The soft relaunch continues.
1. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Taiji Ishimori vs. Gabriel Kidd
Ishimori still looks like he puts hours in the gym if not thinking about his matches, a product of this strange timeline we live in where both he and KENTA are boring chinlock guys in the Bullet Club. He has a pretty basic young lion squash with Kidd here, all chain wrestling and shoulderblocking, until he leaps off the second turnbuckle with a hurricanrana and Kidd CATCHES HIM with a crab hold. What a metaphor! Seconds later, a basic crossface wins. <>*1/4
2. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Yuya Uemura
Uemura has a couple flashes of being All Fired Up, attacking Kanemaru before the bell and busting out a springboard crossbody. Otherwise, Kanemaru picked him apart so slowly that I thought he was going to win. Then he lost. *1/4
3. Hirooki Goto, YOSHI-HASHI, SHO & YOH vs. EVIL, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & BUSHI
I don’t have much to say about this other than the obvious fact that SHO vs. Shingo is very exciting. YOH did un-ironically try to get a crowd going mid-match, so there’s that. *3/4
4. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Yuji Nagata vs. Minoru Suzuki
Yuji Nagata enters the ring and stares a hole through Suzuki that overcomes any flaw empty arena wrestling ever introduced. Here in 2020, Nagata and Suzuki are pulling Rusher Kimura shtick with more slaps and chairshots and that’s really all you need. They carry most of this 20 minutes by just staring each other – it’s not their best, it’s actually probably their worst, but a welcome offer during COVID-19. ***
5. New Japan Cup – Round 1: Kazuchika Okada vs. Gedo
I wish I could find charm in these buds working a silly main event where Gedo uses a wrench to keep control, but the dynamic didn’t work with people in the crowd at Korakuen Hall and it didn’t work here. There’s definitely issues with New Japan title matches going 20-30 minutes, but this New Japan squash match going 16 was very concerning. *1/2
Happy Thoughts: This was a weak night of wrestling, but a pretty pleasant show all the same. Nagata vs. Suzuki was fun. 4/10
