The Best And Worst Of NJPW Road To The New Beginning


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As New Japan Pro Wrestling expands its presence around the world, With Spandex is expanding its NJPW coverage! I’m going to be writing regular columns in Brandon’s patented Best and Worst style about NJPW shows now, starting with this week’s Road to the New Beginning.

Pre-Show Notes: You can watch New Japan Pro Wrestling shows on their streaming service, NJPW World, which costs 999 yen (about 9 USD.) They feature a new free match on the site every Monday and have an optional free trial month, so it’s a pretty easy service to test drive. Certain NJPW shows also air on AXS with commentary by Jim Ross and Josh Barnett.

Since there hasn’t been a ton of regular NJPW coverage on With Spandex, I’ll also be providing more background info on the performers and storylines than you get in present-day B&W of WWE or Aces and Ehs of Impact columns. This won’t be New Japan For Beginners, but it is going to be NJPW noob-friendly. We’re also going to be running some articles about the histories of the many FACTIONS (I love factions) in NJPW in the style of my Explaining the Golden Lovers article, so look out for those!

I’m going to be watching the show with English language commentary by Kevin Kelly and Don Callis, and I completely understand why many English-speaking NJPW viewers don’t. However, it seems like I should write about the version of NJPW’s product that’s designed for me to watch. On a related note, I’m an American with no background in Japanese language or culture, so I might miss the mark on some stuff for that reason. I’ll try to be as informed as possible in my takes and admit where I’m culturally in the dark, but if you think there’s something I missed, don’t hesitate to let me know in the comments.

Feedback of any kind is appreciated and will help us keep running more NJPW-related pieces. So please comment, share the column on Facebook, retweet it, yell at people on the street about it, whatever. And don’t forget to follow With Spandex on Twitter and like us on Facebook. You can also follow our home site UPROXX, and even follow me on Twitter @emilyofpratt if you want.

Now that the housekeeping’s done, let’s start down that Road to the New Beginning!

Previously on NJPW: Antonio Inoki founded the company and became the first IWGP Heavyweight Champion, the Great Muta defeated Jushin Thunder Liger in one of the greatest matches of all time, and Bad Luck Fale murdered a therapy cat.

Best/Worst: This Column Is Starting With Coverage Of A Two Day Long Go-Home Show

These shows from February 5 and 6 comprise a two-parter called Road to the New Beginning, because they’re building to The New Beginning in Osaka show on February 10. We’re beginning anew because Wrestle Kingdom 12, the NJPW Wrestlemania equivalent, was on January 4, and that wrapped up the 2017 season, so to speak. Since then, we had the blowoff show New Year Dash!!, which included another Chris Jericho attack outta nowhere, and the beginning of the new beginnings, the two nights of New Beginning in Sapporo, which featured true love’s confetti-inducing hug.

The main players in the New Beginning in Osaka saga are the crazy-dominant mostly babyface faction CHAOS, their cool mostly heel rivals Los Ingobernables de Japon, and Suzukigun, a bunch of guys who like to hurt people and are really good at it. None of these people have ever had the most popular shirt at Hot Topic, but most of them are great and worthy of getting invested in anyway.

Best: Drama In The Dojo

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Both the February 5 and 6 shows, however, kick off with a six-man tag match pitting Young Lions (rookies training in the New Japan dojo) against veterans. The Young Lions Narita, Shota Umino (son of greatest working ref in the world, RED SHOES), and Yagi all look pretty similar, don’t have a lot of experience, and don’t have big move sets. Meanwhile, the vets are JUSHIN THUNDER LIGER and Tiger Mask IV, with the third slot filled by dancer/coach Ryusuke Taguchi on Feb. 5 and Yujiro Kushida on Feb. 6. So the lions are way behind in terms of both wrestling ability and having personalities.

It’s obvious that vets are going to win both matches. The first is a fun, basic tag match. In the rematch, the Young Lions decide they’re going to get theirs. They enter the ring fired up and taunting the vets. Liger responds by THROWING HIS CAPE AT THEM before the ring intros even start, because he’s the greatest. I had no idea someone could look so offended while wearing a full face mask.

