All Japan: 5th April 2009

I watched all of the 2008 Champions Carnival in March, and enjoyed it. The 2009 event just appeared on DVDVR, courtesy of Spin Fly Kick's very own Alan (I don't know how he gets GAORA in Ireland). I watch it, and I opine.

Day one, match one is Hama vs. ZODIAC. Hama is like a Japanese Big Daddy V. He's like a Japanese Kamala. He's big, is what I'm saying. And Japanese. This match is built around the fact that Hama is big. He uses the fact that he is big to do moves which require him to be big. I struggle to care about ZODIAC, but Hama could be a fun in his next few matches.

Match two is between Nishimura and Senada. First half of this is Nish dominating on the mat. Second half of this about Senada targetting Nishimura's leg. The leg work is fine, and Nish sells it to the finish, as I would expect. Senada is pretty focused, and Nish, in keeping with both his old school gimmick and the resorts to a surprise roll up for the victory. A well put together, coherent match. My only complaint is the match lacked a bit of drama or excitement near the end, but it's hard to expect much else from a first day match between two guys I don't expect to win their group.

Joe Doering vs. Kaz Hayashi is an interesting first day match. The way this was put together was clearly to establish junior Hayashi as a credible contender. Hayashi hits a great looking tope early in this - a lot of topes in Japan become more like diving forearms (Sekimoto's is the worst example), whereas in Mexico, a tope is head-first and out-of-control. Kaz skull crashes into Joe's chest, and I am pleased. Obviously enough, Joe dominates most of this match, throwing Kaz around with a huge back body drop and a fallaway slam. Kaz's short comebacks work and looks believeable, and builds through bigger moves culminating in an impressive Air Raid Crash. There is some smart wrestling here - bigger moves like the german is blocked early on, but is hit later when Kaz has managed to wear Joe down a little. Also, each move does greater and greater damage, allowing him to finally hit one of his finishers. Kaz's progress in this tournament could be one of it's best features, if booked well.

I wasn't really all that impressed with Kojima and Suwama. It begins energetically, with Suwama gaining the advantage. They fight on the outside with a teased powerbomb off the apron, culminating with an elevated powerbomb on the outside, which was a pretty big bump that didn't really feature into the rest of the match. In fact, for all the big moves being thrown out in this match, they're wasn't much evidence of long term cumulative selling. Then again, Suwama popped straight up after a Koji Cutter and kicked out at one on the penultimate lariat, so it's probably unfair to expect deep selling when short-term selling wasn't great either. And it's probably unfair to expect short-term selling when your watching a match between Kojima and Suwama.

Next match was between Kea vs. Suzuki. This began well, lots of nice striking, Kea looking good on offence, taking control of the ring with Suzuki trying to get in, leading to Suzuki surprising Kea with a jujigatame to establish the danger of a quick submission. But Kea just kills me by ignoring the arm whenever its convenient. I appreciated the stiffness in this, but Kea (a man with three other limbs) kept using the bad arm to attack, and most of the time didn't even bother to do the intermittent arm clutching that a lot of Japanese wrestlers do in lieu of actually selling. Suzuki's submission stuff is entertaining - he finds lots of interesting ways of working arm locks. Kea adds to his list of bad selling by shaking off everything, including a cradle piledriver, and goes for his finishers. Suzuki decides all this no-selling looks like fun with a kickout at one of one of Kea's finishers, goes down for three after the next one, and that's a match - one that had better ideas than execution.

Last match of the night was between Mutoh and Takayama. Takayama's the new Triple Crown champion, having beaten Muta last month. Adding to the intrigue, Mutoh nearly missed the tournament with an injury. Little surprise how this match goes. Mutoh plays the broken down star with just a couple of very effective weapons still available to him, which he will use on repeat and at all available opportunities until they get a result. This time, its delivers a surprisingly great, coherent wrestling match, as Mutoh is relentless in attacking Takayama's leg with dropkicks and figure fours, completely cutting his offence out of the match, and kept on going until he gives up. Great performance here from Takayama, selling every blow to the leg like he's been shot in the thigh and made the final figure four look like agony. This became a good example of taking something formulaic and making it really work.

Good end to a quite variable show. A lot of effort all-round, but some of the matches were dragged down by the participants not working smartly. I like tournaments because they allow for the possibility of developing little themes, and there's a few nice opportunities for that here. I look forward to the next show.