Andrew’s Pro Wrestling NOAH Starting Over Ratings & Analysis: Day 4

Another free Pro Wrestling NOAH YouTube show! These have all been pretty fun shows to date. How does this one fair?

So we’ve been here a few times this year. NOAH streams a few shows on their YouTube Live and leaves the full show up for about 48 hours before cutting it down into individual matches.

We’ve got the IPW Junior Heavyweight Championship match, which will hopefully put some space between the two. Current champion Atsushi Kotoge has a lot of history with his challenger Daisuke Harada. If Kotoge wants to solidify his return to the Junior Division, he needs to put Harada behind him.

Let’s see how the show plays out!

Ratings:

• Hajime Ohara, Kinya Okada & KAZMA SAKAMOTO vs Hitoshi Kumano, Junta Miyawaki & Minoru Tanaka: KAZMA wins via Pop-Up Sitout Powerbomb @9:15 – ** 1/2
• Dark Agents Return (Masao Inoue & Akitoshi Saito) vs 50 Funky Powers (Quiet Storm & Mohammed Yone): Saito wins via Sickle Death @9:30 – ** 3/4
• RATEL’S (Tadasuke, YO-HEY & HAYATA) vs STINGER (Yoshinari Ogawa, Kotaro Suzuki & Chris Ridgeway): HAYATA wins via Cradle @16:50 – *** 1/2
• KONGOH (Kenoh, Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura) vs  Hi69, Kaito Kiyomiya & Naomichi Marufuji: Kenoh via Diving Foot Stomp @16:40 – *** 1/4
• IPW Junior Heavyweight Championship: Daisuke Harada vs Atsushi Kotoge (c): Harada wins via Avalanche German Suplex Hold @24:05 – *** 3/4 – TITLE CHANGE!!!
• Katsuhiko Nakajima, Shuhei Taniguchi & Go Shiozaki vs Takashi Sugiura, El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr & Hideki Suzuki: Taniguchi wins via Maybach Press @23:15 – *** 3/4

Analysis:

Hajime Ohara, Kinya Okada & KAZMA SAKAMOTO vs Hitoshi Kumano, Junta Miyawaki & Minoru Tanaka – Well paced opening match. Miyawaki ate a lot of punishment, we saw a small glimmer of the Kumano/Ohara rivalry and KAZMA really just picked his spots. I really enjoyed the pace of the action, the crowd started to rally behind Miyawaki a little bit and everything was entertaining. KAZMA getting the win did feel a little telegraphed since he didn’t do anything until the last like 2 minutes, but it was a fun match.

Dark Agents Return (Masao Inoue & Akitoshi Saito) vs 50 Funky Powers (Quiet Storm & Mohammed Yone) – Inoue matches are hard to get into sometimes because his brand of comedy isn’t as lovable as a Colt Cabana or Toru Yano. However, since 50 Funky Powers are a little goofy themselves, it really worked fairly well. Inoue got beat up a bit and berated by both his teammate and his opponents, but it wasn’t over the top. Saito also getting the hot tag to pull things out of the darkness was really nice. 50 Funky Powers looked to have everything put away, but Saito showed he’s still a force to be reckoned with. Fun match, just a little tough of a sell with Inoue.

RATEL’S (Tadasuke, YO-HEY & HAYATA) vs STINGER (Yoshinari Ogawa, Kotaro Suzuki & Chris Ridgeway) – This was great fun. Everyone involved has story line heat and it all played out beautifully. Suzuki and Tadasuke brawled on the outside up until the 19 count and both ran in. Ridgeway and HAYATA had a lot of time together, and it’s always fun for everyone to beat up YO-HEY. Ridgeway had the win when he caught HAYATA in an attempt at the Rings of Saturn, but HAYATA managed to wiggle out and hit a flash jacknife cradle to steal the win.

-After the match, STINGER goes after the RATEL’S team and has to be forced to the back, but they made their point. Ogawa and Suzuki most likely want a Junior Tag rematch and Ridgeway is lined up to be the next challenger for HAYATA’s GHC Junior Heavyweight title. This will be a fun feud, all these guys are great.  

