Taichi & El Desperado vs Atsushi Kotoge & Hitoshi Kumano
Taichi in black, Desperado in black and masked, Kotoge in pink and Kumano in red
Heels beat down the guy trying to grab the ribbons. The man is just trying to feed his family. Does this mean the fans caused this man's suffering since they threw the streamers? I do so love Taichi and Desperado's entrance.
So you have this dangerous faction causing chaos in your promotion, and you put them up against your junor heavyweight champion(ok) and a guy who just started wrestling(Kumano). Ok? Imagine if Hall & Nash were wrestling Luger and a Powerplant John Cena. Kumano has only been wrestling 2 years, and the dude has some serious cauliflower ear. I've taken to noticing fucked up ears lately for some reason. Tanahashi has it real bad too. Taichi wants Kotoge, but Kumano assures Kotoge 'I got it.' So someone's about to get murked. Taichi kicks the green rookie and throws him into Kotoge's corner, demanding Kotoge instead. Kotoge finally succumbs and enters the ring to start it off.
In a true heel fashion, Taichi then tags in Desperado after all the hubbub about getting Kotoge in to wrestle him. Because they are heels, you see? There is a ton of stalling to build up this match since I assume Kotoge and Taichi are the main juniors feud for this invasion as Taichi has been fucking with all the juniors since Suzuki-gun arrived. There's a long, plodding period of Taichi and Desperado working the green Kumano. Kumano's first tag in was surprisingly decent. Even though he was very green, I thought it got over him being pissed at the slight that Taichi didn't want to wrestle him. He looked very believable forearming and choking Desperado. Gave the young lion a bit of a character before spending the rest of the match selling. There's a bit where Kotoge tries to get into the ring when he's not legal and Taichi begins counting him like a ref would. I thought that was funny. The last 6 or 7 minutes has been extremely plodding. Constant cheating by Desperado and Taichi. Unlike the previous Kenou and Ohara match where the cheating is done quickly and effectively, this drags forever. Kenou and Ohara work around refs and constantly sneak in. The NOAH refs are very lenient, but the amount of times Desperado distracts them makes them look completely incompetent. Like they shouldn't even be in the match if they're not going to enforce any kind of rules. Thankfully, Kotoge gets tagged in.
Kotoge throws himself out of the ring and proceeds to kick Taichi right in the fucking face which is the biggest pop so far. Desperado recovers by hitting Kotoge with one of the worst spinebusters ever. Taichi continues to sell getting kicked in the fucking face for a while which really puts it over. Kotoge does an indyriffic roll through the ropes and cutter to Taichi.
Ugh. Kumano hits a nice fisherman suplex on Taichi and Desperado makes the quickest save from the outside I've ever seen. Taichi nails Kumano with the title AND THROWS IT IN THE AIR! THE DISRESPECT!
This is the worst match of the card so far which makes me sad as it was my second most looked forward to match. It has a really great talent and two really good talents with a lot of heat. Even the green Kumano impressed me more than the match did. He needs less elbow based moveset ,but he's very fast and pretty clean at pulling off those moves. Has good fire. But the first half of the match drags on for far too long. There's cheating done in the second half as well, but it's so much quicker paced that it's acceptable. The first half of the match working over Kumano feels like total filler.