(NOAH) CHRONOLOGY: The M's alliance (Naomichi Marufuji and Keiji Mutoh) - GHC Heavyweight Tag Championship
Won: WRESTLE UNIVERSE presents DEMOLITION STAGE 2021 in YOKOHAMA - Saturday November 13th, Yokohama Budokan
Number of title reigns as a team: 0
Number of defenses: 2
Lost: Belts vacated on February 8th 2022 due to Keiji Mutoh suffering a hip lip injury
Total number of days held: 88
Challengers
1. M's alliance (Masato Tanaka & Masaaki Mochizuki)
2. Kongoh (Manabu Soya & Kenoh)
ABEMA presents NOAH New Year at The Budokan
1st January 2022, Nippon Budokan
THE WARROAD 2021 in NAGOYA (Aichi/Nagoya Congress Center Event Hall, Sunday December 5th)
Funky Express had expressed an interest in possibly challenging for the titles, but they lost the eight man tag match and so there was no way they could challenge, but there were other challengers waiting. Tonight had been a night of inter unit challenges so far, and so Tanaka hopped on that train and challenged for the GHC Heavyweight Tag belts on behalf of himself and Maasaki Mochizuki. Marufuji and Mutoh referred the answer to Jurina Matsui (who is probably the boss of the unit), and she gave her consent for the match and they all posed together.
MAN CRUSH 2021 (TUESDAY 7TH DECEMBER, KORAKUEN HALL)
Keiji Mutoh vs Masaaki Mochizuki
Masaaki Mochizuki went straight into the attack, meaning that Keiji Mutoh had a few seconds to evaluate the situation outside of the ring. Mutoh went to wear down with submissions, putting his full weight on him. When the tide of the match turned, Mochi returned the Shining Wizard to a thunder of applause, the crowd (who seemed to be behind Mochi) made an "Ooooh" sound when Mutoh kicked out. Sadly, Mochi was not so lucky the second time.
WINNER: Keiji Mutoh with the Shining Wizard (10 minutes, 15 seconds)
Naomichi Marufuji vs Masato Tanaka
Very technical match, and I am sure that Naomichi Marufuji remembered the lessons of Global League 2015 when Tanaka beat him in eleven minutes. It was a brutal match with Marufuji working on Tanaka's elbows, and Tanaka taking out his knees and feet. A Sliding D was even delivered from the apron, with tough as leather Masato Tanaka taking knees and kicks before Marufuji could even knock him down. Marufuji knew that this was only a pre match, the title match was going to be something else.
WINNER: Masato Tanaka with the Sliding D (20 minutes, 49 seconds)
Title match
ABEMA presents NOAH "THE NEW YEAR" 2022
1st January 2022, Nippon Budokan
This match was civil even though in the thick of it unit solidarity went out of the window and both teams would do anything to win, including Naomichi Marufuji using rare apron shots on the opponents.
Masaaki Mochizuki, who has a slight grudge against Keiji Mutoh as he lost in the pre-matches started off the match and targeted his crumbling old knees, and he was repaid in kind. Mutoh can no longer moonsault, but he and Marufuji found a slight way around his not being able to do aerial maneuvers by having Mutoh springboard a Shining Wizard off of Marufuji's back which was followed up by a tandem knee and kick to the face.
Mochizuki, rather than Tanaka (although he took his fare share of the punishment) became the target, Marufuji chopped him and Mutoh worked on his knees. In the end, the damage done, he tapped.
WINNER: Keiji Mutoh with the Figure Four on Masaaki Mochizuki (20 minutes, 50 seconds)
Afterwards there was a shake of hands and everyone celebrated, no belt throwing or walking off angrily here as everyone did the pose. For Masato Tanaka, it was the end of a long and exhausting (and sadly frustrating) New Year's Day. Tanaka sadly did not take the ZERO1 World Heavyweight from Takashi Sugiura, and so did not enter and did not leave a double champion.
VS Kongoh (Kenoh & Manabu Soya)
BUMPER CROP 2022 in SENDAI
Sendai Sunplaza Hall (Sunday, January 16th)
NEW SUNRISE 2022
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, January 4th
Kongoh filed out looking grim, only Tadasuke smiling and animated as he walked into Korakuen Hall as if he were the main event at a rock concern. He did the usual camera spot, but there was no one there to photobomb him.
