ALL JAPAN PRO WRESTLING
REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2021 NIGHT 2
NOVEMBER 17, 2021
HODOGAYA PUBLIC HALL
YOKOHAMA, KANAGAWA, JAPAN

Watch: AJPW.TV

NON TOURNAMENT MATCHES

  • IZANAGI DEF. KOSUKE SATO (6:21)
  • TOTAL ECLIPSE (JAKE LEE, TAJIRI & HOKUTO OMORI) DEF. TAKAO OMORI, BLACK MENSO~RE & ANDY WU (7:58)
  • NEXTREAM (KENTO MIYAHARA, YUMA AOYAGI, ATSUKI AOYAGI & RISING HAYATO) DEF. EVOLUTION (SUWAMA, HIKARU SATO & DAN TAMURA) & SHOTARO ASHINO (11:39)

REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2021 C BLOCK
TWIN TOWERS (SHUJI ISHIKAWA & KOHEI SATO) [2] DEF. YOSHITATSU KINGDOM (YOSHITATSU & SEIGO TACHIBANA) [0] (9:55)

Tachibana got worked over by the Twin Towers for a while until the hot tag to Yoshitatsu. Later on, Tachibana found himself doubled teamed by the Twin Towers, kicked out of a running knee from Ishikawa then was pinned by the Big Dog’s Fire Thunder Driver. A pretty simple match, but it was all action and I liked Tachibana trying and failing to go toe-to-toe with the Twin Towers. A true Gentleman’s Three if there ever was one. ***

REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2021 D BLOCK
PURPLE HAZE (ZEUS & SHIGEHIRO IRIE) [3] DREW KOJI IWAMOTO & RYUKI HONDA [1] (30:00)

After not doing any time limit draws in the past couple of years, this Real World Tag League has already had two. That’s not surprising given the four-team, four-block format. If you want to build drama for the end of the block stage, you will need draws to do it. Since they had 30 minutes to kill, we got some actual mat wrestling from Zeus very early on. Though they didn’t spend that much time on the mat, considering the length of the match. Surprisingly it was Irie who at first ended up getting worked over for a while by Iwamoto and Honda. Well into the match, Honda did eventually become the whipping boy. The crowd also really got into his attempted comebacks.

In the closing minutes, Purple Haze looked like they had this match in the bag. Irie was holding Iwamoto on the outside and Zeus was hitting a lot of moves on Honda. But everybody got back in the ring for a big all out brawl. Zeus locked in the Front Facelock on Honda as Irie held Iwamoto back but the time limit expired.

Wow, this was great. I think this was better than the Nextream vs. StrongHearts draw on Night 1, particularly because they did a better job of filling up the first half of the match with stuff. Everybody looked great here, but the real standout was Honda who took a beating but channeled some fighting spirit that kept him going. I always thought he had star potential, but this match further solidified it, showing he can go in a long match.

With this result, maybe, just maybe, my wild speculation in the preview for this tournament that Iwamoto and Honda had a small but real chance make the semi-finals might actually come true. They happen to be main eventing tomorrow’s show against Takao Omori and Isami Kodaka which is interesting match placement, that only gets me thinking about it further. ****

REAL WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2021 A BLOCK
ABDULLAH KOBAYASHI & DREW PARKER [4] DEF. JUN SAITO & REI SAITO [0] (10:20)

There was stalling from the Big Japan team to start, *sigh.* The first several minutes of this was the Saito Twins and Kobayashi just clubbing each other. Things finally picked up when Parker got tagged in. His sequences with the Saitos were not bad at all. At one point, Jun managed to bodyslam Kobayashi, which was impressive.

After some brawling, and Kobayashi bleeding, he pinned Jun with the Elbow Drop off the top rope. This was not pretty save for a couple of parts with Parker involved. Something about the time that Kobayashi gets in the ring in these matches needs to be done. Congratulations to the Saito Twins on their first main event, at least. Clearly a sign there are big plans for them once they return from their U.S. excursion. *¾

FINAL THOUGHTS

While this night didn’t look like much on paper, I think it ultimately delivered given how great the time limit draw was. At least from here, there is only one more match featuring Abdullah Kobayashi in the block stage.