This match quickly turns into a pretty one-sided beating, and made me laugh so hard because angry old masked wrestlers are hilarious. As Kevin Kelly puts it, “Yagi’s background is in baseball. Tiger’s background is in kicking Yagi in the face.” There’s a sequence of Tiger kicking Yagi, then tagging in Liger to kick Yagi when he’s not remotely tired, then Tiger coming back in to beat on Yagi some more. (Yagi gets a dropkick in later.) It’s implied they’re working out some drama in the dojo, and, uh, what the heck is going on in the dojo??? Yushida gets Narita to tap out after a super cool cartwheel dropkick, then KICKS NARITA OFF THE APRON. The Young Lions pick a post-match fight with the bets, and Tiger kicks Yagi so hard he starts bleeding from the mouth. Have fun at your next class, guys!

Worst: A Pimp And His Protégé

The entirety of the Bullet Club content (besides Kelly recapping their drama on commentary multiple times during unrelated matches) for these shows is Tokyo Pimp Yujiro Takahashi and suddenly-not-Leo-Tonga-anymore Hikuleo versus Manabu Nakanishi and Tomoyoki Oka on Feb.5 and Oka and Hiroyoshi Tenzan on Feb. 6. These matches are okay, but don’t really have to do with any storyline.

The most interesting thing, although it’s not especially good, is Hikuleo’s development. He’s Meng’s youngest son and technically still a Young Lion, but has already been inducted into the Bullet Club because he knows the other Tongans in it (and is the little brother of Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa.) He looks super green in the ring because he is, and seems too nice to be in the Biz Cliz.

Much is made of him being 6’8, but he’s got to be the least intimidating 6’8 ever. Despite having played basketball in college, something about the way Hikuleo carries himself in the ring is awkward. He does also some running powerslams in the second match, which invites comparison to much scarier huge guy Braun Strownman. The most impressive thing about Hikuleo right now is seeing smaller guys like Oka figure out how to maneuver him.

We do get some brief, good character stuff from Takahashi and Hikuleo: the Pimp gets the pin in the second match after Hikuleo prevents Tenzan’s run in, which is an important skill for a wrestling faction member, and after both matches Pimp has to jump up to Too Sweet his skyscraper of a partner.

I think this dynamic could bring out good things from both of these guys in the future, if it doesn’t get swallowed up by the Bullet Club passing around notes that say Do You Think Cody Should Be Bullet Club Leader Instead Of Kenny? [ ] YES [ ] NO AND IF YOU CHECK THIS YOU HATE AMERICA.

Worst: Goldberg Podraces

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Young Lion Cup winner Katsuya Kitamura is on a seven-match trial series to prove himself to New Japan Pro Wrestling fans and wrestlers. He had lost all three prior to Road to the New Beginning, and he loses his fourth to Tenzan and fifth to Nakanishi on these shows. The match with Tenzan is all about Kitamura struggling with his opponent’s “experience edge,” while with Nakanishi he doesn’t benefit from his usual strength advantage. They’re pro wrestling matches about one guy not really being ready to be a good pro wrestler yet, so they’re kind of boring.

Kitamura, though. Kitamura is the furthest thing from boring. This guy by far the swolest guy on the New Japan roster! He is also tanned like Hulk Hogan! He also wears a mouthguard that looks like FANGS! His finishing moves are a spear and a jackhammer. He has the potential to be TERRIFYING JAPANESE GOLDBERG, which isn’t a thing I knew I needed before.

Kitamura’s story is off-putting to me because I feel like it’s starting too early. Because of the nature of the Young Lion system and this type of trial match series, we’re seeing him lose a lot. I’ve watched a lot more WWE than NJPW in my life, so I feel like this character should be getting an early Ryback or Braun Strowman-type push. This is not how I’ve been conditioned to experience this type of character. It’s like Goldberg’s first match was with Regal, and then his next six matches were slightly different versions of his match with Regal.

We’ll see two more matches for Kitamura in this series, and he’ll probably lose them. Then he’ll go on excursion, and we’ll see what they decide to do with him and how he develops. Tenzan kind of sums it up in the post-match interview when he says, “I wonder what kind of monster he’ll become,” and

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Worst: The Yoh And Shoh Of Six Man Tag Matches, In Terms Of Being Very Similar

We have another set of very similar matches in the six man tags between CHAOS representatives Yoh, Shoh, and Rocky Romero and Suzukigun members El Desperado and Taka Michinoku, with Taichi for the first match and Kanemaru for the second. Yoh and Shoh as Roppongi 3K are the current IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions (after defeating the Young Bucks at New Beginning in Sapporo), and Rocky Romero usually acts as their manager. Both bouts feature a lot of brawling outside the ring, which is very much Suzukigun’s thing, and very much not Roppongi 3K’s thing.

