New Japan’s biggest show of the year goes down tomorrow and it’s set to be a HELL of a show. You’ve got a main event that is sure to pull out all the stops as the company’s biggest young star Hiroshi Tanahashi takes on one of his mentors, All Japan president and IWGP Heavyweight Champion, Keiji Mutoh. There will also be two HUGE New Japan vs. NOAH matches and a rematch of the 10/13 Sumo Hall thriller between Yugi Nagata and Zero 1’s Masato Tanaka.

NJPW “WRESTLE KINGDOM III IN TOKYO DOME”, 1/4/09 (WPW/PPV)
Tokyo Dome

0. Mitsuhide Hirasawa, Kazuchika Okada & Nobuo Yoshihashi vs. Milano Collection AT, Minoru & Taichi Ishikari
1. Wrestle Kingdom Grand Opening VIENTO DORADO: Mistico, Ryusuke Taguchi & Prince Devitt vs. Averno, Jado & Gedo
2. Jushin Thunder Liger 20th Anniversary Match: Jushin Thunder Liger & Takuma Sano Pro Wrestling NOAH vs. Wataru Inoue & Koji Kanemoto
3. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title ~Tread on!!~: Yujiro & Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. Alex Shelley TNA Wrestling & Chris Sabin TNA Wrestling
4. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title ~Ballistic interception~: Low Ki (c) vs. Tiger Mask
5. Fighting Holdings Competition: Riki Choshu, Masahiro Chono, Kurt Angle TNA Wrestling & Kevin Nash TNA Wrestling vs. Giant Bernard, Takashi Iizuka, Tomohiro Ishii & Karl Anderson
6. World Heavyweight Title ~Crusade for Justice~: Yuji Nagata (c) vs. Masato Tanaka ZERO1-MAX
7. New Japan vs. NOAH Battle Tendencies ~the invasion~: Manabu Nakanishi vs. Jun Akiyama Pro Wrestling NOAH
8. IWGP Tag Team Title - Hardcore Rules: Togi Makabe & Toru Yano (c) vs. “Team 3D” Brother Ray TNA Wrestling & Brother Devon TNA Wrestling
9. New Japan vs. NOAH Battle Tendencies ~the encounter~: Shinsuke Nakamura & Hirooki Goto vs. Mitsuharu Misawa Pro Wrestling NOAH & Takashi Sugiura Pro Wrestling NOAH
10. IWGP Heavyweight Title: Keiji Muto All Japan (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi

”The Natural One” Michael Modest. Mainstream wrestling fans know him as the kid from “Beyond the Mat” who had a dark match on WWF Television during the peak of the wrestling boom. NOAH fans remember him as a hard-hitting gai-jin and a lot of his matches with tag partner Donovan Morgan. Bay Area wrestling fans, specially APW elitists, see him as a “Wrestling God”, no disrespect to JBL.

Wrestlewarehouse.com presents the first in it’s series of brand new shoot interviews, a sit down interview with “The Natural One” Michael Modest, conducted by Rubber Guard Radio host Kid Zombie. KZ and Wrestle Warehouse take Mike down memory lane, covering his entire career from A-Z up until now for two hours and forty five minutes.

Early on, Mike talks about how he got into wrestling in due part to his uncle and how he was attracted to the legendary Ray “The Crippler” Stevens up to his first match as an enhancement talent, putting over Koko B. Ware of all people, at age 18. “Playboy” Buddy Rose is revealed as the first guy Mike ever worked who actually listened to him and did the moves that he wanted, until he got punched right in the nose. And Wrestling is supposed to be fake… right?

“Your name’s not Dean mate, it’s fucking mark!”

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I bring to you, the first ever Fight Game Blog Awards. Since our website is unique in that we cover boxing, pro wrestling, and MMA, we have three different categories for awards.

In addition to our FGB brothers, Stevie J from Angry Marks is also giving his picks.

Pro Wrestling

Wrestler Of The Year
Big D - Edge
Alan - Shingo Takagi

Was given the ball in Dragon Gate due to top star CIMA being on the sidelines, and the company had it’s best business year ever. He was also outstanding in the ring and is full of charisma.

Duan - Jeff Hardy

This may not be a popular choice, but Jeff has really delivered main event quality matches this year, and he has now finally been given the chance to carry a world title. His ascension has helped freshen up a tired WWE main event scene, and the title change was executed perfectly.

I might’ve given up on WWE this summer if it weren’t for Chris Jericho. He and Shawn Michaels were the sole reason I bought any B shows this year.

