Lumberjack Death Match – NEVER Openweight Title: Minoru Suzuki [c] vs. Hirooki Goto (6/11/17)
Old man Suzuki looks so OMINOUS, an old Yakuza boss who wrestles on the side. This had some fun pieces to it but was more gimmick than match, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing it just didn’t end up very interesting. Goto continues to be a guy I just can’t get into – he works the New Japan style well enough but there’s no EXTRA to his presence that draws me in. Guy needs a HOOK, man. They work the lumberjack gimmick a bunch – Suzuki-gun throwing Goto back in, CHAOS throwing Suzuki in, Suzuki beating Goto on the outside, Suzuki-gun and CHAOS brawling. Commentator Liger snapping on Suzuki and YOSHI-HASHI’s run on Suzuki-gun was really better than anything either Goto or Suzuki did. Did like Suzuki’s sell of the Ushigoroshi, at least. YOSHI-HASHI goes after Suzuki after the match – now there’s a guy with a hook! Totally fine but completely meaningless match. **3/4
IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title: Hiromu Takahashi [c] vs. KUSHIDA (6/11/17)
I liked parts of this but I have been digging Takahashi and KUSHIDA way too much this year that it felt disappointing. I mainly dug that it wasn’t your standard New Japan matwork/limbwork/strike-fest – this felt like a freakin’ fight the whole way through, with both guys going right at it at the bell and pacing the match like they were going 2 and a half minutes again. As they moved on though it started to feel like the type of match New Japan juniors who grew up on ECW would have. There’s good and bad to that. It was kind of meandering for a while, with random bursts of nuttiness – KUSHIDA’s crazy dropkick off the chair into the crowd, the sunset flip to the floor countered with KUSHIDA’s cross armbreaker, KUSHIDA’s rolling kick to the top, the Hoverboard SUPERPLEX. The sweaty desperate strikes towards the end didn’t feel like desperation to win but more desperation to make the match interesting. KUSHIDA stomping the shit out of Takahashi leading to the Hoverboard finish sure was awesome though. I dunno! Really good but not great – love a lot about these two’s presence, dug the non-stop wild big move fight feel of the match, but it also had a lot of dead spots and felt kinda cheap. ***1/2
