuji Kondo & "brother" YASSHI vs Tatsumi Fujinami, Riki Choshu, Masahiro Chono, Jushin Thunder Liger & AKIRA
This is a match containing the two big heel teams in New Japan and All Japan teaming up against a team of legends
Jado and Gedo represent the GBH faction in New Japan. These two are two tough, short, bald junior heavyweights who were associated with Fergal Devitt for much of last year. WWE had been rumoured to be interested in signing them for ECW at one stage. TARU, Kondo and YASSHI are all from the Voodoo Murders in All Japan. YASSHI was intending to do some MMA recently, but I never heard any more of that so I assume he's decided to leave it. He's a charismatic guy. TARU is a tall lad with a monster gimmick. Kondo had one of the best matches I've seen from 2007, against Nakajima, I just saw it in the last week. He probably won't get much of a chance to show off what he can do when there's so many involved in this match though
The legends team consists of the New Japan faction called, appropriately, Legend, minus one of their injured members. So replacing him is Fujinami, who headlined the first ever WCW Superbrawl PPV, as well as inventing the dragon sleeper and dragon suplex. The thing is, Fujinami and Choshu have legitimate bad blood between them, although they seem to be on good terms now. Last week was the first time in over five years that they had appeared in public together
Because of the age of the legends team, I'm not sure if this will be that great a match. Liger is the only one of them who can still really go. The Japanese fans will absolutely love it though, so I'll go with the legends for the win
7 - Hirooki Goto vs Great Muta
Goto wrestled a good few matches in TNA in 2006 when he was a junior heavyweight. Last year he went to Mexico and I don't know if there was something in the water there or not, but he came back to Japan recently and he's now a heavyweight. A very good heavyweight. He had such an awesome match not so long ago against Tanahashi for the IWGP title, it was so much fun and helped build him as a future main event player in the fans' eyes
Muta made an appearance in TNA last year, scaring Christian in his lockerroom. His last appearance in New Japan was almost eight years ago, so the fans will be very excited to see him back. He said that he'll be wearing the original Great Muta costume for this match
If Goto wins then it does wonders for him as a top guy in 2008. If he loses then it's no big deal and he'll still get a rub from hanging with Muta. So I think it'll be Muta winning here
8 - IWGP Tag Titles - Giant Bernard & Travis Tomko vs Rick & Scott Steiner
Giant Bernard is Prince Albert/A-Train and he is a really good wrestler these days. Himself and Tomko are the top tag team in Japan at the moment and they're taking on the Steiners, who were the top tag team 15 years ago. They once held the belts that they'll be challenging for
Realistically, this probably won't be great. Although Bernard and Tomko are capable of having good matches, the Steiners just don't seem to have it anymore. I wouldn't write them off completely as I think they could still rise to the occasion, but with two big men teams facing off this could end up ugly. Champs to retain
9 - Fake IWGP Title - Kurt Angle (c) vs Yuji Nagata
Ok, so it isn't really the "fake" belt...sort of... The belt that Kurt holds was the one that Brock Lesnar held when he was New Japan champion. Brock decided to go home with the belt and not give it back though, so New Japan crowned a new champion. In the meantime, Antonio Inoki (a former New Japan booker) left New Japan and set up his own promotion called the IGF. Inoki was the actual owner of the belt Brock had, so he got Brock to defend it against Angle at the first IGF event. The idea with this match is that Nagata is trying to reclaim the belt that was stolen from New Japan
This is the biggest match of the show from TNA's perspective. They're claiming that Kurt is also defending his TNA title, which kind of gives away the winner. There's a sadistic part of me that's curious about how they'd book Nagata as champ though! New Japan have mentioned nothing about the TNA title though, so it's probably not being defended
They built this up quite nicely at a press conference two weeks ago. Nagata said that he's wanted to wrestle Kurt for years and that this is the biggest match of his career, as he tries to bring the title home. Angle said that he was able to beat Brock, but nobody in New Japan had been able to. For whatever reason, Kurt didn't actually bring the belt to the press conference. It tied in with him being over-confident, as he claimed that he'll beat Nagata in less than 15 minutes
This match has a lot of potential, mainly depending on which Kurt shows up. I have no doubt that it won't be Nagata's fault if the match isn't great, because he's been having good match after good match all last year. Sort of like Kurt was a few years ago. Angle just hasn't seemed to hit it off most of the year, there's only two matches of his that I would hold up to Nagata's best of 2007
Kurt will win, no question about that
10 - IWGP Heavyweight Title - Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) vs Shinsuke Nakamura
This is the one match on the card that features only New Japan wrestlers, so I expect these two to give this all that they've got to make it great
Back in August the IWGP champion was Nagata. The G1 Climax tournament took place and it was Nagata vs Nakamura in the semi-finals. The plan was for Nakamura to beat Nagata, then beat Tanahashi in the final, making him the number one contender for the title. The plan was also for him to win it, either at this January 4th show or sometime before
Nakamura never made it to the G1 Climax final though, he separated his shoulder after a move that went slightly wrong against Nagata. Tanahashi beat Nagata in the G1 final, then beat him again for the title in October. Last month Nakamura returned and won a number one contenders match against Makabe, leading to this main event. New Japan made me laugh, they said that they had to make that number one contenders match because TNA couldn't provide any suitable challengers. Nice burying!
