NOAH The First Navigation, Tokyo, Japan
Juvi in Japan! This is the first match of KENTA’s 2004 singles match trial series at Differ Ariake.
The boys are layin’ it in with the forearms right off the bat, both stagger back, and lock it up to do some wrestling. Some very fast wrestling. Nobody gets the better of it. They trade strikes (Juvi chops, KENTA kicks) and land two each, then miss one each, and they’re at another stalemate.
Once they settle the pace and get to the meat of the wrestling, it’s good stuff. Guerrera became almost, like, a meme fan favorite, and I get that because he is super fucking weird and funny and whatnot, but if anything now his actual wrestling is probably underrated. He’s a great opponent for young KENTA here, and KENTA shows the outstanding promise he would absolutely deliver on over the years.
A lot of these spots and stuff are just so smooth and quickly executed, they have a chemistry that comes from working on opposite sides of a bunch of tags in 2002-03, so they know each other even without having a singles match before now. It’s a good system, a good way to come up and learn and get to work with a lot of different people.
They do a Van Dam/Lynn pin reversal which wasn’t TOO played out by ’04; well, it was, kinda, but not compared to later. Guerrera hits a 619 and the Juvi Driver, but KENTA finishes him with a strike combo and a running knee. A big finish and a big win for KENTA to kick off his trial series. In the end he’d beat Juvi, lose to Yoshinari Ogawa, Jun Akiyama, Yoshihiro Takayama, Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, and and Naomichi Marufuji.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
You must be logged in to post a comment.