AJPW Champion Carnival 2019 Day 2

Hokuto Omori & Koji Iwamoto vs. Atsuki Aoyagi & Yusuke Okada - 5.5/10

Great match up with the young guys. Omori was great. The kids lack a lot of personality, but damn, their basics are solid. Iwamoto submitted Aoki with a Boston Crab. After the match Okada and Iwamoto got face to face, Iwamoto seemed to be offering a shot at either title.

Atsushi Maruyama, Jun Akiyama, & Kim Duk vs. Black Menso-re, Kazuki Enosawa, & Takao Omori - 3/10

Old man Duk is in there, so some parts of the match we know were obviously slow. We also had Maruyama and Black Menso-re, so we had a little bit of comedy, I saw Akiyama corpsing a couple of times. Finish saw Maruyama and Akiyama kill Black Menso-re. Ok match, it was short and basic.

Champion Carnival 2019 Block B Match
Daichi Hashimoto (0) vs. Joel Redman (0) - 4/10

Match was completely designed to show off Redman, who even though he had some people chanting for him, seemed mostly unknown to the crowd. This also felt like a extended reverse squash, Redman had control most of the match and then Hashimoto hit two running knees and pinned him, making it an underwhelming win for Hashimoto and a a weak loss for Redman.

Champion Carnival 2019 Block A Match
Dylan James (0) vs. Ryouji Sai (0) - 6.5/10

Question, has anyone ever seen Sai and AAA's Averno in the same room? Anyway, story of the match was that Dylan James is a big dude and Sai had to bring it if he hoped to start the Carnival with two points. James had a lot of control of the match, while Sai mostly had small flurries of offense here and there, he got at one point a superplex, but at the end, it was James size that won after he pinned Sai with a lariat. Ok match, it got good towards the end.

Champion Carnival Block A Match
Yuji Okabayashi (2) vs. Yuma Aoyagi (0) - 6/10

Aoyagi jumped Okabayashi during his entrance to start the match. When this match started, it seemed that they were going to tell a story of Okabayashi not being able to hit the chop thanks to Aoyagi's speed, but then Okabayashi just got a control of the match and beat the shit out of Aoyagi and even threw a chop that didn't matter because a few minutes later, he submitted Aoyagi with a Camel Clutch. Having said that, that one chop was pretty stiff, it opened up Aoyagi. Good wrestling, but pretty weak storytelling.

Champion Carnival Block A Match
Atsushi Aoki (0) vs. Shuji Ishikawa (0) - 7/10

This was a far better story of the big dude taking on the, in this case, the smaller technical wrestler. Aoki did some cool escapes and reversals to get Ishiwaka down, but at the end, Ishiwaka just hit a running knee for the win. Only issue with this was that it was too short, at this point of the card, I would had given them 10 more minutes in the main event spot.

Gianni Valletta, Joe Doering, Sam Adonis, & Yoshitatsu vs. Jake Lee, Kento Miyahara, Suwama, & Zeus - 6/10

Pair offs were Miyahara vs Valletta, Adonis vs Lee, Suwama vs Yoshitatsu, and Zeus vs Doering. So technically, none of tomorrow's matches were built here. I did find Adonis vs Lee interesting, since Adonis made some effort to bring out some personality out of Jake Lee. Miyahara pinned Valletta with what looked like a botched Crucifix Pin. Match was ok, everyone did their little thing, and maybe i'm just missing something, but why not at least try to make something for tomorrows' matches, they even had Yoshitatsu and Doering in the same team tagging each other.

Champion Carnival 2019 Block B Match
Naoya Nomura (2) vs. Takashi Yoshida (2) - 8/10

Easily the match of the night, mainly because it was given enough time. Yoshida was the big cheating heel torturing Nomura, who fought with heart and surviving all the high impact offense that Yoshida was hitting. as the match went on, Nomura started having some good near falls until the finish that saw Nomura hit the Maximum for the win. I'm calling for Nomua to win the B Block.

Post-match - Nomura cut a promo which I can only guess he said he is winning the Champion Carnival.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

This was a one match show, that match being the main event, but the truth was that the rest of the show was completely skippable.