WhiteTail Wrestling

NOAH began the year 2022 with a big show at the Nippon Budokan in front of a good crowd for the pandemic of 3,181.

I decided I would watch the final 5 matches on the card starting with the GHC Junior Heavyweight Title match as HAYATA defended against Yoshinari Ogawa. An excellent ***1/2 match. This match went a while and had a lot of nothing in the middle but the work throughout was solid by both men and the final few minutes were excellent with Ogawa the veteran really taking it to his tag team partner hitting him with numerous back suplexes and really targeting the arm of HAYATA. HAYATA wins the match and retains but only with a rollup after Ogawa had really pushed him all the way.

The GHC Tag Team Championship match was next as two teams from the same faction battled for the titles the champs M’s Alliance (Keiji Muto & Naomichi Marufuji) took on M’s Alliance (Masaaki Mochizuki & Masato Tanaka). Very slow early with Muto lying on the mat and doing nothing. The highlight of this match was a great battle between Marrufuji and Tanaka this was very physical with plenty of hard striking and got the crowd into a match which had been a snoozefest up to that point. From then on the match was great with plenty of physical action from all involved. Muto gets the win with the figure 4 to retain. An excellent ***3/4 match.

KENTA made his return to NOAH teaming up with Sugiura-gun (Kazushi Sakuraba & Takashi Sugiura) defeating Daiki Inaba & Masa Kitamiya & Yoshiki Inamura in an excellent ***3/4 match. Showcased Kitamiya and Inamura very well making them both look like stars against KENTA and his veteran teammates. Inamura in particular had a great performance against KENTA at the end of the match giving it absoultely everything before falling to the GTS.

A great ****1/4 match in the semi main as Kenoh defeats Kaito Kiyomiya to retain his GHC National title. Some great sequences of action in this tough hard hitting match with an awesome finish. Kiyomiya nails Kenoh with three snap dragon suplexes in a row but Kenoh hits Kiyomiya with a series of massive slaps stunning him and then knocking him out with a massive head kick and the referee stops the match.

The main event for the GHC Heavyweight Championship as Katsuhiko Nakajima successfully defends his title against Go Shiozaki. A 30 minute match that certainly felt like it this was wrestled very methodically but built the drama of the match brilliantly with the crowd enthused in the battle despite not being able to cheer. A number of excellent near falls with neither man able to finish their opponent even with their main finishers. Nakajima hits a number a sheer drop brainbusters but couldn’t get the pinfall until he changed the move into a variant of the emerald flowsion in a tribute to the legendary Mitsuharu Misawa. An awesome ****1/2 main event.

As I write this we are just days away from NOAH’s Budokan show for 2023 looking back on 2022 this show was a brilliant way to start the year in pro wrestling with an awesome main event a great hard hitting semi main and a number of other excellent matches. Match length is definitly an issue for this promotion as some of these encounters could have been a few minutes shorter. Age of some of the stars are also going to cause some issues into the future unless some younger performers are featured in prominent spots on the card.