Pro Wrestling NOAH News and Notes!

Naomichi Marufuji’s 15th anniversary show was on 8/24 at Korakuen Hall before a sellout of 2,100 fans featuring the appearances of Shinsuke Nakamura, Jushin Liger and Tiger Mask from New Japan. Nakamura & Marufuji in the main event lost to KENTA & Takashi Sugiura in 20:39 when Sugiura pinned Marufuji with the Yonemitsu slam. The Yonemitsu slam was one of the big moves of Tatsuhiro Yonemitsu, who won the gold medal at 145 pounds in the 2012 Olympics in freestyle wrestling. Sugiura, who was a high-ranking amateur years back before joining NOAH, has trained with him. KENTA did shove the GHC title in Nakamura’s face and they worked spots together so going in that direction was at least teased. TMDK of Mikey Nicholls & Shane Haste retained the GHC tag titles beating Yoshihito Sasaki & Shinya Ishikawa in 16:39 when Nicholls pinned Sasaki. Liger & Tiger Mask retained the GHC jr. title beating Genba Hirayanagi & Maybach Suwa Jr. in 16:07 when Liger pinned Suwa Jr. with a brainbuster. Liger & Tiger Mask attacked the mask of Maybach Suwa Jr., until he got tired of it and tore his own mask off, revealing himself as Hajime Ohara, which is pretty much what most knew. After the match, Daisuke Harada came out with rookie Hitoshi Kumano and challenged Liger & Tiger Mask for the belts. 

Takeshi Morishima returns on 10/5 in Yokohama. He has asked for it to be in a singles match with Kensuke Sasaki. 

To help build up the upcoming KENTA vs. Nicholls GHC heavyweight title match, there was a trios match on 8/17 in Hamamatsu where Nicholls & Shane Haste (from Australia) & Kaiser (from South America) beat KENTA & Takashi Sugiura & Genba Hirayanagi when Nicholls pinned KENTA with a power bomb in 23:21.

The way things stand right now, KENTA defends first against Haste on 9/7 at Differ Ariake and then against Nicholls on 9/16 in Fukuoka.