Giant Baba Memorial show card

The card for the Giant Baba memorial show was announced, and it doesn't look bad considering no titles are on the line as the whole point of the show is to pay tribute to the late Shohei "Giant" Baba who founded AJPW over three decades ago.

Taiyo Kea will be going back to his old Manaukea Mossman name, and teams up with Triple Crown champion Toshiaki Kawada to take Genichiro Tenryu and Masanobu Fuchi. These are probably the only four guys left on the roster with direct ties to Baba and are rightfully in the main event slot. But I wonder if Mossman will go back to his old tights considering he's gained quite a bit of weight since he's Jr. heavy days?

Noticibly no NOAH participation for the show, but hopefully that will change before the show takes place in a few weeks. To have a show in memorium for Baba and not have his key students (other than Kawada) there just doesn't seem right. But Misawa himself said last year when the show was in the planning stages that he didn't see the point of it.

I'm really hoping the Dragon Gate match steals the show, cause they really need any good publicity they can get now, and a good performace on a big stage here could win over a few new fans for them.

AJPW "7 YEARS OF GIANT BABA'S DEATH", 2/5/05
Tokyo Nippon Budokan
1. Nobukazu Hirai & Ryuji Hijikata VS Yuto Aijima & GOEMON
2. Nobutaka Araya & Taichi Ishikari VS Arashi & Shigeo Okumura
3. Dragon Gate Offer: Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Yokosuka & K-ness VS Dragon Kid, Genki Horiguchi & Ryo Saito
4. Abdullah The Butcher & Tarzan Goto VS Jinsei Shinzaki & Tomoaki Honma
5. Mike Barton, Jim Steel & George Hines VS Jamal, Chuck Palumbo & Rodney Mack
6. Keiji Mutoh, Kensuke Sasaki & Kaz Hayashi VS Satoshi Kojima, Takao Omori & Hiroshi Hase
7. Toshiaki Kawada & Maunakea Mossman VS Genichiro Tenryu & Masanobu Fuchi

Another Baba themed show called "Giant Baba Goodbye" will take place at Korakuen Hall on 1/30/2005. The full card hasn't been released yet, so I'll just post the current card:

AJPW "GIANT BABA GOODBYE", 1/30/05
Tokyo Korakuen Hall
1. Masanobu Fuchi & Taichi Ishikari VS Nobutaka Araya & Yuto Aijima
2. Kaz Hayashi & Genichiro Tenryu VS Taiyo Kea & TAKA Michinoku
3. Toshiaki Kawada & Ryuji Hijikata VS Yoshiaki Fujiwara & Tomoaki Honma