Roppongi 3K has a non-title match against Michinoku and Kanemaru in Osaka, so Suzukigun is trying to 1) hurt them badly enough beforehand that they’ll get an easy win and 2) bully them into giving them a shot at the tag titles. They’re kind of weird strategies to pursue at the same time. They’re also not particularly exciting to watch in two matches with no other stakes two days in a row.

The best part about these matches was seeing Rocky get in the ring again. He’s been managing since he got Roppongi 3K together (they’re called “3K” because they’re three thousand times better than his previous tag team, Roppongi Vice, he says) and doing a great job, but the dude’s combination charisma and athleticism seems kind of wasted in that role.

There’s Going To Be A Lot Going On In The Taguchi Japan vs. CHAOS Six-Man Tag In Osaka And I’m Not Crazy About A Lot Of It

In Osaka, Taguchi Japan (David Finlay and Juice Robinson) and Toa Henare will face CHAOS reps Toru Yano, Tomohiro Ishii, and Jay White in a six-man tag match. We build to this with Robinson and Henare vs. Ishii and Yano and Finlay vs. White on Feb. 5, and the same people who are going to be in that six man tag match in a six man tag match on Feb. 6. This type of thing can make New Japan kind of exhausting sometimes. Let me break down some of the things going on here:

Best: The Stone Cold Pitbull And Legendary Coward

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Tomohiro Ishii is one of the most intimidating, reliable guys in NJPW. He’s been wrestling since 1996, and his career has arguably just blown up over the past five years. Now he belongs to the promotion’s most dominant faction, and has one of the best theme songs. He gets the best actual wrestling moment of their match on Feb.5 when he delivers an impressive vertical drop brainbuster to the much larger Henare.

Toru Yano is a cowardly dirtbag and one of the best promos in the game. He took Rob Van Dam’s finger point taunt (but with “Y-T-R”) after LOSING TO HIM in a hardcore match. He always, ALWAYS takes off the turnbuckle pad. In the first tag match he TIES JUICE ROBINSON TO A GUARDRAIL BY HIS DREADLOCKS. In the six-man, he tries it AGAIN.

Juice Robinson’s frustrated post-match comments really make it, too: “Listen to me. Every match Toru Yano takes off the damn turnbuckle pad. I’m not saying disqualify him, but we got seventeen young boys sitting around the ring … Tie the f*cking turnbuckle pad back on, because I’m sick and tired of Toru Yano’s bullsh*t.” And I’m sick and tired of looking at your gross dreads, Juice! Sometimes life isn’t fair!

Basically Yano is an absolute legend in the opposite way Ishii is and I have no idea how they get along, but I’m so glad they do.

Worst: Chief Jay Strongbow, Jr.

I seriously don’t know why Henare’s gimmick is happening. The dude is out here in a loincloth and feathery boots and is nonverbal in and around the ring. It’s incredibly uncomfortable to watch, and it looks even worse when he’s in there with the Guerrillas of Destiny and/or Bad Luck Fale, Pacific Islander dudes who have actual good characters and aren’t cartoons from the 1950s.

Juice Robinson blatantly points it out in the post-match comments from Feb.5 when he calls Henare over by saying, “Get your Tantanka ass in here. Get over here, Chief Jay Strongbow, Jr.!” People should not be able to destroy your gimmick that quickly! Henare actually uses human language in this segment, but it doesn’t make the gimmick less uncomfortable, just more confusing.

Worst: Finlay vs. White Is Clearly A Placeholder Until A Guy Who’s Actually A Big Deal Is Available For White To Feud With

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David Finlay, the fourth generation wrestler son of Fit Finlay and brother of Hornswoggle, and Jay White came up as Young Lions together and have competed many times. White has beaten Finlay the past nine times in a row. However, Feb. 5 was the first time they’ve gone toe to toe since Jay White discovered My Chemical Romance and became SWITCHBLADE Jay White! Since then, the 25-year-old White has held his own against Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom and beaten Kenny Omega for the IWGP United States Heavyweight Championship. His defeat of Finlay was almost as suprising! /s

This feud is impossible to get invested in (unless you’re a huge David Finlay mark, I guess) because you know they’re just keeping Jay on TV to better establish his character until a more important person is available for him to fight. They basically tell us that outright by repeating how when Jay White joined CHAOS right after rejecting Bullet Club membership he asked “Why don’t members of CHAOS challenge Okada?” Because that would defeat the purpose of being a stable, you edgelord! Hmm, I wonder if White will challenge Okada, or another champion from CHAOS? I guess we can just watch him fight his flabby ex-friend who isn’t getting pushed to the moon until something interesting like that is ready to happen.

