Big Japan: 13th February 2009 (part one)

This is the first batch of shows featuring the Maximum Tag League, which goes on until the end of May. I like how they have teams from all their 'divisions', and adjust the type of match depending on the participants. The first match between the team of Inoue and Hoshino and team Yoshito Sasaki & Shinya Ishikawa was easy enough to watch. The only thing that I particularly like about the littlest S. Ishikawa is his dropkicks, which look great. They do two short heat sections, neither leading to a particularly hot tag. I normally like Hoshino for bumping and underdog selling, but they didn't seem to be going for that here.

Next match is a big deathmatch of Sasaki and Miyamoto vs Jun Kasai & Numazawa. This had some weak brawling to start. They'll do crazy things with weapons, but the older deathmatch guys are generally terrible in-crowd brawlers. Miyamoto does his moonsault over the stairway, which is a pretty insane spot, given the risks from missing, but the camera never picks up on that. I'm also a little bored of Kasai and Numazawa's broom-based comedy spots. Thankfully, this eventually settled down into a simple, bloody spotfest - not well put together, but fun at least. Kasai and Numazawa go together into the lighttube cage in an overly contrived spot. They do a superplex and a Frankensteiner off the side cage, the later onto tacks. After loads more weapon assisted moves, Sasaki brings out a bucket of kenzans, but the final Yankee Driver doesn't really seem to make contact with any (I've never gotten over watching Sasaki wrestle Abby Jr with one stuck in his skull for fifteen minutes). Kasai's appeal is crazy highspots, and Numazawa needs them to disguise he can't wrestle (watch how weak the few non-hardcore moves he does to see this).

With the pretty poor opening ten minutes, its not surprising this was nowhere near as good as their match last June (which was highspots and highspots and huge energy for twenty five minutes), but the final stretch was entertaining in the car-crash kind of way. My favourite touch, and its such a small thing, but Miyamoto got the jump on his opponents at the start - its seemingly the oldest booking cliche in Big Japan that the champion gets attacked during his introduction. I thought that played nicely into the ongoing theme of Miyamoto's development as a champion.