How great is the New Beginning theme song? I’ve watched and rewatched the opening package on every show from this tour just to listen to this thing. That synth riff that kicks in when SANADA drops Okada with the TKO: holy shit. What an epic, beautiful piece of music.
Katsuya Kitamura vs. Yuji Nagata – Trial Series Match #6
Easily the best match of Kitamura’s trial series and a true testament to the greatness of Grumpy Old Man Yuji Nagata. Big Katsu takes the beating of a life time but gets just enough hope spots to display his crazy strength and win the crowd over. They put together the smart storyline of Nagata outclassing Kitamura in the striking department, Nagata throwing faster elbows, kicks and slaps. Kitamura only has his trusty old knife-edge chop, which gets a big reaction from the crowd, but in the end he’s no match for his sempai. I honestly marked out for Big K using the Argentine backbreaker at some point. Nagata’s crazy-ass Koppou kick near the end was also a total Holy Shit moment. I’m curious to see what they do with Kitamura from this point on. ***
SHO & YOH vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado
I liked ALL of this. Such a smartly-worked little match. Great babyface/heel dichotomy with R3K playing the flashy, fun-loving champions against Suzuki-Gun’s cheating, black-clad, whisky-drinking rudo enforcers. The heels go after SHO’s back injury like sharks smelling blood and it is a thing of beauty. SHO’s selling is just plain phenomenal and Kanemaru/Despy do all sorts of cool old-school shit to hurt him like a good old double back body drop and snap suplexes. The back injury flips the usual R3K dynamic on its head, as it’s YOH who gets the hot tag segment instead of his partner and he totally pulls it off with a snappy dragon screw, spinning forearm and slingshot double stomp. Loved the finish: SHO unable to do his part of the 3K finisher due to his injury and Suzuki-Gun just wrecking his back to get the win. Give me a rematch for the title ASAP. These four have brilliant chemistry. ***1/4
Togi Makabe, Michael Elgin, KUSHIDA & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Minoru Suzuki, Takashi Iizuka, Taichi & TAKA Michinoku
Decent multi-man wrestling 101 that follows the pattern of the previous Makabe/Suzuki lead-in tags except the never-ending forearm showdown is placed in a very weird spot and kind of kills the momentum of the match for a minute. The Iizuka biting sequences reach a new level of weird when old Takashi ducks a Taguchi hip attack and starts biting his ass for a bit. Tumblr NJPW Fanfic writers will have a field day with that one. Shoutout to all my Tumblr NJPW fanfic writers. **1/2
Juice Robinson, David Finlay & Toa Henare vs. Jay White, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano
These guys have had better matches on the Road To shows, but this one’s still pretty solid. You get your comedy with Juice/Yano, your hard-hitting strike-fest with Henare/Ishii and your Former Best Friends turned Bitter Frenemies action with Finlay/Jay. Fun for the whole family, is what I’m saying. Another good showing from Finlay who’s super fired up from wrestling the Switchblade. Jay brings it home with the Bladerunner followed by the shoot elbows of death on Henare. **1/2
REY MYSTERIO! JUSHIN THUNDER LIGER! STRONG STYLE EVOLVED!
Gedo vs. BUSHI
Great entrances: BUSHI walking out with giant shears to cut Gedo’s beard, Gedo coming out with the two masks he ripped off BUSHI’s head on the Road To shows. The entrances actually tell the story of the whole match: both guys work heel, Gedo tries to unmask BUSHI and BUSHI tries to rip out Gedo’s beard. This thing has SO MUCH SHTICK. Gedo tying BUSHI’S mask to the ropes, a ref bump, Gedo avoiding the Poisonous Mist. A couple of good near falls near the end and finally BUSHI wins with the MX. This all happened. **1/2
Tetsuya Naito vs. YOSHI-HASHI
Guys, was this the YOSHI-HASHI breakout performance or something? Or maybe it was Naito trying to prove he’s one of the best in the world by carrying old Loose Explosion to a tremendous match? Either way, this is a blast. YOSHI keeps showing that newfound MONKEY RAGE by attacking Naito during his entrance and IT IS ON. Osaka being one of the last places in Japan where Naito still gets full on heel heat, the dude just revels in that shit and turns Taco boy into this crazy over babyface.
