ALL JAPAN PRO WRESTLING
REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2020 NIGHT 5
NOVEMBER 29, 2020
YAMADA GREEN DOME MAEBASHI
MAEBASHI, JAPAN

Watch: AJPW.TV

NON-TOURNAMENT MATCHES

  • HIKARU SATO, BLACK MENSO~RE & MAZADA DEF. ATSUKI AOYAGI, RISING HAYATO & FRANCESCO AKIRA (9:45)
  • HOKUTO OMORI DEF. RYUKI HONDA (6:50)
  • YUSUKE OKADA & TAKAYUKI UEKI DEF. UTAMARO & ALEJANDRO (8:48)
  • EVOLUTION (SUWAMA & DAN TAMURA) & SHUJI ISHIKAWA DEF. TAKAO OMORI, YUTAKA YOSHIE & REVLON (12:42)

REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2020
TEAM ECW (MASATO TANAKA & TAJIRI) [4] DEF. JIN (JAKE LEE & KOJI IWAMOTO) [4] (9:17)

Lee and Tanaka started this with some good mat work. But then the mat got boring as TAJIRI got worked over for a while with little excitement or energy. Things eventually picked up again with Iwamoto vs. Tanaka, who worked well together. Then TAJIRI got his kendo stick and took out Lee with it on the outside, distracted the referee and hit Iwamoto with it. Then Tanaka hit the Sliding D on Iwamoto for the win. There were a couple moments here of a good match, but TAJIRI ruined it. I’d place TAJIRI above Abdullah Kobayashi at this point as the worst wrestler in the tournament. I have said previously in my AJPW reviews that TAJIRI had been bothering me a lot less this year, but now I’m going to have to take that back. **1/4

REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2020
PURPLE HAZE (SHIGEHIRO IRIE & IZANAGI) [2] DEF. DAISUKE SEKIMOTO & ABDULLAH KOBAYASHI [6] (10:24)

Well I can say this is a better example of how to have a tag match when one of the wrestlers in it is limited. Sekimoto did most of the work for his team and his work against both Purple Haze members was good. When Kobayashi eventually got tagged in, Izanagi worked well against him, doing crafty moves and selling well. Izanagi got the win over Kobayashi with an ugly looking inside cradle, but that was really the only offensive part of this match. I’m even going to give it an extra quarter star just for Izanagi getting the win over Kobayashi here. Izanagi has been great in this tournament. ***1/4

In a backstage segment after the match, Hokuto Omori ambushed Izanagi and ripped off his mask. I’m going to assume this is setting up Omori challenging for the All Asia Tag Team Championship at some point with either Koji Doi or Yusuke Kodama.

REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2020
NEXTREAM (KENTO MIYAHARA & YUMA AOYAGI) [4] DEF. YOSHITATSU & RYOUJI SAI [2] (22:56)

After a bit of a slow start, Aoyagi and Miyahara worked over Sai’s right leg. Then Yoshitatsu and Sai regained the initiative and then worked over Aoyagi with lots of kicks. Sai and Yoshitatsu were showing a relatively decent amount of fire for them and they really wanted to punish Aoyagi. This match picked up into a pretty decent pace and lots of back-and-forth action. Thankfully, especially when dealing with Yoshitatsu and Sai, the restholds were kept to a minimum and were short in length. Miyahara put Yoshitatsu away with the Shutdown German Suplex. This match exceeded my expectations, especially for a match that went over 20 minutes with Yoshitatsu & Sai. Aoyagi was definitely the star here, doing most of the work to hold the match together with Miyahara just doing his usual schtick. ***1/2

FINAL THOUGHTS

Another middling show as we get into the dog days of the tournament before the last three shows later this week in Nagoya, Niigata and Korakuen Hall that have much more interesting tournament matches on them. Nothing on the undercard is an absolute must-see, but I thought the opening match and Omori vs. Honda were a lot of fun. The only tournament match worth checking out was the main event to see a surprisingly good match given some of the wrestlers involved.