Match Of The Year Continue Reading »

It’s taken longer than I thought but I got back to watching some KENTA & Marufuji stuff. On the docket today we have their final four big matches as a regular team - all three of their matches from the 2005 Differ Cup and the big June 2005 title change against Sugiura & Kanemaru.

Differ Cup 2005 1st Round: KENTA & Marufuji vs. Ibushi & Kudo
This was before Ibushi and Kudo had everyone’s attention and going into the match they were merely two young DDT (small indy group) guys who were gonna get their butts handed to them. What actually happened was they stepped right up to the plate and put on what was at that time a career performance for them. K&M sold their asses off throughout the match, eating all of Kudo’s kicks full on and taking Ibushi’s flying perfectly. The went about 15 minutes and it was a damn fine 15 minutes. KENTA & Marufuji of course progressed to the semi finals, with the end coming from a brutal Busaiku Knee Kick on Ibushi. ****

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Still on KENTA & Marufuji - THE TAG YEARS~!

4 matches this week. I’ll see if I can fire through the rest next week. While I’m definitely not getting sick of watching these matches, finding different things to write about them is becoming hard.

Kenta & Marufuji vs. Ogawa & Suzuki – 4/3/2004

Former GHC HEAVY champ Yoshinari Ogawa drops down to the junior division here to get a crack at Kenta & Marufuji. He picks Kotaro Suzuki as his partner. This was the youngsters first title shot and easily his biggest match ever. They went a half hour and to it’s credit it never got boring. Suzuki had some slip ups here and there but that added to the story. Marufuji got a huge win pinning Ogawa with a top rope Shiranui after surviving a couple of backdrop suplexes. Very good defense ****1/4.

Kenta & Marufuji vs. Misawa & Ogawa – 4/25/2004

Quite the awesome dynamic here. Kenta & Marufuji go for the HEAVYWEIGHT tag belts, a true step up. Ogawa wants to prove himself after the junior champs beat him and Suzuki a few weeks prior, and Misawa wants to prove that pesky little men deserve nothing but elbows in the face, lots and lots of elbows in the face! Kenta & Marufuji have faced heavyweight competition before but never in a match of this importance.

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And we continue on with the KENTA & Marufuji tag years here in the second week of the From The Vault series. Three more matches from our heroes as they close out 2003.

KENTA & Marufuji & Kotaro Suzuki vs. Kanemaru & Sugiura & Hashi 10/5/03

Kotaro added to the mix brought something a little extra to the equation. He was still in his young lion days here and thus took quite a beating throughout. Although he gave back plenty in return and was surprisingly the star of the match. Sugiura and Marufuji had some excellent exchanges, expecially down the stretch. Sugiura sure isn’t afraid to throw a man. Overall this was mainly just a build up type match, they didn’t go ALL OUT but it was still damn good. ***3/4

KENTA & Marufuji vs. Juventud & Marvin 11/1/03

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The lineup for the now annual NOAH Junior Tag League - The NTV Cup was announced today.

8/23 - 9/6
NTV Cup Teams
1. KENTA and Taiji Ishimori
2. Jay and Mark Briscoe
3. Atsushi Aoki and Akihiko Ito
4. Ricky Marvin and Eddie Edwards
5. Bryan Danielson and Davey Richards
6. Katsuhiko Nakajima and Kota Ibushi
7. Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Kotaro Suzuki

Nakajima and Ibushi is the definition of dream team. That pairing came out of nowhere and puro fans are salivating at the thoughts of their matches. KENTA and Taiji were last years winners, putting on the match of the year in their last bout of the tournament.

So I watch ALOT of wrestling every week, and in addition to all the current stuff I also go back and watch alot of things that maybe I missed out on when they happened or maybe something I just wanted to rewatch. I figured a nice regular piece I could do would be a From The Vault style column, just reviewing some of the things I saw during the week. The other guys have pretty much all the bases covered on the current stuff so I thought instead of providing a second Raw review or something like that, I’d go this route. Most everything I will talk about is easily accessible so feel free to contact me if you want to check out what I’m writing about.

We start this week with KENTA & Marufuji - the tag years. This will be a multi-part edition of From The Vault.

I’ve been meaning for a long while to rewatch all the KENTA & Marufuji stuff from when they were a regular team. This was some of the first puro I ever saw and while it blew me away, I don’t think I would have appreciated it then like I would now. So with a dearth of new puro in the last week or so, I said now is the time to check all this out again.

I’m three matches in and WOW is all I can say.

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