1. Manabu Nakanishi Final Osaka Castle Hall: Manabu Nakanishi, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima & Yuji Nagata vs. Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, Toa Henare & Ryuske Taguchi
Manabu Nakanishi in one of his final matches hyped a crowd up, raised an arm, and threw a bad clothesline. Everybody else did some stuff. Loved it. **
2. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: Roppongi 3K [c] vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado
They’ve had a better match or two but still brought the quality, with Kanemaru and El Desperado quietly a great tag team that was both popping off sweet double teams and staying on target. The target here was SHO’s leg, a section that got us to a very fun finish. There’s a great spot here where RP3K sets up a double team on their comeback but BUSHI runs in and dropkicks out SHO’s leg at the last second. Very good, even with that very questionable DDT off the second rope. ***1/2
3. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, Juice Robinson & David Finlay vs. Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa, Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens
Juice Robinson’s gear is more magnificent each time out, but Hiroshi Tanahashi’s subtle transformations make Juice look like some thrift store dwelling chump. The story here for me was David Finlay who was running some absolute DRILLS with Tama Tonga, looking real good and real jacked baby. Tana pins Camacho! Tana pins Camacho! *3/4
4. Kazuchika Okada & Will Ospreay vs. Zack Sabre Jr. & Taichi
Lot of good wrestling here, which tracks because the Okada/Taichi and Ospreay/Sabre pairings had two of the finest matches I’ve seen in a while last weekend. Okada breaks clean early, and Taichi just cracks him in the face with a gamengiri before beating on Okada with Sabre like a couple of shits. Ospreay and ZSJ did some just casually incredible stuff here – that Ospreay boy is strong. Between these teams, Tanahashi & Ibushi, EVIL & SANADA and even Finlay & Juice we’ve got this weird possible golden age of tag wrestling cooking and the god damn Guerillas of Destiny are still champions. ***1/2
5. Jay White vs. SANADA
A match that in every possible way lived up to expectation. Lots of Skull Ends and Paradise Locks and Gedo spots. SANADA almost died on a Shiranui. Jay White won. I dunno man. It just kind of happened. **
6. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title: Hiromu Takahashi [c] vs. Ryu Lee
The first half of this was great, the last half felt like a missed opportunity. They threw chops for an astounding 5 minutes (or so it felt) before a completely insane tope suicida over the guardrail and commentary table followed by Hiromu diving to the floor like a madman before some neck break teases and then… well, it got to that point in some wrestling matches nowadays where you’re definitely going for something epic because that’s what we do nowadays but it doesn’t actually become epic so it just kind of feels both quality and average. Wrestling’s weird. They did make the stupid hanging double stomp spot kind of work for the first time in history. Good, wild, needed something new. ***1/2
7. IWGP U.S. Heavyweight Title: Jon Moxley [c] vs. Minoru Suzuki
Just a slugfest, the kind of match you don’t see that much in major promotions these days where there was just an inherent manliness and intensity to everything and the match was a brawl that didn’t ever feel like they were trying to do moves that looked cool or had anything even planned out beforehand at all. Suzuki doing the Moxley swagger and smiling after falling through a table before slamming the table over his head killed me. Mox has still got to lay them elbows in better but he also threw a lariat for the ages. ***1/2
8. IWGP Heavyweight Title & IWGP Intercontinental Title: Tetsuya Naito [c] vs. KENTA
This went thirty minutes, because of course it did, and I appreciate the macro story of 2020 KENTA just constantly failing upward but the micro story where I have to watch thirty minutes of it is a little demoralizing. They laid it out well enough for a long match, with KENTA doing some quality stalling and a pose-off early before the inevitable stretch of KENTA getting that HEAT on offense except it feels more like Minoru Tanaka under the Heat mask and not actual wrestling heat – by that I mean it’s boring and it sucks. I’m sorry, KENTA – I take shots because I love. Naito randomly started gushing blood near the 30-minute mark and then 30 seconds later it was over. Not bad but not good either. **3/4
Happy Thoughts: A solid show, with a more quality undercard than usual for New Japan that brought consistency if not a must-see match. 7/10
