Great Voyage 2013 in Tokyo Vol. 2 - Akira Taue Retirement Show: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

Super Crazy defeated Pesadilla in 8:39 to open NOAH's Great Voyage 2013 in Tokyo Vol. 2. The pairing introduced a lucha-style element on a show whose most important attractions concerned Akira Taue's retirement and multiple GHC championship matches. Super Crazy brought an internationally familiar junior-heavyweight style, while Pesadilla served as another guest capable of quick movement and counterattacks. The victory belonged to Super Crazy in a direct singles contest, not a faction tag or tournament elimination.

Its placement created variety before the heavier NOAH stories began. An eight-minute bout could present aerial exchanges and a recognized visiting talent without demanding that the audience already follow a long domestic feud. The match didn't affect the GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship that Taiji Ishimori later defended, and it wasn't connected to the NOAH junior tag title change on the same card. For a complete historical event record, the value is the international opening and identifiable winner rather than a major lineage consequence.

Mohammed Yone and Atsushi Kotoge defeated Daisuke Harada and Hitoshi Kumano in 8:20 at Great Voyage 2013. Kotoge pinned Kumano with a running knee, giving his team a clear result while leaving Harada, an important junior heavyweight, off the deciding fall. The matchup combined Yone's established heavyweight presence with faster junior contributors, illustrating how NOAH could mix roster levels on a major card. Kotoge's involvement was particularly relevant because he and Harada would continue to feature in the promotion's junior division.

This wasn't a GHC Tag Team Championship defense and it didn't determine a tournament winner. The brief duration kept the pairings as useful early-card context rather than a central attraction. Kumano's defeat represented his developmental stage, not a prediction that he would never challenge stronger opponents. Yone and Kotoge received the team victory, with Harada and Kumano still credited as a two-person losing side. For fans tracking those competitors' progression, the result supplies a specific checkpoint without displacing the retirement and title matches that followed.

Yoshihiro Takayama and Hajime Ohara defeated Kensuke Sasaki and Mitsuhiro Kitamiya in 8:56 in a NO MERCY versus Diamond Ring match at Great Voyage 2013. Takayama and Sasaki brought accomplished heavyweight backgrounds, but the actual deciding fall went to Ohara over Kitamiya. That result emphasized the current competitors while allowing the veteran stars to lend credibility to the confrontation. The pairing also offered fans a rare opportunity to see the two prominent heavyweights on opposing sides of a compact team encounter.

Neither the GHC Tag Team Championship nor a singles title was contested. The bout was a faction and interpromotional attraction with enough recognizable participants to register even at under nine minutes. Kitamiya's eventual development into an important heavyweight shouldn't be transferred backward into a win here, and Sasaki didn't take the deciding fall. Ohara's victory was the specific in-ring outcome. The match provides useful evidence of NOAH's 2013 roster relationships for viewers interested in more than the closing championship defenses.

Katsuyori Shibata defeated Maybach Taniguchi after a two-stage singles segment at Great Voyage 2013. The original match ended by disqualification at 4:44 when Taniguchi attacked the referee. After the encounter restarted, Shibata was awarded the victory by referee stoppage at another 4:13. Those two recorded stages explain why the official summary can mention both disqualification and a decisive Shibata win without referring to separate championship matches. Shibata's confrontation with the masked NOAH heavyweight was deliberately more volatile than a conventional singles exhibition.

The segment also advanced an angle when Shibata exposed Taniguchi's face. That character development gives the encounter more historical usefulness than its short combined time would otherwise suggest. Shibata entered from New Japan with a reputation for physical strikes, while Maybach's presentation depended heavily on identity and intimidation. No GHC title changed hands. For an accurate Event File, preserving the initial DQ, the restart and the later stoppage prevents the action from being reduced to a misleading ordinary pinfall.

Akira Taue, Takeshi Morishima, Takashi Sugiura and Genba Hirayanagi defeated Genichiro Tenryu, Tatsumi Fujinami, Masao Inoue and Kentaro Shiga in 10:40 in Taue's retirement match. The lineup surrounded Taue with wrestlers who represented multiple eras of Japanese heavyweight wrestling and important chapters of NOAH's history. Taue himself earned the deciding fall, giving the farewell a direct personal result instead of merely appearing beside younger teammates. His earlier career as a heavyweight star helped make the segment one of the show's defining attractions.

