WhiteTail Wrestling

The first show of the year as NOAH put on their big Nippon Budokan show.

The opening match sees Yasutaka Yano take on Taishi Ozawa. A short match that was well worked by two young NOAH talents with Yano winning after the fisherman suplex. **1/2

Funky Express (Mohammed Yone & Akitoshi Saito & Shuhei Tanaguchi) take on NOAH Regular Army (Masa Kitamiya & Daiki Inaba & Yoshiki Inamura). A good *** match with an impressive display by Inamura who spent a long time in the ring and won the match for his team.

Kongo (Shuji Kondo & Tadasuke & HIROKI) take on Ninja Mack & Dante Leon & Alejandro. A good match filled with a lot of fast paced action particularly from the juniors involved who were flying around everywhere. A slight upset as Alejandro is able to sneak away with the pin on Tadasuke. ***1/4

M3K (Masaaki Mochizuki & Susume Mochizuki & Mochizuki Jr) take on Hijo Del Dr Wagner Jr & Atsushi Kotoge & Seiki Yoshioka. Another really fun undercard match with plenty of fast paced action with M3K picking up the victory. ***1/4

A eight man match was next with Sugiura-gun having an unknown wrestler who was revealed as Hiroshi Hase. Sugiura-gun (Hiroshi Hase & Kazayuki Fujita & Kendo Kashin & NOSAWA Rongai) take on Kongo (Masakatsu Funaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima & Manabu Soya & Hajime Ohara). Hase was remarkably good given he is in his early 60’s and has rarely wrestled in the last 20 plus years. Bit slower than previous matches but very hard hitting with Hase taking a lot of kicks to his body and handling it like a champ. Jushin Liger was on commentary and there was a big moment when Nakajima provoked him to stand up. Hase wins the match to give the fans a happy moment using the northern lights suplex that he invented. ***1/4

Jack Morris takes on Timothy Thatcher in the next match. A good technical wrestling match with a perhaps surprising result with Morris picking up the win. **3/4

After the match Jake Lee appears comes down to the ring and shakes the hand of Morris.

The GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship match is next as Amakusa defends his title against Junta Miyawaki. Amakusa retains his title in a good match with some good moments although I don’t think it reached quite the level that I could recommend it as it felt slow in parts particularly early before getting better towards the end. ***1/4

The GHC Tag Team Championship match is next as Takashi Sugiura & Satoshi Kojima defend against Naomichi Marufuji & KENTA. The first truly memorable match of 2023 this was a great **** match. Tough aggressive and hard hitting this was good throughout but the final few minutes were of a high quality with both teams exhausted and hitting each other with their hardest moves until Kojima was able to get the win with his lariat.

The GHC Junior Tag Title match was next as Kzy & YO-HEY defend against Yoshinari Ogawa & Eita. A slow start it didn’t feel like anything happened for at least the first five minutes of this match. However the match did improve and the final sequences of the match were truly excellent with new champions as Eita defeated YO-HEY. ***3/4

The first half of the main event as Kaito Kiyomiya defends against Kenoh in the GHC Heavyweight Championship match. This was an awesome match the first must watch match of 2023 and very close to the full five but I would go ****3/4 on this match. Little slow to start and then began to build firstly with a crazy dive to the outside by Kiyomiya and then back in the ring where we had the first shining wizard which Kiyomiya gained a near fall off. A crazy turnbuckle spot resulted in Kiyomiya being smashed into the apron and back in the ring it looked over after the double foot stomp by Kenoh but Kiyomiya kicked out. Both me continued with some great action strikes and moves. Kiyomiya continued to hit his shining wizard and eventually he was able to put Kenoh down for the three count.

Shinsuke Nakamura takes on the Great Muta as the Keiji Mutoh retirement tour continues. The entrances for both men were epic with the crowd breaking the no noise rule numerous times both during the match and before it. To see this was great and it is going to be so much better when all crowds return to normal. The match itself was not great but Nakamura got everything he possibly could get out of an old broken down Muta. Such a shame that Nakamura will now return to WWE and do virtually nothing in a company that has never truly valued his abilities. A lot of laying down by Muta and there was the poision mist spot and some weapon usage. I liked the finish with Nakamura sucking the poison mist out of Muta and then using it against him and hitting the kinshasha. A great moment with a hot crowd and understandably the main event given that but in terms of match quality this was clearly overshadowed by the GHC title match. ***3/4

Show Thoughts

A great start to 2023 for NOAH most of the undercard was average but the title matches mostly delivered particularly the GHC title match which was an awesome match. The main event wasn’t the greatest in terms of match quality but worked with the crowd who showed up in large numbers possibly in excess of 10,000 which is unheard of for a show in the pandemic era. Of course in won’t really help long term in drawing a crowd when you put your title match with two young stars on prior to the main event regardless of whether you consider it a double main event or not the perception is there.

Still NOAH has built some early momentum in 2023 and it will be interesting to see where they go from here especially when Muto has hung up the boots and they can’t rely on him to draw big shows.