Best: Switchblade Jay White, Somehow?

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I will probably make fun of the Switchblade gimmick until White finishes eighth grade and gets over it, but I respect how fully he has committed to this cringey character and how consistently the character is being written. Beating a guy up after a match, then ending the rematch by beating his tag partner into unconsciousness the same way is a good sadistic heel move, even if White still isn’t fully believable when he does it. Bucking convention by coming out to your own theme music instead of your tag partners’ is such a diva, why-did-you-even-join-this-faction-in-the-first-place touch.

This is almost definitely a coincidence, but I also like how his finisher, the Blade Runner, is a swinging reverse STO, which is the same move as Bray Wyatt’s Sister Abigail. Are they a dream match for me? No, because they’d both mutually insist on it being called a NIGHTMARE MATCH and then become best friends. And then Jay White could start projecting knives onto the ring.

Best: The Spanish Announce Table Experience

I was so ready to have to talk crap about commentary, but turns out Kevin Kelly on his own is not bad, just repetitive. When Rocky Romero joins him at the table before the six-man tags featuring Minoru Suzuki both nights, it gets elevated to Actually Decent. You just wait until Don Callis gets back, though. THEN I’ll have commentary stuff to be mad about!

The main reason to listen to the English announce table is because they’re NJPW’s Spanish announce team. Rocky points this out and says, “This is the worst spot in all of professional wrestling.” Heels will feud with the Japanese commentators at times, but they will straight up manhandle, threaten, and assault the English language announcers on a regular basis. The best SAT moment here is when Naito holds up his fist for Kelly to bump while looking like he’s going to punch him any second. He doesn’t this time, but the tension is real and Kelly reacts like he’s being mugged.

Best: The Surgeon And The Bruiser

The best storyline on these shows and one that will definitely carry beyond Osaka is the budding feud between Togi Makabe and Minoru Suzuki. This develops in and around two six-man tags building to an eight-man tag on Feb.10, because NJPW.

Minoru Suzuki is the scariest dude in this promotion. He’s a surgeon and a sadist in the ring, a man who takes pleasure in expertly taking his opponents apart body part by body part. After he lost the hair vs. hair deathmatch at Wrestle Kingdom 12, he got his dignity back by winning the IWGP Interconteintal Championship from Tanahashi, who is basically John Cena, and kayfabe hurting him so badly he was taken off the road (a cover for his taking time off to recover from a shoot knee injury.)

If you like really good grapplers and submission style wrestlers but aren’t yet familiar with The Man With The Worst Personality In The World, you should do yourself a favor and watch a bunch of Suzuki matches. He calls his finisher, a cradle piledriver, a “Gotch-Style Piledriver” because he is on the Karl-Gotch-referencing level of old school. I love watching him wrestle, and I want him to never ever win because he is evil and scary and very mean to everyone.

Togi Makabe is another dude who’s been around a long time, and this feud might be the start of something big for him. He’s a violent brawler and a big fan of using chairs and chains, whether they’re legal in the match or not. He’s very influenced by Bruiser Brody and enters to a cover of “Immigrant Song” (so we hardly ever hear his theme due to international copyright issues).

Makabe clearly has it in for Suzuki from the start of the first match and goes right after him. Suzuki tries to maintain his usual cold demeanor, but you can see he’s revved up by Makabe’s spirit. Makabe calls him out after the ring and demands a title shot, which immediately drives Suzuki into a chair-beating, Kevin Kelly-manhandling rage. In his official post-match comment, Makabe says he’s been frustrated with his career, and that he blames the establishment.

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Makabe demands a title shot again before their next match, but doesn’t wait for an answer before attacking Suzuki.

Suzuki hits Makabe with a Gotch Piledriver after the match and tells him to shut his mouth. He acts like he’s above the whole thing to the point of calling Makabe a peasant. But something tells me Makabe isn’t going to stop there, you guys! This might be the thing I’m most hyped to see continue in Osaka and beyond.