The purpose was celebration and closure, not the most demanding technical match of the year. Tenryu and Fujinami brought historical resonance from outside NOAH, while Morishima and Sugiura represented the promotion's later heavyweight development. All eight participants should remain identified in their original teams, even though the retirement spotlight fell on Taue. No GHC championship changed hands. The match's lasting value comes from its placement in the career timeline of a major Japanese wrestling figure and its connection across generations.

Yoshinari Ogawa and Zack Sabre Jr. defeated Jushin Thunder Liger and Tiger Mask IV in 13:43 to win the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship at Great Voyage 2013. Ogawa pinned Liger, giving NOAH's veteran technician a decisive result over an iconic New Japan junior while the younger Sabre contributed his own distinctive grappling. The title change brought the belts away from visiting NJPW champions and into an unusual combination of an established NOAH figure and a wrestler whose international reputation would keep growing.

This was a change in NOAH's junior tag lineage, not the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. That distinction matters because two of the participants were closely associated with NJPW, yet they were defending GHC belts. The result also didn't alter Ishimori's separate junior singles championship later on the card. The bout offered more than an interpromotional novelty: the pinfall created an actual new champion team. Its relatively compact runtime made the switch efficient without reducing its historical weight.

Taiji Ishimori defeated Tatsuhito Takaiwa in 12:32 to retain the GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship at Great Voyage 2013. Takaiwa offered a particularly physical veteran challenge and carried extensive junior-heavyweight experience from other Japanese companies. Ishimori represented the current NOAH singles division, using the defense to establish that his reign could withstand an opponent with a different, more forceful approach. The title remained with Ishimori rather than returning to a guest veteran.

The match sat between two important tag championship contests on a card that already had the emotional focus of Taue's retirement. That placement didn't make the singles defense irrelevant; its outcome kept another major title lineage stable on a night where the GHC junior tag belts changed hands. Takaiwa's challenge was real, but there was no new singles champion. The twelve-minute runtime limited how far the struggle could develop compared with KENTA's heavyweight main event. It is worth watching for divisional continuity and the contrast of Ishimori's style with an established outsider.

Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste defeated Naomichi Marufuji and Katsuhiko Nakajima in 17:59 to retain the GHC Tag Team Championship at Great Voyage 2013. Haste scored the deciding fall on Nakajima after Thunder Valley, giving the Australian TMDK partnership a meaningful defense over a prominent NOAH pairing. Marufuji was already one of the promotion's defining modern wrestlers, while Nakajima had become an increasingly important heavyweight. The challengers were more credible than an ordinary undercard team and forced TMDK to demonstrate the strength of its partnership.

The match didn't end in a title change, but it strengthened the champions' place in NOAH's heavyweight tag division. Pinning Nakajima rather than Marufuji also preserved a distinction in the two challengers' individual results. The belts remained with Nicholls and Haste, whose Japanese run was no longer simply a sequence of visiting appearances. On a show with a junior tag title switch and KENTA's heavyweight singles defense, their successful retention supplied continuity to a separate championship lineage.

KENTA defeated Yuji Nagata in 28:46 to retain the GHC Heavyweight Championship at Great Voyage 2013. Nagata came from New Japan with a substantial heavyweight résumé, providing an outside challenger whose reputation could test NOAH's top champion. KENTA answered with the Go 2 Sleep to complete the defense. The long main event confirmed his position in the most important singles title picture of his NOAH career, and the result kept the promotion's leading belt with a homegrown modern star.

Its placement was important after the retirement of Akira Taue and several other substantial matches on the card. The company could honor one of its founding heavyweight figures and still close with a championship confrontation involving its current main-event leader. Nagata's defeat wasn't a transfer of an IWGP title; the championship on the line belonged to NOAH. KENTA's win also occurred before his later international career, which shouldn't be used as a substitute for the actual 2013 title-defense result. The match is the natural destination for heavyweight championship viewers.