Big Japan: 28th April 2009

Two big tag league main events in this show. First one is Takeda and Kodaka vs. Shuji Ishikawa and Ito. This was a complete sprint, with a brief foray into the world of established tag team formula wrestling. There was a couple of spots that really highlighted the essence of the rookie team. Firstly, Takeda running charges a lightube into one of his opponents - I think it was Ito - and afterwards sells it with a look of, "what did I do that for?". Secondly, Isami lifts his knees to block a lightube assisted frog splash. They are a team that are frequently required to throw themselves in harms way to overcome higher ranked or larger opponents, and its this that makes them underdogs that the audience really want to get behind.

Other things I liked about this included the early work with Ito and Ishikawa targetting Takeda's back, the stiffness of Ishikawa's knee and kicks and even Ito's strikes looked more forceful than usual - I suspect this is because Takeda and Kodaka are relatively better bumpers and sellers for that sort of thing than much of the Big Japan roster. So many deathmatch guys have such perfunctory non-hardcore offence that its impossible for the match the come off as a series of spots with weak filler. Hence, I'm a big fan of Ishikawa kneeing guys with an audible thunk. I thought it definitely strayed into overkill at the end, which I'm not forgiving even if they want to play up the resilience of Takeda and Kodaka. Takeda's german suplex to Ishikawa onto Ito who was beneath a barbed wire board was an impressive spot.

The main event was a pretty typical tag match. They opened with some basic holds and counters, which was fine (and certainly by keeping it simple it looked a lot less contrived that some indyish matwork). The middle is power stuff on Miyamoto, targetting the back. The finish was typical back and forth stuff. I thought the execution of these elements was fine, although nothing stood out as unique or exceptional to me. If you are going to have two deathmatch workers doing straight tag matches, Miyamoto and Sasaki are the ones to do it. They have the moveset and they can match impact with Sekimoto and others, and they are better sellers and bumpers - Miyamoto in particular, during the heat section. I liked the surprise rollup finish here, which prevented further overkill, but I'm hard pushed to call this anything other than standard, with some things I really didn't like (like the Sliding D steal to no reaction, for no reason).