Both men are young, part of New Japan's new generation of stars. Tanahashi has wrestled in TNA and John Laurinaitis and Dean Malenko were reportedly pushing for WWE to sign Nakamura in 2006 when he was on a break from Japan, but New Japan called him back as Lesnar had left with the belt and they needed as many stars as they had at the time
Tanahashi proved in 2007 that he could step it up when he needed to and that he could be counted on to deliver in the main event. The women and children all love him but there's certain sections of fans who aren't so keen on him (sound familiar?). He's kept plugging away though and recently has started acting a little heelishly, such as in his title defence vs Goto when he repeatedly attacked the leg of Goto when the referee tried to stop him. I wouldn't be surprised if more of those tactics were used in this match, even though he's been playing fair since that last title match
Nakamura will be the overwhelming face I would imagine. He's come back from injury and he's been giving it his all in every match. Both men are strong and fast and they should prove to be a good combination. They actually held the IWGP tag belts three years ago, so they're no strangers to each other, although both were a bit smaller back then. And not quite as good as they are now
You can expect Fergal Devitt to be at ringside for this match, as Nakamura is the leader of his faction
I'm picking Nakamura for the win. It's a big show and Nakamura was going to be getting it anyway, so it makes sense to me. The only thing is that Tanahashi has done so well with the belt that I think he deserves to keep it. Angle has said that he wants to unify his belt with the belt of whoever wins this match. I can't imagine Kurt winning that, but either man against him could be great
A press conference was held a few days ago and they got a large turnout, so it looks like the event is going to do well
They said they got 2,000 but Japanese promotions always exaggerate. Could have easily been a thousand. But think of the attendance TNA's press conferences usually get!
So there ya have it, a full preview. Hope it helped a few fans of the TNA guys who know nothing about the Japanese wrestlers. You'll probably see a few more strikes and lariats than you're used to if you've only seen American wrestling, but there's something in this show for everyone. I'll try stick up some videos of the matches if I find any, as TNA's special on this show later this month will only be an hour long and it'll feature interviews and videos following their guys around Japan, so the matches will be heavily clipped
The Murder City Machine Guns are also in Japan at the moment, but they're in ZERO1-MAX defending their NWA International Lightweight tag titles. I'll see if I can find any videos of them
It'll be nice to get some matches with TNA guys where I know I'm guaranteed no bull****! Really looking forward to this now0
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Cool man
Do you ever get to see Hustle Fozzy?
Now and again, but not much. I don't keep up to date on it, bit too cartoonish and gimmicky for me! I did check out the match that Cro Cop was involved in on New Year's Eve though: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=BW8MjEgPX8A0 -
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Now and again, but not much. I don't keep up to date on it, bit too cartoonish and gimmicky for me! I did check out the match that Cro Cop was involved in on New Year's Eve though: http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=BW8MjEgPX8A
yeah I saw it 0 -
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Jesus, Petey Williams has bulked himself up a bit, and is very annoying as a result. He's ripped off Tank Toland's gimmick too and he can't pull it off at all.
It was an enjoyable 6 man though, mainly for seeing Devitt hanging with the TNA guys. It would be nice to see him on Impact, although I'm not even sure if an appearance from him would convince me to tune in
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