Kento Miyahara has been my favourite wrestler in 2016,2017,2018 but not 2019. He has not had a great year compared to the previous three. His matches have gone from lasting around 21 minutes in his first title reign to nearly 30 most of the time. What those earlier matches had that was their best attribute was how brilliantly they were paced. This year he has faced Kai in a nearly 30 minute match that was meh, a great 30 minute SUWAMA match, Nomura in a 30 minute meh match. Shuji in a 30 minute match that was actively bad Yoshi tatsu in a very good match, Zeus in a ok match and Nomura again in a very good match. They are all far longer and far more hit and miss, most of them feel baggy and unless are completely different spin on his usual big match formula such as the tatsu match often feel baggy and bloated. Going long for the sake of it.
This match was different, this went 33 minutes but felt half of that, this felt like a big time match where the challenger was hot (both in a wrestling sense and in a physical one God Jake Lee is sexy). It for the first time since the Zeus match where he won the belt last October it felt like an epic.
Jake was great, some of the best work I have ever seen from him along with his feud Vs Akiyama. He looked vicious and measured in equal amount. He controlled most of the match with Kento getting desperate and resorting to a barrage of headbutts the best use of such headbutts I have seen from him. Unlike his normal dickhead control sequence he never had the opportunity for it. Yes he tried to do it but was cut off each time by Jake. This led to a feeling that it was the closest Kento has been pushed this reign.
The struggle and fight over the German and the end meant something and was the culmination of this epic rather than feeling forced as it does in the shuji match. I bit on several of the nearfalls such as a head kick, the first shutdown and the backdrop. I fully wanted Jake to win by the end but the fact that he didn’t did not put a dampner on the match as it did with the second Nomura match instead it was so good that I still felt like it was earned by Kento.
I loved this match and marks a clear highlight of the year it had the timing and pacing that a match of this length needs to survive it was almost perfect in that respect, it still had some issues with one or two sequences with delayed selling but it was still and excellent match second best match of 2019 ****1/2
Korakuen Ramblings 