Ain't No Stoppin Him, NOW

Go Shiozaki (c) VS Shelton Benjamin - NOAH GHC Heavyweight Championship 6/12/2016

CJD: I can't say I ever dreamed of Shelton in a half hour GHC Title match. Definitely not playing to his strengths. And I know there's a very good chance you've already seen this match. But I was in the mood for Shelton in NOAH and of the matches I had available to me this one definitely raised my eyebrows. There's good and bad to this match. Let's get the bad news out of the way first. Terrible crowd as was typical in this period. Video gets choppy or out of sync a few times. And there's just a little bit of a rough feel to how they build to and deliver a lot of big spots. I wouldn't say these guys have great chemistry. But, Benjamin looks surprisingly comfortable in this setting, and is a very game challenger for an all-time great Champion. Go is a kind of divisive figure, I think the people that are hard on him can't get past the sometimes iffy execution and the blatant Kobashi emulation. For me his selling, his supreme effort, and his general charisma outweigh those criticisms. This match has all that on display. And I guess that's the good news. Is that for any negatives you'd expect, this match has all the positives you want to. Hard hitting, hard work, big bumps, nice twists and turns. This is the NOAH Ace defending against the invading heel through and through. It won't go down as one of the greats but for an interesting footnote in both guys' careers I thought they did a damn fine job.

JJZ: Chris my beautiful friend. You are so far in my wheelhouse with this match I'm going to have to ask you to please take your shoes off and have a seat. I have seen this match before and remember liking it a lot. Shelton really had some good matches in NOAH. One with Nakajima that I even played for our mutual wrestling friends. I did play the match that Go won the title for this defense against Sugiura for you before and this was his first defense of that championship run. One thing I really liked about this era of Go was that he wasn't quite the Ace at this time. He was in a proving his loyalty to NOAH phase being that he just returned from AJPW. When Sugiura turned on Marufuji a few months back Maru turned down Go's help and refused to shake his hand. I loved NOAH in 2016 and matches like this are a big reason. This played way better than I remembered. Shelton hit a lot of big "oh shit!" spots. The knee in the corner, that German and that table spot.  Go worked from under excellently. Really nice crowd popping spots with explosive energy. Now the crowd wasn't the best but it was better than a lot of NOAH crowds during this time. I enjoyed the fuck out of this one baby cakes. And I already know what I'm playing next!