GWE Watching: Tamon Honda

 Tamon Honda vs. Daisuke Ikeda, NOAH 3/29/2001

Their KBS hall match is more famous and probably better, but this match was beastly in it's own right. There wasn't much matwork, but Ikeda was landing FUTEN level kicks to Hondas face and Honda hit all these beastly throws and counters. Both guys selling was just great, Ikeda would make a random leglock or Honda falling on top of him look deadly, and Honda sold a chokehold as if he was poisoned. Ikeda limping while getting up after a leglock and then rushing over to kick Hondas big head like a football was awe inspiring. I also loved Hondas reversal of the Russian Legsweep and Ikeda hitting the move later in the match was amazing due to the timing and buildup. The crowd for this was at the beginning so quiet you could hear a pin drop but the match won them over and they were popping big at the end so you know it ruled. Also, NAGAI KILLER and some brutal high kicks for the finish.

Tamon Honda & Masao Inoue vs. Jun Akiyama & Akitoshi Saito, NOAH 9/2/2001

Honda is set to face Akiyama for the title, so the purpose of this match was to make him look like a beast. And well, that they do. Honda does some fun grappling with Akiyama, then catches him in a nasty guillotine. Akiyama seems to make a comeback but then Honda just snatches him and dumps him hard with the Dead End. Saito tags in and Honda chokes him out in 20 seconds. Badass show, which is made more badass by how useless Inoue was in the match. Afterwards Inoue raises Hondas hand like „that‘s my boy!“. Great shit, short, neat, told its story perfectly.

Yoshinari Ogawa & Tamon Honda vs. Yoshihiro Takayama & Takashi Sugiura, NOAH 8/24/2002

Really fun story driven tag. Rare instance of a match where not much special happens early on and it adds to it. Ogawa as this unimpressive champion who keeps ratting his way to victory was just great. All his interactions with Takayama were awe inspiring. Ogawa would rake Sugiuras eye and then taunt Takayama („Clean Fight!!“) only to back off, then try to rush Takayama with punches when he tagged in. Then, he would get isolated and tortured by Takayama and Sugiura. Takayama tagging in Sugiura and then sprinting across the ring to have a go at Ogawa was another really amusing moment. Also, all the olympic grappling exchanges involving Honda where great and the finish between him and Sugiura was awesome.

Tamon Honda & Takeshi Morishima vs. KENTA & Akihiko Ito, NOAH 8/23/2009

Really good undercard tag which was a reminder that NOAH was a pretty fun promotion once upon a time. All of Hondas exchanges were so cool here, he rarely works like a beast but he was a slovenly monster here, really establishing that it‘s hard to get him off his feet. His unorthodox grappling exchanges with young Ito were really cool and his brief sections with KENTA really hinted against a great singles match between them. He Dead Ends KENTA hard, and the bit where he snatches Ito and almost strangles him was grizzly. Morishima is really effective in his role of fat dude who tries to ring peoples bell and crushes them with his fatness. Ito is also a really spry fun guy with really good execution, too bad he retired but I guess he dodged a bullet by dropping out of this promotion. Also KENTA bodyslamming fat Morishima onto Honda was such a fun little spot, totally makes a match like this stand out.

2002 MOTY List Update #1

Ikuto Hidaka & Tomohiro Ishii vs. Tiger Mask IV & Kazuya Yuasa (Michinoku Pro 2/3/2002)