KONGOH (Kenoh, Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura) vs  Hi69, Kaito Kiyomiya & Naomichi Marufuji – Another fun 6 man tag, with some under lying rivalries like Kenoh’s dislike of both Kiyomiya and Marufuji. Kitamiya got some time to shine pulling off some power moves and having a Triple Senton spot on each of the opponents. Inamura showed his big strong boy tank ability of absorbing punishment. Marufuji had a small point where he was throwing Inamura around and the crowd seemed to scold Marufuji at times and chant for Inamura. So with Marufuji still finding himself and Kenoh having momentum even after his big title loss, KONGOH is positioned well here. Kenoh picking up the win over Hi69 just makes a ton of sense as well.

／
拳王「ノアの会場で"UWFのテーマ"聞きたくないか？！」
＼

📅11･16後楽園大会

📢第4試合
清宮海斗＆丸藤正道＆Hi69
🆚
拳王＆マサ北宮＆稲村愛輝

再び田村潔司を挑発する拳王！
本気で田村をノアのリングへ上げようと仕掛ける‼️

⏬YouTube LIVE生配信中📹https://t.co/v4fGrQH8Nx pic.twitter.com/bsUhqZrVbj

— プロレスリング・ノア (@noah_ghc) November 16, 2019

IPW Junior Heavyweight Championship: Daisuke Harada vs Atsushi Kotoge (c) – Given that this match was for a separate promotion’s junior title, the crowd wasn’t exactly abuzz, but they did seem to enjoy the match. As for the match itself, their familiarity showed beautifully. There was a great exchange of rolling out of one another’s moves, Kotoge even managed to sneak in a few knees to counter when Harada usually hits his own moves.

Both men pulled off a ton of signatures. Kotoge went for a Killswitch, Spanish Fly, Kudo Driver and a variety of backslides. Harada went for his Cross Legged Cradle, Knee Uppercut, and a few other prettier moves with some flourish. The match ending on an Avalanche German looked great and was a nice punctuation to a well paced and well wrestled match. Good match, now the only question is what becomes of the title with the recent news of IPW: UK ceasing live shows.

📅11･16後楽園大会

📢第5試合 IPWジュニアヘビー級選手権試合
小峠篤司🆚原田大輔

二人にしか分からない万感の想い‼️そして決着‼️

⏬YouTube LIVE生配信中📹https://t.co/v4fGrQH8Nx#noah_ghc pic.twitter.com/yGeomqnN33

— プロレスリング・ノア (@noah_ghc) November 16, 2019

Katsuhiko Nakajima, Shuhei Taniguchi & Go Shiozaki vs Takashi Sugiura, El Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr & Hideki Suzuki – The six man tag matches have actually been really great this show. AXIZ (Nakajima & Shiozaki) have a tag title match against Hideki Suzuki and Kazuyuki Fujita if I remember correctly. So this Sugiura-Gun versus AXIZ match makes sense. Coupled with Taniguchi being in line for a National title shot, all these players make sense.

Suzuki and Shiozaki have a nice back and forth, which also has a little more meat behind it from their match earlier this year that went to a time limit draw. Suzuki kept blocking Shiozaki’s chops, but Go catches him and that’s when the fun starts. Nakajima makes his way in and they trade off kicks and chops just lighting up Suzuki like a Christmas tree. Sugiura and Taniguchi took the match to a different level since their style together feels like Strong Style more than King’s Road. After trading forearms and headbutts, Taniguchi gets busted open above the left eye. This causes a slight botch where Sugiura can’t quit spin around for the necklock out of the suplex, but they go right back to the spot. Lots of pin break ups from both teams, Taniguchi gets the advantage off of some Punt Kicks, hits his Maybach Press twice and gets the visible pinfall over the National Champion.

Overall Score: 6.5/10

Well we had the one championship match, but it was mostly a “road to” style of show. Lots of good movement for storylines, cementing number one contenders and nice faction unity. Match quality also wasn’t terrible, nothing was exactly classic, but everything was fun and at the worst, decent ring work.

Taniguchi and Sugiura will be a hell of a match, which I’m intrigued about since this is Taniguchi’s first real singles shot at something since changing his gimmick from Monster Maybach. Shiozaki and Nakajima are studs, and I believe they have a singles match against one another before the tag match. Generally, whenever they’re involved in a match, it will be something special.

Much like I said after the NOAH the Best show, NOAH is in good shape and putting out some good work. They have a great crop of rookies (Yoshiki Inamura, Kinya Okada and Junta Miyawaki), Kaito is only 23, and Nakajima and Kenoh are in their early 30s, so the future is pretty bright.