Sooo many cool spots: YOSHI countering both Naito’s leg-trip legdropkick and apron legsweep in quick succession before diving out with a tope con hilo, Bunker buster on the god damn ramp, Naito countering a Butterfly lock with his climb-ub Tornado DDT. These two were wrestling like this was the G1 semi-finals. Marvel at the drama as the vanilla enigma known as YOSHI-HASHI brings THE FIGHT during a stiff slap fest. Witness Naito turning YOSHI’s Butterfly lock into a believable submission near the end. Man, oh man. Big-time near-falls and scalding hatred. Naito with TWO DESTINOS for the finish, which is kind of complimentary for The Yosh. Taichi’s post-match run-in announces the HEAVYWEIGHT TAICHI ERA and also confirms that Naito’s now fully stuck in midcard purgatory. What a time to be alive. ***3/4
Will Ospreay © vs. Hiromu Takahashi – IWGP Jr Heavyweight Title
The pre-match package introducing Will Ospreay as a CAT is an instant classic. These guys are on some Osaka Pro shit with this rivalry and all of the lead-in segments and Twitter exchanges have been hilarious. This also happens to be one of the best recent Ospreay matches in terms of delivering super complex and dangerous high spots but also not getting overly stupid. The selling in the opening sequence where guys get straight up German suplexed on the floor is completely NON-EXISTENT, but it gets way better as the match progresses and both dudes really put over the accumulated damage of all of these nutty spots, which is something they’ve always struggled with in the past.
Love all the parts with Hiromu on offense. As much as he turned into this adorable goofball, he’s still all business in the ring and he will chop the shit out of you. Lots of brand new crazy ass counters to some of their classic spots and some completely new stuff like a 2nd-rope German suplex into the top turnbuckle that was truly disgusting and ill-advised. Holy shit at Hiromu’s leaping neckbreaker Oscutter counter! The rope-draped SSP is still the dumbest spot in wrestling but the rest of the ending stretch is pretty awesome: epic strike exchange, Nasty REVERSE BRAINBUSTER, bonkers Canadian Destroyer from Hiromu. Oscutter does it. Feel bad for my boy Hiromu losing again, but I can confidently say this is the first Ospreay singles match I (almost) fully enjoyed and a lot of that has to do with Takahashi’s performance. ****
Hirooki Goto © vs. EVIL – NEVER Openweight Title
Goto wearing a traditional Buddhist necklace to ward off evil spirits is brilliant stuff. It’s also one of the more inspired things about this match because the action really takes a while to get going and both guys just work their usual Korakuen Hall exchanges for a long stretch. Things kick into a high gear when EVIL starts being EVIL, using chairs and using Goto’s Buddhist necklace against him. The ending stretch takes us back to the Kensuke Sasaki/Riki Choshu era with an epic lariat battle. Lots of intricate counters. Goto hits one of the best-looking Ushigoroshi’s I’ve ever seen and a sweet rope-draped Reverse GTR. EVIL keeps going for his Big Match-only Half Dragon/Half Tiger suplex and STO finisher but Goto manages to avoid everything and catches EVIL with the GTR for the win. This was super competent wrestling with a fun ending stretch, but they didn’t do enough new or interesting stuff in the first half. ***1/4
Kazuchika Okada © vs. SANADA – IWGP Heavyweight Title
Another excellent Okada title defense in a never-ending string of excellent Okada title defenses and possibly SANADA’s best New Japan performance yet. I’ve always had my doubts with SANADA, but he delivered the goods here and came out of the match looking like a real potential main eventer. They kicked things off with a slow feeling out process where SANADA got to show off his junior-like agility and then gradually moved into the Okada Has A Bad Neck Subplot, a staple of all your favorite Kazuchika Okada title matches.
Before things could get too formulaic, Okada pulled off one of his master tricks: doing a tiny little thing to have the crowd turn against him and get fully behind the challenger. In this case, it was trolling SANADA with cocky head-punt kicks and then giving him the biggest ASSHOLE SMIRK to baith him into a forearm battle that he was too damaged to win. It’s such a smart spot to use at this point in the home stretch of God Okada’s IWGP title run. The fans love Lil Kazu, but they’re also desperately anticipating THE MOMENT where someone will take out the Final Boss. So the slightest hint of dickishness from the champ will be met with instant heel heat. It also set up a great revenge spot later on where SANADA got in his own head-punt kicks after a strong run of offense.
Such a great comeback from SANADA, now with the crowd fully behind him: MONSTER Back suplex to counter a first Rainmaker attempt, double leapfrog dropkick right into that picture-perfect Pescado and then a huuuuuge vaulting Plancha. Not to mention the nifty new ways he tried to get Okada into the Skull End, namely out of the AJ Styles ASAI MOONSAULT DDT and from his boss Naito’s own Destino setup. Cool shit. I really dug the whole bit with SANADA hurting his leg on a first Moonsault attempt to protect his finisher on the eventual Moonsault that DID connect, not being able to cover instantly because of the injury. This is an Okada title match, so it goes without saying that the whole ending stretch was completely wild. Not in the top tier of the Ace Okada IWGP title defenses, but let’s not pretend this still wasn’t great or anything. ****1/4
Easily the strongest New Japan show since Wrestle Kingdom. Three really great matches and a mostly-strong undercard to round things out. Lots of cool bizarro undercard shit getting setup: Roppongi 3K vs. Suzuki-Gun, the Switchblade/Finlay beef and of course the arrival of HEAVYWEIGHT TAICHI. But before all of this can come to fruition, let us respect the Code of Honor, shake hands like proper competitors and watch some HONOR RISING JAPAN.
