Big Japan: 19th December 2008

Big end-of-year show, and they manage to pack a lot into two hours, albeit with some clipping of the unimportant stuff, which is not worth discussing.

We get a barbed-wire board tag with three of the Big Japan new guys (and Inematsu, whose been doing this for a while now). At the moment, I think I prefer guys like Isami taking a beating rather than working a fairly even tag match with similarly ranked guys. Can't fault the effort though, as all the guys bump hard through a 12 minute sprint, but it doesn't have the solid structure and story that a underdog-type match does. If you wanted me to pick a highlight, it would be Hoshino carrying on his crazy habit of splaying his back against something metal.

The six man with all the deathmatch guys didn't really do it for me, and wasn't helped by the editing. The match does a good job of elevating Shuji Ishikawa, who saves his partners over and over and ends up on the winning end of most exchanges. Obviously, he's not taking the same level of nutty violence as someone like Sasaki or Kasai, but he looks fun knocking everyone down with his size.

I ending up liking the tag titles match. The opening is pretty standard stuff, Sekimotos ignores some leg work and Mammoth is an entertaining hot tag, with his lariats and his theft of the Ligerbomb. Actually, it was a novel change watching Sekimoto and Mammoth work the other end of the tag formula. The last eight or so minutes after the hot tag were where this got entertaining - everyone goes at full speed and while Sekimoto is a deeply flawed wrestler, he knows how to get the crowd going with all of his energy. I enjoyed Liger here - especially forcing Sekimoto to sell the leg at least for a time with his persistent stomps and submission work. He matches up well against the bigger Mammoth; I liked his palmstrikes and koppou kick out of nowhere, and Mammoth sold them well. I could watch a singles between the two as a lesser Liger vs. Hashimoto type match.

Really, the show hinged on the success of the title match, and I've gone back and forth on this, which generally indicates it wasn't a huge success. The opening is definitely weak, especially the ridiculously slow bit where Miyamoto regroups in the crowd and Shadow WX does nothing by the side of the ring and some weakish brawling. Given the lack of weapons, they at least pace the two big spots well, although WX annoyed me by barely selling any of the damage of barbedwire and explosions. In fact, my biggest complaint of the whole thing is WX looks like he isn't entirely interested - watch him roll slowly out of a bridged german suplex instead of work nearfall. His lariats lack force and aside from one bit when he rips off his t-shirt, he generally seems to lack any fire. It's not even selling fatigue, because he's like it from the start. Obviously, I'm not the guy breaking glass over my chest or getting barbed wire in my head. Miyamoto's victory is a pleasing moment though, even if it wasn't the amazing dramatic conclusion to the chase that I'd hoped for.

2008 is now done. I'll try and do a top ten list of 2008 Big Japan matches soon. I think we can all agree that this wasn't an excellent year overall, especially compared to 2006 and 2007, but there's good in there if you look hard enough.