AJPW. The Four Heavenly Pillars

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The opening match was a clash of titans between Akira Taue of Tsuruta-Gun and Toshiaki Kawada of Super Generation Army. They went to 29:32 until Kawada got the win with a ganso bomb. I honestly thought it would do far better but yh... I'm honestly just struggling with what to do with Taue until the champion carnival and formation of Holy Demon Army so if anyone has any ideas please do tell because otherwise the Excite Series is another final tour show he wont be on.


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The next match had Steven Regal of the British Combat Club take on Gary Albright in a losing effort as Gary Albright won with a german suplex in 15:20. Dont really have much for either of these. Albright will probably be in the champion carnival and fall right back down to the midcard whereas Regal will probably not appear on TV for another few months. After their foundation I got Michinoku Pro to be my developmental system so I might send him there.


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Just a way to get a couple young lions in Asako & Nagata on the card. Asako beat Nagata in 10:12 with a Super Driver Asako since he's technically not a young lion anymore because of the experience so I'm slowly gonna have him join the junior division full time for now.


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Next was the Headhunters vs the Can-Am Express with the winners going on to face Kobashi & Kikuchi for the All Asia Tag Team Championship at the Excite Series tour. I had the Headhunters win as Kobashi & Kikuchi vs Can-Am Express is a story told many a time before hand and I wanted something fresh.


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Kenta Kobashi & Terry Funk went head to head in a heavyweight class exhibition match. Kenta Kobashi won with an Orange Crush at 15:47. Terry Funk is still in the 80s for pop whereas Kobashi is in the low 70s.... see the problem? So I'm trying to push Kobashi to at least the same level as Taue who is at 78 pop all around. The only problem is I havent got a clue what I can do for like a singles feud outside of a program with Misawa so yeah. Pushing him is a slight struggle but I'll make it work even if it kills my save.


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Obviously I'd imagine letting Hansen & Spivey go over Miracle Violence Connection is a shock considering what I said before about how I wanted to make Steve Williams the star Gaijin however Terry Gordy is putting on worse and worse performances to the point where I'm unsure if I can trust him with a title. I'm likely going to have Steve Williams ditch him in favour of a Gary Albright or someone but I dont think I'll give Gordy another title run outside of maybe the All Asia titles because I just can't trust him. He's in the same bag as Dynamite Kid as popular workers but cant quite go like they used to. Have I revealed that I plan on giving the titles to Hansen & Spivey? Yes. I need Misawa & Kawada to lose the titles by Champion Carnival so I can sew the seeds of their split and Spivey has been a dependable worker so I figure this is a good way to reward him.



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You have no idea how close I was to giving the title to Kikuchi. It was arguably the better story. Kikuchi, a man that has had to deal with Fuchi for almost 6 months, in his hometown of Sendai, Tohoku. But he is an unsafe worker. It was actually his botch that injured Malenko and he injured Fuchi in the build up to this match so for that reason I couldnt give him the title. Instead I gave it to Tiger Mask III. I know a lot of people shit on Kanemoto's version of the Tiger Mask character but he seems like the perfect opponent for Dean Malenko when he comes back so that's obviously what I went for. For some reason a few of my friends that watch japanese wrestling have never watched a single Kanemoto match and according to the lack of rated matches of his on cagematch it seems like thats the norm and I feel bad as Kanemoto in his prime was a special talent that deserves recognition. I've always considered Liger as the best japanese junior of all time but Kanemoto is definitely in the top 3 along with Taiji Ishimori (Ik controversial call right) so I really wanted to give him a title reign and as you can see in the post show segment I've also had him join Super Generation Army alongside Tiger Mask II... Mitsuharu Misawa for a rare few that would've heard of him without knowing about this. So yes Koji Kanemoto whether under the mask or not will be getting a big push



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For what I thought it would be. This was a massive let down. Imo Shinya Hashimoto & Mitsuharu Misawa are two of the greatest wrestlers to ever tie up a pair of boots but they seemed to struggle together as Misawa put up an uncharacteristic 82 while Hashimoto was an even bigger let down only putting up a 70. Maybe giving them 35 minutes was too long for them especially in an open, non scripted match but I thought it would do fine. I was expecting an 87 or an 88 maybe even an 89 but to get 81 was a massive let down. It's shown me I probably have to be extremely careful with letting a match go over 30 minutes but what's done is done. Misawa continues his title reign.


End of tour thoughts: I need to be more careful with my booking. Fuchi getting his injury from Kikuchi showed me that I have to be extremely careful with the people I want to push. I thought Dean Malenko was just a freak accident but it clearly wasn't so I'm now considering getting rid of Kikuchi as he's clearly an unsafe worker. Also like I said I have to be very careful with match length. I thought Misawa & Hashimoto could do 35 minutes easily but clearly I was wrong. I'll be back with the Excite Series tour and the Champions Carnival which will now see 2 blocks of 10 men equaling a massive 20 wrestlers. This will see 22 Champion Carnival shows. 9 shows per block equaling 18 and another 4 to clean up lose ends in case of any absentees.