Naomichi Marufuji provoked Manabu Soya by flexing his pectorals at him, and got shoved down for his troubles. Tests of strengths are not a good idea either. Throughout the match Marufuji's quest (and really any match they are in, but remember this, it will be significant later) was to overcome Soya which resulted in bear hugs, lariats and being knocked over the barrier at one point after being propelled off of the ring apron. Speaking of Soya, the last time he and Masa Kitamiya were in the ring together, they managed to break the boards. It was probably for the best that today the three of them didn't have a fight together, as Korakuen would probably have come down.
WINNER: Masa Kitamiya with the Saito Suplex on Katsuhiko Nakajima (15 minutes, 35 seconds)
Masa Kitamiya called for the microphone and challenged Katsuhiko Nakajima for the GHC Heavyweight title, but it wasn't just Masa Kitamiya who had something to say. Manabu Soya also had a challenge to make. Naomichi Marufuji had provoked him and Marufuji had something he wanted and for that matter, Kongoh wanted too. A heavyweight tag belt.
Snatching the microphone from Kitamiya he said
"Marufuji! This is a GHC tag challenge from myself and Kenoh! What genius? Screw you!"
Backstage, Manabu Soya commented on the fact that Keiji Mutoh had once called him a "big useless tree", to which Naomichi Marufuji later commented that he was a tree with super strength.
Title match
"BUMPER CROP 2022"
Sendai Sunplaza Hall, January 16th
Manabu Soya was fixated on his opponents. His glare was so rigid that he didn't even notice the tag belts being presented. Kenoh let him start against Naomichi Marufuji, the person who had been winding him up and continued to do so by flexing his pectoral muscles at him and then challenging him to a test of strength.
Soya had a score to settle with both Marufuji and Keiji Mutoh. Marufuji started as his main target and then it switched over to Mutoh. With his great size and power, Soya utilized the old fashioned bear hug, Mutoh would later take him down with a sleeper hold. This added a wonderful classic wrestling feel to the match both by a veteran and someone of the next generation. Showa era style has always had a place in Noah, with a lot of what the trainees are taught in the dojo stemming from there, so it never seems out of place.
Usually when Keiji Mutoh wrestles a match he will put on an act, often as a feeble old man, which he will play in the promos as well. Kenoh knows not to trust Mutoh or any act he puts on, Mutoh sensed this in Kenoh I think, which is ironic as Kenoh is not always the best judge of character. Mutoh took a PFS both to the front and to the back and in turn with Marufuji, targeted Kenoh's knee. Manabu Soya went for everything to defeat Mutoh for those titles and to show him that he was not as Mutoh had said "a big dumb tree" which was "only useful for shade", but as we know, Mutoh can be devious, and he employed that sudden shock move to keep the belts in the M's alliance.
WINNER: Keiji Mutoh with the Frankensteiner (20 minutes, 55 seconds)
The referee was roughed up by an infuriated Kongoh. Kenoh in particular was very vocal and refused to accept the decision. These two old men were lying on the floor...how had they beaten them? They hadn't! It must be some mistake. The referee insisted no, it was three.
Tuesday February 8th 2022
Keiji Mutoh will be absent for a long time due to an injury to his left hip lip joint. At the press conference held at a hotel in Tokyo on the 8th, he announced this personally. He also announced the return of the GHC Tag Team Championship that he holds with Naomichi Marufuji.
From around the fall of last year, he started to feel a sense of discomfort in his hip joint with the pain becoming stronger following Noah's event at The Nippon Budokan on New Year's Day. At the New Japan event at the Yokohama Arena on the 8th January, he had to fight using painkillers, and on subsequent examination he was diagnosed with "Left Hip Lip Injury"* In the opinion of the doctor, it is highly possible that the artificial joint replacement in both knees that Mutoh received in 2018, also led to the accumulation of burden on the hip joint. Mutoh himself has decided to take long term absence as recommended by his physician. The GHC Tag Championship, which he holds with Marufuji, will be returned with heartbreak.
The time for Mutoh's return is undecided, but he is looking forward to celebrating his 60th birthday in December this year with "the red belt" (GHC National Championship) saying "I want to get well, and work hard towards that dream", and is determined to return within the year.
How the returned GHC Tag Team Championship will be treated is still undecided. Marufuji, Mutoh's partner, said "I think the story of the GHC Tag Belt will be about what the other wrestlers think and how they act. Perhaps someone new will appear with me, perhaps not, you don't know what is going to happen in wrestling and so I just want fans to look forward to what is going to happen next with the tag belts."
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