0. Gauntlet Match – NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Title: Togi Makabe, Toru Yano & Ryusuke Taguchi [c] vs. Tomohiro Ishii, YOSHI-HASHI & Robbie Eagles vs. EVIL, Shingo Takagi & BUSHI vs. Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado vs. Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens
A bunch of wonderful unremarkable action, as promised. Good for Los Ingobernables. **
1. Jushin Thunder Liger Retirement Match II: Jushin Thunder Liger & Naoki Sano w/ Yoshiaki Fujiwara vs. Hiromu Takahashi & Ryu Lee
Enjoyment to the core, the last match of Jushin Thunder Liger which was mostly him wrestling professionally opposite Hiromu Takahashi. Many matches have ended with a finish and pinfall, but none more perfectly both low key and monumental than this one. ***
2. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Taiji Ishimori & El Phantasmo [c] vs. Roppongi 3K
Though the Roppongi 3K entrance was incredible, the last thing the junior tag titles needed was El Phantasmo using the back rake as an offensive maneuver. Taiji descending into lazy heel shtick with ELP was kind of a bummer, though I will give credit where its’ due: the cup spot got a pop. SHO and YOH did their thing at the finish, but I’m waiting for them to do a little bit more than their thing. **3/4
3. RPW British Heavyweight Title: Zack Sabre Jr. [c] vs. SANADA
Basically a fire hose of grappling, a little one-note and boring but also eventually super dramatic as they went for the win. Lots of last millisecond near falls here. ***1/4
4. IWGP U.S. Heavyweight Title: Jon Moxley [c] vs. Juice Robinson
Kind of bland, to be honest. Perfectly solid and cohesive but unremarkable action that needed tables or Lance Archer or something. The post-match with Minoru Suzuki confronting Mox was the real money, a completely unexpected and awesome moment. **1/2
5. NEVER Openweight Title: KENTA [c] vs. Hirooki Goto
Hirooki Goto is a special kind of wrestler in 2019, a man who presents himself as one who is treating this silly wrestling match completely seriously and wields this dark magic where he can have great matches with the most unassuming of foes. He was aggressive from the bell, staying on KENTA like not many would, and the look on his face when he cracked KENTA in the face with the elbow almost made up for so much time spent watching KENTA do his thing.
KENTA is a dick now, one who plays to the crowd and uses their general disappointment as his fuel. He threw Goto to the outside a bunch, worked a chinlock… he SLOWED. IT. DOWN. And he certainly has a shtick that I appreciate – adapting as you age is both a challenging and special thing in wrestling. But that shtick isn’t going high level and the intensity still seems gone. Some do stretches of offense and heat, KENTA stretches and disappointment and regret.
The Goto magic didn’t hit until the last few minutes, but it did hit. When it did, all the KENTA BS made sense and the match hit. They pulled it together with a really dramatic finish, even if the eventual 3-count kind of came out of nowhere. ***1/2
6. Kota Ibushi vs. Jay White
This felt like two matches in one, with Kota Ibushi following up his loss last night with a captivating re-invention while Jay White and Gedo played the same interference game they’ve been playing since they became a unit. It’s not a good game. A run-in isn’t going to necessarily take me out of a match, but Gedo is just bad at this: the chairshot, the blocked punch… it all just looked goofy and fake.
When that wasn’t happening, Ibushi was on couple of missions. The first seemed to be trying to bust his sternum open during the first five minutes or so, piling on last night’s insanity with some truly lunatic bumps. Then he went all Super Saiyan on White, bringing the stone cold done-playing-around badassery a guy like him could use. He was stalking poor Gedo and White like the lovechild of Mike Myers and Andre the Giant, and his perfectly sculpted abs deflecting Gedo’s kicks like Wonder Woman deflects bullets was incredible.
To White’s credit he sold the exhaustion of this kind of match well, but for ALLLL this to be worth it he really needed to not win, no matter how hard Ibushi took that Blade Runner on his head. ***1/2
7. Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Chris Jericho
Tanahashi and Jericho are a pair of legends and they cemented that here by over-delivering in a match between Men of a Certain Age. There’s a clear mutual respect here and thankfully instead of trying to do fast-paced counter sequences they flexed their muscles and said COME ON BABY and it RULED. This was a flabby painted mess vs. the lead star of your movie, a great vibe that they used to tell a story from bell-to-bell. The AEW World Title hook ended up brilliant too, with Tanahashi in the weird position of the only hope for the true possibility of All Elite Wrestling.
Jericho did his best to provide memes and quotable lines as he beat down Tanahashi, and was right there for every big spot like the pro he is – the corner springboard dropkick, double underhook backbreaker, Lionsault, even the balls bump into the corner were all delivered with an impressive impact and timing from this drunk uncle of a man. In a nice bit Jericho went for a frog splash towards the end, but Tanahashi avoided and flashed those pearly whites for one of the biggest pops of the night.
They kept going back to the Walls of Jericho at the end and had a couple great struggles before Tanahashi tapped. A disappointing but expected result, but damn did these professional wrestlers milk everything they could out of it. ****3/4
8. IWGP Heavyweight Title & IWGP Intercontinental Title: Kazuchika Okada [c] vs. Tetsuya Naito [c]
This was sometimes a match where I wondered when the New Japan main event style is going to evolve, and sometimes one with the most incredible wrestling I’ve ever seen. I loved this, got caught up in it, gave the pop of all pops for the finish, and thought they just delivered an absolute meal of fighting, cooperation, timing, precision, drama, selling. Two back-to-back long Okada championship matches at the end of lengthy shows though is either a blessing or a curse. Maybe it’s both. He’s still casually incredible and there isn’t much in wrestling that comes close to feeling this high-end and important, but at the same time I feel like I’ve maybe seen this all before.
Naito is so over that sometimes I thought there was a run-in happening just because he did something the crowd liked. He is both a bit much and a marvel of a wrestler, and a guy like Okada deliberately plays with the latter. He’s the dance partner that gets the most out of Naito’s insanity, never flubbing a spot and taking advantage of all the drama that comes with Tetsuya Naito once again challenging Kazuchika Okada at Wrestle Kingdom for the IWGP Heavyweight Title.
The Stardust Press delivery and kickout was a brilliant moment, while Okada taking a reverse frankensteiner from the top rope directly on the back of my skull made me sad. Okada threw some of the wildest Rainmakers you will ever see as he tried to keep his title, and the moment where he finally felt shook felt like the biggest moment there ever was. Until Naito won of course. ****1/2
Then KENTA attacked Naito? What the-
A big time show, one that at times suffered from the spoils of a double dose of Wrestle Kingdom but one that also closed up with two amazing matches and the long-awaited coronation of Tetsuya Naito. I wish the KENTA run-in didn’t leave such a sour taste at the end, but New Japan used their big night to set themselves up for a very intriguing 2020. 8/10
