1. Kazuchika Okada & Tomohiro Ishii vs. EVIL & SANADA
This was very good. Low key, nothing crazy, but four talented guys having a tag with some great pairings and heat based on upcoming matches. Okada and SANADA going toe-to-toe was awesome, Ishii and EVIL trading strikes was awesome, SANADA out-pacing Ishii and getting hit really hard was awesome. Pretty sure Okada vs. EVIL was awesome too. Super Babyface Okada, doing corner work as Ishii crawled to the ropes for a tag, was beautiful too. He jumped onto the guardrail at one point to soak in the cheers, clearly alive again now that he holds his championship. EVIL and SANADA have incredible wrestling looks and are world class talents capable of hot matches but I wish they’d lean more into being bastards sometimes. The double submissions spot at the end wasn’t quite Real World Tag League level, but good. And it actually ended the match when Ishii tapped. Good stuff, really should’ve been for the IWGP Tag Team Titles. ***1/2
2. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title: Dragon Lee [c] vs. Taiji Ishimori
These are two supremely gifted athletes on opposite ends of their careers – Ishimori is still only 36 but nearly two decades into wrestling, while Dragon Lee is 23 and only half a decade into the game. Ishimori as a wrestler at this point is kind of fully formed, like how an old guy just gets set in his ways. It’s not a knock – use what works, he’s basically a still-impressive but more careful version of his past crazy self. And I’m not expecting some big evolution from him any time soon either. Dragon Lee meanwhile still feels raw, like a guy who’s clearly crazy talented but waiting to emerge as an actually elite wrestling talent. Maybe he gets there, maybe he doesn’t. But these two against each other with that dynamic was something I found interesting.
The match? Yeah it was good. It’s the usual knock against what these guys do sometimes – the spectacular is spectacular, but the in-between doesn’t quite work. But sonofabitch, that spectacular. How do you explain a springboard leap caught with a deadlift suplex into a fireman’s carry countered into a crucifix bomb to your children? But not sure all the near falls worked as well as they wanted to. Like they gut some people, but some of it felt a little excessive. But also I mean god damn. God damn. They went 25 minutes and did all kinds of crazy shit. ***3/4
