Pro Wrestling NOAH
NOAH’s N-1 Victory final show drew 1,537 fans in Osaka Edion #1. This is down 600 compared to last year’s final and down 1,500 compared to the 2022 final in the same venue. A typhoon hurt the attendance a bit, but it’s far from a good number, and it’s another big NOAH show that wasn’t able to draw well which isn’t a good sign considering the show had the biggest match NOAH can run right now with Kaito Kiyomiya and Kenoh facing off with the GHC Heavyweight Championship on the line.
The final N-1 Victory show presented all the weaknesses of NOAH in 2024, as it had a long undercard with underwhelming top matches that will be forgotten by tomorrow. The biggest news coming out of the show, outside of the main event, is that Yoshiki Inamura is seemingly going on another excursion, something which doesn’t make a lot of sense. He is nearly 32 years old and has had IT for years now. Fans have been asking for him to get a good push for a long time now, and, after he came back from his first excursion that was already unneeded, he had a good Budokan main and worked a good N-1 tournament, so it’s fair to question why he needs a second excursion. It reminds me of Junta Miyawaki, who had a similar experience in 2023 and hasn’t yet been able to recover from the second excursion, being someone who barely beats the lowest wrestlers on the cards.
Kaito Kiyomiya wins the N-1 Victory and retains the GHC Heavyweight Championship match against Kenoh with the arm-drag-pinning combination as a tribute to Yoshinari Ogawa, who, funny enough, didn’t like the match and called Kaito’s performance a copy of Zack Sabre Jr. and Keiji Muto. The match was good, but I’ve seen the same match multiple times already and done better. The others have also had a better atmosphere as the crowd wasn’t hot for this show. The sudden ending with the Ogawa tribute worked in theory but fell flat due to the match not hitting the heights that it should have. NOAH should stop running a match between Kenoh and Kiyomiya for a while, and perhaps run it back in two years when it hopefully feels fresher when the fans are more into it. This match was an overkill of a story that was already not interesting enough to be worthy of an N-1 Victory final.
All Japan Pro Wrestling
AJPW held their next big show in Fukuoka Island City Forum in front of 1,013 fans, which is another great number for the promotion, who now constantly draw over 1,000 fans for the shows with Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship matches on it. The promotion has been able to grow a lot over the past 365 days by taking risks and pushing the new generation, and it’s certainly paying off.
In the main event, Yuma Aoyagi retained the Triple Crown Championship over Kento Miyahara in a match that went over 30 minutes. Aoyagi hasn’t found his groove yet as champion, and this was a perfect example of that. A match between Kento and Yuma is normally a safe bet for All Japan to have a great match, but that wasn’t the case here as this match was a disappointment. The match was still good, don’t get me wrong, but considering it’s the biggest match All Japan can run, it should have been much better. Similar to the Yuma Anzai match, the first 15 minutes were nothing as Aoyagi wasn’t able to make his match layout interesting, he needs to change it. Meanwhile, Miyahara was great throughout this match, including excellent timing on the near falls. He is a once-in-a-lifetime talent and shows that at every opportunity that he gets with his high-quality performances. Once it got into the final 10 minutes, the match picked up with a fantastic finishing stretch as it brought out the greatness of Aoyagi and showed what he can do really well.
The start of Aoyagi’s title run has been underwhelming so far, and that is disappointing, considering the quality of opponents he faced and how great his first run was. A big part of that is the the difference in his role as champion, as he went from a title-holder who had to establish himself on top of All Japan, to one who already is at the top of the promotion and this is reflected in his wresting style. So far, it hasn’t clicked. His next challenger will be decided with the upcoming Royal Road tournament, where it’s likely that a young guy will win it and challenge Aoyagi.
TAKAYAMANIA
The Takayamania show was at Korakuen Hall in front of 1,701 fans. The show was organized by Minoru Suzuki to raise funds for his long-term friend Yoshihiro Takayama, who suffered a serious injury in a match back in 2017 that left him paralysed, although he continues to fight – sadly without much luck so far.
The main event of the show was Minoru Suzuki facing Katsuyori Shibata in Shibata’s first match at Korakuen Hall in seven years, and the match was exactly what you’d expect from these two. They chopped each other for 20 minutes straight all over Korakuen Hall, including Kenta Kobashi even getting involved to chop nothing men, in a brawl until they got back into the ring and had a good finishing stretch that Shibata won after a total of 27 minutes. If you like the match that I just described, you will enjoy this one. The crowd was hot, the moments were well-placed, and it was a fun match, but the biggest thing happened after the match.
Yoshihiro Takayama was brought into the ring in his wheelchair in his first public appearance in years, whereupon Minoru Suzuki embraced him in tears in one of the most emotional moments in wrestling this year. Shortly after the bell rang, Yoshihiro Takayama and Minoru Suzuki had a nice moment in the ring with all the wrestlers standing ringside and the crowd chanting Takayama’s name. Suzuki challenged Takayama to a match, the bell rang and he screamed at Takayama that the match would be postponed if Takayama couldn’t stand up and kick him in the face as a way to motivate Takayama to do the unthinkable and stand up, but sadly Takayama couldn’t. The final 10 minutes of this show were as emotional as wrestling can get and showed how real all of this is. A fantastic way to end this show.
