I hopped back on the Pure-O-Resew reviewing bandwagon exactly a year ago with a review of KOPW 2017 for HWL, and now here I am – live in Japan, awkwardly sitting in a cramped box seat to watch my favorite Shinnichi Warriors put the hurt on each other for 4 hours. The show was fun – not a lot of high-level MOTYC’s but a lot of crazy shit happened. Shingo turning up, the OKADA RUN-IN, Jay White joining the Tongans, the Jericho thing. It was basically the best possible 4 hour edition of RAW is SHIN NIHON. Great fun live, but I could also see a lot of people pointing to this show as The Moment where New Japan jumped the shark in their misguided attempt to appeal to a wider Western audience. I mean, the main event was a 3-way match featuring Cody Rhodes.
Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado © vs. Jushin Thunder Liger & Tiger Mask – IWGP Jr Tag-Team Title
Simple but effective stuff, the right kind of match to kickstart a big show like this. The heel/face dichotomy was on point and everyone played their role well. Hearing the Liger entrance theme music live for the first time was some life-changing shit and Suzuki-Gun cutting the heroes’ entrance short was a dick move of the highest order. True heels. We, the ungrateful Internet gaijin scum, give Tiger Mask a lot of crap but the guy is still over as hell: absolute monster pop for the top-rope double-arm suplex and the crowd gave him a big ovation when he bowed in defeat after the match. ***
Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma vs. Juice Robinson & Toa Henare
Speaking of guys who are crazy over, Makabe was getting massive support in this match from a group of teenage girls sitting right behind me. I know the guy’s a star on TV in Japan, but this still amuses me to no end: TOGI MAKABE – TEEN IDOL. I was quite into this match: kind of throwback New Japan in away. Just beefy lariats and shoulderblocks for the most part. The whole situation with Honma not being fully recovered is even more apparent live without any editing. Dude looks in rough shape. Still, crowd is there for him and the reactions for all the Kokeshis were huge. **3/4
Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Taiji Ishimori vs. Nick Jackson, Matt Jackson, Chase Owens & Hangman Page
This was about what you’d expect: harmless fun with a lotta’ superkicks. Hangman got the biggest response here, the crowd was eating up all of his big spots. Otherwise, Taiji seemed to be having an off night and Tanga Loa was clearly on a quest to redefine what it means to Be Bad At Selling. He took a superkick at some point and his face was so absurdly blank that the crowd was legitimately confused as to what the fuck was going on: was he no-selling? Did he forget he was in a wrestling match? So many Tanga Loa questions. **1/2
Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii & Will Ospreay vs. Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & Takashi Iizuka
Say what you want about William Ospreay – his stuff looks tremendous live. He was the clear highlight of this match save for the obligatory Suzuki/Ishii forearm death match (which is always great). I hope Will challenging for the NEVER belt means we’ll get more openweight NEVER matches, and not that Will is moving to heavyweight. He improved a lot this year, but the last thing the heavyweight division needs right now is another flashy foreigner. Match was fine! **1/2
Kazuchika Okada, Toru Yano, SHO & YOH vs. Tetsuya Naito, SANADA, BUSHI & Shingo Takagi
The whole Shingo reveal and initial fakeout with Naito announcing Milano as the new LIJ member was great stuff. I actually got to see Shingo’s last Dragon Gate match in Tokyo just a week before so this was poetry in motion, baby. He looked super sharp here but I’m not yet sold on him being a good fit for Los Ingo. They all have this sleazy ‘’can’t be bothered’’ demeanor and he’s on the complete opposite end of the spectrum, a boisterous hard-hitter who loves to have himself a wrestle. Still, happy to see him in New Japan and can’t wait for him to wreck shit up in next year’s BOSJ. Shingo-Talk aside, the match zipped by and I loved the big Okada/Naito exchange. Both came off as total superstars, obviously. Plus, THE DROPKICK! ***
The ZSJ/EVIL/Jericho angle was a mixed bag for me, and for some of the live crowd too I think. The initial Jericho reveal really took everyone by surprise – total shocker. Everything that came after was a little flat for me, as we just saw the exact same bit at All In. The crowd was legit BUMMED OUT when the referee threw the match: everyone (me included) seemed psyched for EVIL vs. ZSJ. Not sure where the hell they’re going with this – are we really getting Jericho/EVIL at the Dome?
