A lovely companion piece to one of Big Japan’s most fun matches of the year.
There’s no new ground here that wasn’t discovered there. It’s another match where Takuya Nomura tests his wares against two heavy hitter BJW main eventers as part of a superteam, and in which Hideki Suzuki tries his best to bail him out only to be cut off by the brick wall of opposition in the end. That being said, that is a pretty tremendous concept for a match and variations of that match have been great for decades and decades and decades.
Nomura, Hideki, and the Twin Towers are not so arrogant as to go and fuck up the program after all that hard work, and so this is another easy hit.
In particular, the Nomura stuff is out of this world.
That’s not to say Hideki isn’t good here. The magic isn’t quite here with him and the Towers in the way it was in September against Sekimoto and Okabayashi, largely because Hideki, Sato, and Ishikawa are all natural antagonists, but on a force of talent level, it works. Pure lizard brain shit, people elbowing and slapping each other really hard is always going to offer some sort of visceral thrill.
Mostly though, this is about Big Japan’s super rookie, and he delivers. No rookie has more fire than Takuya Nomura and no rookie has the snap and precision of the boy either. He not only hangs with the big boys in strike exchanges late in the match, but he’s great enough at it to the point that he could easily go five minutes further, even win the thing, and it wouldn’t be that out of place. He has it in a way few other rookies throughout all of wrestling history have ever had it. It’s to the point where, even though he loses at the end, it feels less natural than other rookie losses and more of a case of “oh, we have to play this game for a year or two to preserve the order” in a way that I haven’t felt since early 2000s KENTA or 1992-1994 Jun Akiyama. He is that naturally gifted.
At the same time, Big Japan being Big Japan, every kickout he gets manages to feel big, as a result of these long established systems and routines. Despite all of the very enjoyable jokes I and others have made about how NOBODY kicks out of the Falcon Arrow, and how they’ve really Done The Deal now, Takuya Nomura kicking out of Sato’s Falcon Arrow following a God Damner of a running elbow does feel like a really big deal. Beyond that, given that Strong BJ didn’t have to go to the #1 or #2 hits to really beat him even three months prior, Kohei Sato breaking out his leaping Piledriver to do the job against Nomura feels like a little bit of a victory in and of itself.
Once more, a tremendous piece of slow advancement from Big Japan, and a great little match on top of that too.
Not one for the lists, so it’s easy to forget about so late in the year, but a little pocket God Damner here to delight your many senses.
HANDWERK 