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30 years of Uncle Jun. A man who saw was raised by, and participated in, one of the best in-ring periods in wrestling history, those heady days of All Japan during the 90s. Now he's leveraged the weight of his incredible career and had landed in my beloved DDT. For the most part this is a regular DDT card featuring the usual suspects and a debuting Cara Noir, but the main event is a celebration of Jun's past and present.

Yoshinobu Kanemaru makes his first DDT appearance since 2014 when he and Akiyama were teaming as an older incarnation of Burning, but their history goes back to the original stable during the final years of pre-split All Japan. From there they would form Sternness in NOAH, leave NOAH together after the Kobashi situation (Kenta Kobashi is also on commentary this show) to reform Burning in All Japan, before Nobu would return to NOAH and later New Japan where he works currently. Their partner for today and current Burning leader Tetsuya Endo was only 7 years old when the stable was formed.

On the other side of the match are three of Akiyama's rivals. Takeshita was the person Akiyama lost the KO-D title to (after defeating Endo for the belt) and declared the future, Shunma is everyone's rival because he's just so unlikable, but the third member of the opposition team in the most interesting, making his debut here is New Japan's Yuji Nagata. Twenty years ago Jun Akiyama main evented the January 4th Tokyo Dome show where he defended the GHC Heavyweight belt against Nagata, drawing a claimed 51 500 fans. To punish him for making the enemy money, Jun was booked to lose the GHC title on his very next opportunity. In 4 minutes. To Yoshinari Ogawa, a career jr heavyweight who while skilled only got as far as he did because he was Misawa's boy. It's interesting that this show doesn't feature any NOAH talent considering there are several there that share quite a bit of history with Jun (including the aforementioned Ogawa) and the two promotions are under the same umbrella, but I guess there's still some bad blood there. Outside of copromoted shows, Jun's only worked three NOAH shows since Final Burning 2013.

Show starts in 45 minutes of so, come watch (everything but the Pheromones match which unfortunately is a bit to high up the card to easily skip)

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1. Yusuke Okada Vs Yuya Koroku
2. Yuki “Sexy” Iino, Danshoku “Dandy” Dieno, Yumehito “Fantastic” Imanari & Koju “Shining Ball” Takeda Vs Sanshiro Takagi, Toru Owashi, Antonio Honda & Kazuki Hirata
3. HARASHIMA & Yukio Sakaguchi & Hideki Okatani & Soma Takao & Yukio Naya
4. Kazusada Higuchi, Yuki Ishida, Yuji Hino & Makoto Oishi Vs Daisuke Sasaki, Minoru Fujita, MJ Paul & KANON
5. Special 6-Man Tag Match: Yuki Ueno, MAO & Toi Kojima Vs Cara Noir, Chris Brookes & Masahiro Takanashi
6. Naomi Yoshimura Vs Takeshi Masada
7. Jun Akiyama Debut 30th Anniversary Match – Special 6-Man Tag Match: Jun Akiyama, Tetsuya Endo & Yoshinobu Kanemaru Vs Yuji Nagata, Konosuke Takeshita & Shunma Katsumata

SG Bamboo posted:

Yusuke Okada is a guy I always think is way older than he actually is, guy isn't event 30 yet

Jerusalem posted:

Is it over yet?

Jerusalem posted:

SG Bamboo posted:

This is getting me pretty excited for their title match next week