(NOAH) CARD: NOAH SANCTUARY (30th May 2022, "Noah Special Arena" - Club Citta, Kawasaki)

Noah have announced that the event is a sold out card. For those lucky enough to be witnessing a mega hoss fight, Junta Miyawaki's farewell before leaving to train in Mexico, Kongoh vs Damnation and the continuation of the GHC Heavyweight pre matches, doors open at 18:15, for everyone (going or not) the event starts at 19:00 JST and will be broadcast on WrestleUniverse. To watch, you must be a subscriber. 

Naomichi Marufuji will be absent from the event and the card has been changed as a result. He will be absent due to a problem that has arisen with his knee. He can walk, but there is pain on flexion and as a result Mohammed Yone has taken his place in the main event. As this is Junta Miyawaki's farewell, Marufuji will be attending the event, but just not wrestling. Please note that as Club Citta is a small venue and so since shows here are traditionally small, not all of the roster will be appearing on today's card. 

MATCH ONE

Yoshiki Inamura vs Kazusada Higuchi

Noah have seen fights between guys with MMA backgrounds, guys who have karate backgrounds, guys who can mat wrestle in older styles, but this is something new. Rarely before have two guys who have a background in sumo faced off. This is going to be an interesting fight leading up to the tag match at CyberFestival, in which Higuchi has pretty much isolated himself from his partners (Jun Akiyama and Tetsuya Endo) and in which Yoshiki Inamura has been ignored by them. In this match fans demanded on Inamura's Twitter Space, that either the building or the ring falls down. 

MATCH TWO

YO-HEY & Xtreme Tiger vs The Noah Junior Regulars (Haoh & Alejandro)

If there is anything left of both the ring and the venue after the clash of the leviathans in the first match, the team of YO-HEY and Xtreme Tiger have a friendly with YO-HEY'S Noah Junior Regular teammates.

MATCH THREE

Michael Elgin & Masa Kitamiya vs Simon Gotch & Kinya Okada

Eerie Simon Gotch teams with Kinya Okada to take on the tag champions. 

MATCH FOUR

Junta Miyawaki send off match

Kaito Kiyomiya vs Junta Miyawaki

Following his loss to Yoshiki Inamura, Junta Miyawaki announced that he would be going on excursion to train in Mexico at Toryumon Casa (there is a lot of misconception, please note he is going to train, not appear for any promotions I don't think), and he will have his farewell match today against Kaito Kiyomiya. Kiyomiya and himself are the seniors of Noah's next generation. Kiyomiya met with Miyawaki when they where both teenagers as Miyawaki wanted to enter the Noah dojo, and when he did, Kiyomiya was delighted that he was his junior. Both have known Noah in it's dark days following the Suzuki Army fallout and the turbulent era that followed. Miyawaki will have his last match in Noah for a while, against his old friend. Miyawaki says he will return when the company (Noah), his seniors (Naomichi Marufuji, Takashi Sugiura and most likely Yoshinari Ogawa) and the fans agree it is time. 

MATCH FIVE

Kongoh (Kenoh, Hajime Ohara & Hi69) vs Damnation (Daisuke Sasaki, MJ Po & KANON)

Forget the camaraderie of the last match, you are not going to find it here. 

Just like last year, Kenoh takes the CyberFight Festival announcement as a chance to break into the promotion he denies even exists, and harass Sanshiro Takagi (CyberFight president). This year, Takagi was not around, and so Kenoh came across Daisuke Sasaki. Sasaki (who I am told hates Takagi as much as Kenoh does), said rather than having a "third rate" wrestler like Takagi (Kenoh does not even consider Takagi a wrestler and thinks he should be expelled from wrestling), wouldn't he prefer a first

rate one like himself? This will be the first time they have met in the ring since butting heads at Kenoh's invasion, and this will be their first interaction since the press conference, where Kenoh gave Sasaki a PFS and then set his leg on fire and kicked him...you can imagine just from that, what this match is going to be like. 

MATCH SIX

Go Shiozaki, Shuhei Taniguchi & Daisuke Harada vs Satoshi Kojima, Mohammed Yone & Atsushi Kotoge

With Naomichi Marufuji absent, Mohammed Yone says he is stepping in for a friend in a moment of crisis. While Marufuji's absence robs us of the Daisuke Harada vs Naomichi Marufuji "rivalry" (i.e. Marufuji makes out like Harada doesn't hate him), it does give us a furthering of the Funky Express fallout. For Harada of course, the match without Marufuji doesn't signify much, he still has two heavyweights to overcome (Satoshi Kojima defeated him in a singles in 2014) and is teaming with two others, against his own tag partner Atsushi Kotoge. To his mind therefore, partners or opponents, the heavyweights are to be overcome and he will expect the same of Kotoge. 

The GHC Heavyweight pre matches inch closer to the title match on the 12th June, and time is running out. Lariat vs lariat, chops vs chops, a New Japan branch vs an All Japan branch ("Always aggressive Inoki vs always passive Baba" as Keiji Mutoh once described their different teaching), the pre matches now stand at one win over the other each. Tonight needs a win over the other by either the champion or the challenger. 

Picture credit: WrestleUniverse

GIF taken from Noah Official YouTube