NOAH Navigation Against The Current tour

Early cards for Pro-Wrestling NOAH's next tour have been announced, and I thought I'd chime in a my opinion on the key matches that have already been announced.

10/9/2004 - Tokyo Korakuan Hall
4. KENTA Single Match Trial Series: KENTA VS Kenta Kobashi
- KENTA's trial series has seen him take on EVERY major star in the promotion (Akiyama, Misawa, Takayama), and he hasn't won a match yet! Of course I don't expect him to win here either, but like the others, expect it to be great!

10/16/2004 - Tokushima Municipal Gymnasium
4. GHC Hardcore Openweight Title: Jun Akiyama (c) VS Naomichi Marufuji
- Another great looking heavy VS Jr. match. Expect Akiyama to bully around Marufuji who will put up a big fight, but of course come up short.

10/22/04 - Yoyogi National Stadium Gymnasium #2
3. Daisuke Ikeda VS The Gladiator
- This is definately gonna be fun as I'm sure these two have met before during their old FMW days.
4. Jun Akiyama VS Bison Smith
- This is almost a dream match for me! I've heard Bison had two awesome singles matches with Kobashi in the past, and now he gets a chance to showcase it against another of NOAH's top stars in singles matches! They should have the Bison Single Match Trial Series!
5. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Naomichi Marufuji & KENTA (c) VS Ricky Marvin & SUWA
- The former Toryumon/Dragon Gate ace and UDG champion gets his big shot in NOAH. This match will no doubt be very good, but it's almost a given the Marvin is the fall guy of the match.

10/24/04 - Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium
3. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title: Yoshinobu Kanemaru (c) VS TAKA Michinoku
- TAKA makes his NOAH debut! I had actually considered simulating this match in KOC2, and now it's happening for real! This will definately be an awesome battle of two rudo aces!
4. GHC Tag Team Title: Mitsuharu Misawa & Yoshinari Ogawa (c) VS Akira Taue & Takuma Sano
- I have high hopes for this one, and hopefully Misawa does the right thing by dropping the belts to Taue & Sano as he and Ogawa don't really need the titles to be over with the crowd anyway.
5. GHC Heavyweight Title: Kenta Kobashi (c) VS Akitoshi Saito
- Kobashi went from having three MOTY title matches in succession with three awesome opponents to having to defend it next against Saito?!? What happened to Gladiator? That would definately have been more interesting than this, and it just makes it so obvious Kobashi will V11 here.

It's also interesting to note that Masao Inoue will be touring America for NWA:TNA from 9/28 - 10/5/04. Hopefully, they do someting good with him other than just job fodder for the TNA locals like every other Japanese star they've brought in.