1.Kenou vs Chikara **1/4
2.The Tough vs KAZMA, Kinya ***
3.AXIZ vs Kaito, Taniguchi ***3/4
4.Elimination: Harada vs HAYATA vs Tadasuke vs YO-HEY **3/4
5.Ultimo, Ohara, Shiro vs Tokyo Gurentai **1/2
6.Doktor Marufuji Jr vs Hijo del Wagner Jr ***1/4
7.Hideki, Fujita vs Sakuraba, Sugiura ***1/2
8.Sugiura-gun vs Kongoh ***1/2
Thoughts:
Sugiura and his boys put on one last shindig for NOAH as we come to a close of 2019. Since I love NOAH and fear Sugiura, let's take a look at the whole event (the last time I'll be doing that this year)!
The opener was okay, but completely skippable and admittedly a bit of a waste of Kenou's talent. Kenou agreed that Chikara was worse than a trainee here.
Match two was better and a good overall tag but still nothing major.
Luckily, the trend was stopped abruptly with number three, as AXIZ once again proved how fucking great they are. The Go/Kaito build continues.
The concept was there in the elimination match as was the novelty, yet possibly due to how rare such a thing is in puro the execution wasn't as well as I'd have hoped considering the talent involved. The end stretch was fun, the rest was decent but forgettable. Just a throwaway RATEL'S thing. They always tease dissension before going Simpsons because the division is semi-shallow and the group makes up most of it. Occasional dissension is the only booking option.
Speaking of decent but forgettable, the trios match was just that.
Moving along, some new, mysterious masked wrestler appeared and faced off against the Wagner kid. He seems to have been trained by Misawa at some point, or one of Misawa's students. Bullshitting aside, which funny enough, "bullshitting" doesn't warrant a red underline misspelling warning on blogger, but Marufuji and Hijo del Wagner Jr worked a very lucha style match which was a fun novelty even if the quality didn't hit recommendation levels. It kind of felt like I was watching a midcard IWRG singles match until the mask removal.
The battle of Sugiura-gun "closer" followed in a style expected of such talents. It was very good, arguably borderline great at times, before Kongoh came and broke it all up setting up the true main event which was also borderline great, closing the show on a strong note.
This was the final show from NOAH in 2019. Yea, it was a glorified house show, but it pushed key angles and was generally fun. If you loved what they put out this year, hit play. If not, just consider anything that sounded interesting to you.
Warning that NOAH does remove things randomly at times.
And, with that, my wrestling coverage of 2019 is complete. Expect the award posts soon and several non-wrestling related posts, too and the recommendation posts to be updated likely tomorrow.
Happy New Year!
Overall Rating: 70/100%
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