KUSHIDA vs. Marty Scurll – IWGP Jr Heavyweight Title
About on the level of their BOSJ match from earlier this year, which means pretty good for a Marty Scurll match, but won’t end up on any year-end lists. Save for the one sequence that ended with both guys awkwardly double-slapping each other, I dug the counter wrestling shtick they were going for: the rollup reversals were particularly smooth and you can tell KUSHIDA loves having this type of chain wrasslin’ fun. Also liked Marty constantly going for the chickenwing, although the big chickenwing suplex payoff seemed a little random.
Cool spot in theory but I always groan when US/Europe indie wrestling dorks start throwing big-time Japanese suplexes. All of KUSHIDA’s big spots came off great live, notably the cartwheel dropkick, top-rope flying cross armbreaker (!!) and hiptoss into cross armbreaker. He also pulled out some new variant of the Back to the Future that started from a fireman’s carry – shit was wild. Basically, my whole take on this match is that I loved seeing KUSHIDA live. ***1/4
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White – IWGP Heavyweight Title #1 Contendership
Match of the night by a mile and the best match Tana and Jay have had together up to this point. This had all the tropes of an old-school American wrasslin’ match with Tana playing the super babyface to perfection and Jay leaning hard into the heel shtick trickery. With some help from Gedo as his evil manager, Jay is now getting full-on heel heat and it’s a beautiful thing. I really dug his performance here as he just went for the core character work and dropped a lot of the superfluous, bad offense that wasn’t getting any reaction.
Doing this type of match in New Japan wouldn’t work with everyone but Tanahashi is such a good worker that the crowd was hanging on to every Sports Entertainment twist and reacting massively to everything. Dude was selling his ass off and knew exactly when to make the million dollar comeback. There were some more classic NJPW moments peppered throughout, including a mind-boggling counter sequence that had the entire place BUZZING at the complexity of it all.
No one does high drama like Hiroshi Tanahashi and seeing him do his thing live was truly special. The High Fly Attack to the floor is a big spot we all take for granted now, but seeing it in the flesh is something else: absolutely mental. ***3/4
Now, I’m of two minds about THE ANGLE that followed. Okada running in to rescue Tana and get revenge on Gedo easily got the biggest pop of the night and was completely fucking surreal to witness live. Jay White then joining up with the Bullet Club OG’s is something that makes sense, but the whole setup with Jado came off as contrived and the crowd was initially more confused than anything. Still worth it for that final image of Tana looking over the downed Okada after the whole thing. The fangirls behind me let out an audible ‘’Aaaaw’’ of disappointment when Tana left, hoping he would finally bond with his eternal nemesis. Powerful stuff.
Kenny Omega © vs. Cody vs. Kota Ibushi – 3-Way Match – IWGP Heavyweight Title
I was really happy to see all three of these guys live, but this match was just a bad idea. There were bits of greatness sprinkled throughout, but the ridiculous length and awkward trappings of a 3-way match were working against everyone here. A lot of the stuff that was meant to be taken as deadly serious, like Kenny gradually pissing off Ibushi, actually came off as comedy. The entire section around me was literally laughing whenever Kenny would do something to anger his partner. I liked the payoff of Ibushi basically going into SHOOTER MODE for a minute, but the road to getting to that point was pretty tedious.
Plenty of the individual spots looked great: Ibushi’s big corkscrew Moonsault to the outside, Kenny’s INSANE double-arm Piledriver near the finish. Others less so: that ROH-y sunset-flip German suplex spot was clearly a terrible idea and they paid the price for it. Also, I know Kenny’s IWGP champ and all, but him taking that massive table bump and then kicking out of two (!) Cross Rhodes was a bit much. I don’t know man, I just don’t like 3-ways and I’m getting more and more confused with where they’re going with the Golden Lovers story. I shall give this a THREE STAR SEAL OF ALMOST-APPROVAL for the live fun factor but I can’t imagine this came off super well on World. ***
