1. Taiji Ishimori vs. Yuya Uemura
Taiji Ishimori, en route to a showdown with Hiromu Takahashi, pulled the scrappy Yuya Uemura into a submission hold a couple times and won the match. *1/2
2. Satoshi Kojima, Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano, Yota Tsuji & Gabriel Kidd
Togi Makabe is clearly having a good time showing young Gabriel Kidd the ropes, this crazy lad living in Japan through COVID-19. They had a little run before Makabe pinned him, then gave him a show of respect after: “ORA, you did good man that was pretty good hey couple things to work on..” **1/2
3. Hirooki Goto, YOSHI-HASHI & SHO vs. Tetsuya Naito, SANADA & BUSHI
Cannot deny the greatness of SHO’s disappointment when he looked behind him to see YOSHI-HASHI emerge as his tag team partner, but otherwise this wasn’t much. Cold Skull actually wins though. *3/4
4. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, Yuji Nagata, Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Master Wato vs. Minoru Suzuki, Taichi, Zack Sabre Jr., Yoshinobu Kanemaru & DOUKI
A fine bunch of wrestlers here, but a re-enforcement to myself that there are definitely other things to experience than New Japan multi-man undercard matches. Give me Nagata vs. Suzuki again already. **
5. Kazuchika Okada vs. Yujiro Takahashi
I wanted to be into the hilarious mini-push of Yujiro Takahashi, but a bad 10+ minute match with Kazuchika Okada is pretty much confirmation that he just sucks. He dropped poor Okada on a powerbomb and there was just zero energy behind everything he did. Maybe that’s the gimmick, but why is OKADA selling it? I’m not sure what is worse: Yujiro being bad or that Okada went along with it. *3/4
6. NEVER Openweight Title: Shingo Takagi [c] vs. El Desperado
El Desperado tries tries and tries some more, but this would’ve worked a lot more for me as a 5-minute memorable fight scene than the drawn out dramatic leg work match it ended up being. I remember the mask, I remember the beatdown, and I remember Shingo coming back and kicking ass – all the other stuff didn’t really add to it though. ***1/4
7. IWGP Heavyweight Title & IWGP Intercontinental Title: EVIL [c] vs. Hiromu Takahashi
Conflicted.
At the onset, this is the freshest IWGP Heavyweight Title match in years. Look at these two pink-haired freaks in the blog post image. New Japan’s stubbornness makes subpar stuff seem incredible just because it’s new, but I really do love EVIL and Hiromu in this spot, even if they ended up having the most standard of matches. It felt like good solid NEVER Openweight Title wrestling, and occasionally it also felt kind of bad.
I’m using words like “love,” “solid,” and “bad” here – I am conflicted!
Somehow the Hiromu match smokes EVIL’s matches with Okada and Naito, even if EVIL is going through this weird period where he is in the biggest spot of his life and having some of the longest, most mediocre interference bullshit-riddled matches he has ever had. He’s had great matches in a tag team format, in the G1 Climax – I’ve seen the man tear the house down live with Michael Elgin before he started wearing makeup. In this run he’s just doing these long stretches of THE USUAL offense that is so frustrating, especially when he has trouble filling in the gaps between it. I love Dick Togo, but Dick Togo run-ins aren’t going to be it!
It was all too boring and basic, especially when it’s Hiromu Takahashi challenging for the IWGP heavyweight Title. Hiromu put in a fun performance, eschewing the usual lockup and going right at EVIL at the start. He got some great near falls in too even if the finish was never in doubt. He is like a junior heavyweight punk rock Dusty Rhodes; it isn’t always great but I root for him regardless. An odyssey of emotions, even if at the end of the day it was a half-hour and disappointing. ***1/4
Happy Thoughts: The world is going through some stuff, but this didn’t deliver. It was the usual dry New Japan undercard followed by a disappointing close. 4/10
