Only the tournament matches because life’s too short, baby.
Toa Henare vs. Lance Archer – New Japan Cup (Round 1)
I’m a sucker for Archer’s dumb heel shtick (‘’SHADDAP!’’) so this match was quite allright with me. Him going ‘’DON’T YOU EVER COME AT ME LIKE THAT’’ after taking a bunch of forearms from Henare is the kind of shit that amuses me to no end, and the match had a lot of that. I’m also a fan of the boy Toa Henare and he played his role well here – sold a lot, bumped his ass off for Archer and made some fun comebacks. He got in some good kickouts near the end and his leg-slappy’ headbutt of death keeps getting big reactions from the crowd. Solid wrasslin’. ***
Mikey Nichols vs. Hikuleo – New Japan Cup (Round 1)
This one was a little more on the bland side and didn’t do much to sell me on Mikey Nichols as more than just a guy that does wrestling. Technically-speaking, everything looked fine, but it never really hooked the crowd or went beyond formulaic back and forth wrestling. Both guys have some hard chops and Hikuleo is really tall. I dunno. **1/4
Will Ospreay vs. Bad Luck Fale – New Japan Cup (Round 1)
An actually good professional wrestling match between Will Ospreay and Bad Luck Fale. This thing was constantly on the verge of getting derailed by ref bumps and Bullet Club overbooking bullshit, but they somewhat pulled the match off and got a legit feel good moment out of Will getting the upset on Fale.
They kept the wrestling fairly basic and that’s really all I needed from these two – Babyface Will getting tossed around by Fale, bumping and selling (aka. screaming). Ospreay has a tendency to oversell everything now, but him jumping into the first row to celebrate his win was great stuff and really put the ending on another level. FUN. ***
Kazuchika Okada vs. Michael Elgin – New Japan Cup (Round 1)
This took a while to get going and Okada seemed to not give a single fuck at first, but once the pace picked up it got quite fun. Ironically, the boring dueling neckwork segment early on was a testament to how over Okada is right now, as the crowd kept screaming his name like crazy while he was just coasting through chinlocks and looking ready for a nice nap.
These guys have good chemistry together so they were able to keep things interesting when Elgin went into ‘’Get My Shit In’’ mode, working in a bunch of nifty counters around the Rainmaker and Elgin’s Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 CAW offense. Okada stealing Elgin’s Buckle Bomb into Elgin Bomb combo was extremely weird but also completely unexpected, so kudos.
Milano losing his mind over Elgin’s big spots always makes his matches better, but to Big Mike’s credit, the crowd was also going nuts over his various death movez by the end. ***1/2