Tomohiro Ishii comes out in full on Dick Togo worship gear. Amazing. This was a shockingly great indy tag with all 4 guys smacking eachother hard while working complex spots and cutoffs. We get lots of fun heel tactics from Rudo Hidaka and Ishii which was interesting to see these two go back and forth between throwing hard shots and working Stunning Steve Austin/Fuerza Guerrera heel spots. Hidaka likes slapping his thigh but he really does paste guys with his kicks. This was one of the greater Tiger Mask IV performances I've seen too as he looked like a graceful technico while also spin kicking dudes really really hard. Him almost crushing Hidakas ribs with a massive kneedrop and Hidaka coming up bloody was a pretty epic moment. All their brief showdowns really made me want to see a singles match between the two which is not something I would've said from watching their BattlARTS material. Kazuya Yuasa is the future GAINA and he works like a WAR rookie here, hitting as hard as he possibly can on his dropkicks and lariats and hitting awesome bulldogs and elbow drops. He survives a ton of punishment and it builds to him and Ishii trying to crack eachothers jaws with lariats. The finishing run wasn't as brilliantly tricked out as the body of the match but what the hell... it's a great little discovery.

 Kenta Kobashi & Kentaro Shiga & KENTA vs. Akira Taue & Daisuke Ikeda & Bison Smith (NOAH 11/17/2002)

Borderline great NOAH 6 man action. Really fun opening, BURNING try isolating Taue only to eat a bunch of boots to the face and Taue ends up teasing the apron chokeslam on Kobashi with Ikeda helping him. We get some brief exchanges where you can't tell what the layout is going to be and then Taue takes out Kobashi with the big chokeslam on the floor anyways. In 1995 this probably would barely phase Kobashi but in 2002 this takes him out for a long time and we get a long heat segment with KENTA taking a huge beating while Shiga desperately tries to save him. That they were able to get serious heat for something like a Sleeper Hold in Differ Ariake speaks volumes about they excellent job the rudos did here. Ikeda was in top form, hitting hard, constantly running in to cheap shot dudes and almost knocking KENTA out with high kicks and spin kicks. Kobashi ends up coming back altough looks badly wounded. We get a really fun finishing run with Ikeda laying into Kobashi, doing a great job selling a big suplex, Shiga busting out his awesome submissions. Bison manhandling the little dudes etc. Great postmatch too, Taue rules.

Tamon Honda vs. Takashi Sugiura (NOAH 11/17/2002)

One year after their first match, Sugiura looks much more rugged. Can he take down Honda now? He can't, but here's another really fun match. Plenty of grappling, and that is a good thing because Honda rules so much on the mat. His cradles, takeovers etc. are so much cooler than your average UWF matwork. His super tight headlocks etc. also help emphasize how much it must suck to wrestle this guy and they also have significance, he might just lock in a basic front headlock then yank the guy over and crank his neck. Sugiura brings a lot more to the table in this match. Not outstanding and he does look a little awkward at times but he is a fun dance partner for Honda. The finish was pretty fun and unpredictable even if you've seen a lot of Honda as he wasn't doing his usual finishers (yet?) and instead some more experimental things.

Sumie Sakai vs. Megumi Yabushita (JD 1/20/2002)

This match was like a joshi version of Atlantis/Blue Panther. Just what the hell was going on with these two girls? I'll just assume that this is how Jaguar Yokota taught them wrestling is supposed to be like. Just a straight up grappling match with a ton of legit ability in both workers and a strange lucha influence to keep it sweet and graceful. I swear to good some of the sequences here wouldn't look out of place in a 1991 CMLL title match. At one point, Sakai floated into a flying headscissor, which turned into a standing choke, that Yabushita then countered into an ankle pick. Really unlike anything I've seen in a wrestling match before. Same for Sakai's strange huracanrana where she slipped underneath almost as if pulling guard and then gracefully rolled into a pin. That kind of stuff could look cute and contrived, but they had their timing down pat and the rhythm was just right, moving from matwork, to sparringly used rope usage, to hellish suplex moves. Yabushita again went for the arm like a bat out of judo hell, and the selling was top, adding just the right kind of fatigue and desperatin. Some of Yabushita's armlocks were straight out of Negro Navarro's book. Really I've no idea what was going on with these two to have a match like this in a dying promotion. I guess it's just a thing between two workers who trained together and just did the kind of bout they enjoyed.

2002 MOTY MASTER LIST