Best: No Es Tranquilo Por CHAOS

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In Osaka, five members of CHAOS will all five members of Los Ingobernables de Japon in singles matches, with three titles and the power structure of NJPW in the balance. There’s a shoot element to that last part as well, at least in terms of character popularity. Kazuchika Okada was ranked PWI’s best wrestler of 2017, and there’s no question he’s one of the best in the world. He’s been the face of NJPW and one of its most popular wrestlers, but he has recently been overtaken by Tetsuya Naito. I broke down their journey in my WK12 preview article:

“The story of Okada and Naito started in 2013, when Naito, then a babyface, won the G1 Climax tournament, earning a shot at Okada’s title at Wrestle Kingdom 8. However, due to Naito’s unpopularity with fans, NJPW held a poll to determine whether this match would be the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 8. The fans voted Naito and Okada out of the slot, and Okada defeated Naito to retain the title.

“Naito then left NJPW for CMLL in Mexico, where he joined the heel stable Los Ingobernables. He returned to NJPW with a new heelish scorn for the fans and that badass signature eye taunt. He now leads his own heel stable branch, Los Ingobernables de Japon, and ironically has a lot more fan support than when he was a babyface. This is his first time main eventing Wrestle Kingdom, and Okada’s fifth.”

I don’t think a single person didn’t want Naito to beat Okada at the Tokyo Dome, but he lost. He even played to the crowd like a babyface for the first time in YEARS, and he lost. And that’s why he lost. He has returned to his heelish ways now, but still gets babyface chants. Meanwhile, Okada and CHAOS (at least the five members with singles matches in Osaka) are still seemingly babyfaces, but Okada’s opponents get dueling chants with his. Okada also stuffed money in Sanada’s mouth a little while ago and got outright BOOED before his next match, which the NJPW crowd hardly ever does.

Okada’s been back to his regular face of the company self since then, but dude has the least sympathetic storyline ever going on right now. He’s in the middle of a record-breaking IWGP Heavyweight Championship reign. His goal is to make it last over 600 days and we’re currently in the 500s, PLUS he and Goto went after Evil and Sanada’s tag titles! TFW you’re a beautiful, unstoppable professional wrestling champion and you just gotta get more titles, amiright? I love Okada; Okada is great; I really want to see him lose that gold.

Meanwhile, the story for his challenger Sanada, who still acts like a heel but is getting babyface reactions, is that he has the potential to be a singles champion, but we don’t know if he has the passion to take advantage of the opportunity. He’s a much more exciting wrestler than he used to be, and the ten man tag match and IWGP Tag Team Championship match seem to show that he’s stepping up. He goes toe to toe with Okada, manages to hit him with his own finisher, and delivers a very cool mic drop promo in which he says he’s taking the belt.

This is by far the most compelling of the CHAOS vs. L.I.J. feuds, but all were developed in the tag matches on the Road to New Beginning. Sometimes these giant tag matches can kind of blend together, but the ten man was very entertaining and effective: ten guys with defined looks and characters, with clear motivations for both them as individuals and for the teams.

I’m normally pretty neutral on Will Ospreay as a character, but holy flip, he needs to stop what he’s doing with his face. The mugging and the cheeky Nandos of it all is driving me insane, and I have no idea how the crowd is cheering anything he does that isn’t a cool flip. You’re on a team with Okada, dude, you have to know you’re not the handsomest person in the world! Why are you acting like you are? I hope Takahashi, the world’s fuzziest human, absolutely destroys him. That being said, Takahashi vs. Will Ospreay should be great and has become more adorable and chicken-centric than I expected.

Yoshi-Hashi vs. Naito parallels the Okada vs. Sanada storyline in that we’re all wondering if YH will step up to Naito’s level. I mean, that’s what we’re supposed to be wondering, but really we’re all wondering when Chris Jericho will come back and attack Naito again. Sorry, Yoshi-Hashi.

Depending on how these single matches turn out, there could be a disrupiton of the NJPW status quo in Osaka. It’ll be interesting to see if Los Ingobernables de Japon get the level of power to match their level of popularity.

I’ll see you back here after The New Beginning in Osaka on February 10, possibly after shaking my fist and yelling “OKADAAAA” at my computer screen if he retains.

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