Previously on NJPW: Almost every dude wrestling promotion in Japan was represented at the Giant Baba Memorial Show and I learned the 67-year-old Dos Caras is probably in better shape than me, which is fine!
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And now, the best and worst of the New Japan Road show from February 21, 2019, at Korakuen Hall that will be remembered as Iizuka’s retirement show.
Worst: You Already Know Who It Is
This show was extremely good throughout, so I’m just going to get this out of the way – the weak link on the card is the dads and Young Lions match. It’s the one you would expect to be the weak link just looking at the card. Still, it’s alright! The match most notably continues the rivalry between Henare and Tsuji which has seen Henare seem to really, finally gotten it together. It ends when Henare pins Tsuji for the third time with a Toa Bottom, which I think is nice of Kevin Kelly to just call an ura-nage because I get that Henare’s doing a tribute to the Rock and that’s cool, but the name does not make sense without the pun! (It’s still a nice-looking move though.)
Best: Our Shiniest Junior Heavyweights
Part of what makes this show so fun is that it’s almost oddly stacked for a random Road show, featuring the return of wrestlers who were supposed to be on the New Beginning in USA tour but were thwarted by visa issues because the Trump administration is so pro-sports entertainment and anti-strong style wrestling, probably. In the first match of the night, we also get the return of Bullet Club/Australia’s Robbie Eagles and his cyborg scope eye thing!
Eagles and Taiji Ishimori vs. Yuya Uemura and Jushin Thunder Liger, besides Eagles getting the pin on Uemura with a beautiful 450 splash, is all about the Anniversary Show Junior Heavyweight Championship feud. At the time of the challenge, it felt to me like Ishimori should be able to just wreck this old man, but in this match, Liger shows that I’m a horrible ageist and that if he keeps Ishimori as immobile as possible with his tried-and-true submissions, he has a chance. We get an engaging first preview of the physical story they’ll probably tell on March 6, and the post-match brawl and promos ramp up the intensity of the rivalry.
In other junior heavyweight division news, Roppongi 3K defeat El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru, starting the trend of Suzukigun losing every single one of their matches on yet another show, in what was a matchup with championship implications multiple times last year. As we know they’re going to be by now, these teams are really good together. Desperado and Kanemaru nearly beat the number one contenders and Kanemaru is still on his busting-out-old-junior-ace-moves thing, but they lose after an exciting finish with a 3K Outta Nowhere. The variant of this move that doesn’t directly follow Theatrics has really upped Sho and Yoh’s finish game.
But after a good match that gained the challengers some momentum, they are immediately owned by the champions. Shingo Takagi’s level of charisma is unreal right now and he and Bushi look extremely cool as a team after they take out R3K with Rebellion while in street clothes. The only reason it seems like this team should lose the tag titles is if they’re immediately going to chase them again or if Takagi’s moving into the singles title picture.
Best: The Dream Of Ishii-Nagata Is Alive In Korakuen
The question that doesn’t really need to be asked going into the Shota Umino and Yuji Nagata vs. Tomohiro Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi tag match is if the Nagata vs. Ishii feud will pick up again, and the question that really needs to be answered is WHEN IS THE ONE-ON-ONE? Umino and Yoshi-Hashi are both strong supporting players here and the Head Hunter actually looks somewhat tough, but Ishii and Nagata’s interactions are the next step up. The sequence of Nagata just kicking Ishii in the chest rules and is made even more brutal backstage by creating an opening for Blue Justice to call his rival “my low-kick sand bag.”
There’s also some talk from commentary before this match about how Ishii seems like the most likely Chaos member not to be down with their alliance with Hontai because he’s never been part of Seikigun or any Standard Babyface Faction. (Plus, Ishii came to NJPW from other promotions, so he doesn’t even have that dojo boy loyalty element to draw him in.) Could this be a hint at a revived GBH or something? It seems like this mega-babyface group is going to splinter in some way sooner or later. Or maybe the Stone Pitbull could be the BC mole in Chaos? Stay tuned for like the next six months to find out!
Worst: Lobster Boy Smith Jr.
But while it lasts, the most fun things about the Chaos-Hontai alliance are – wait, is this dude okay? What happened here? I am concerned.
Best: Home Team Heroes
Okay, so the most fun things about the Chaos-Hontai alliance are the new tag team combinations, which started with Okada-Tanahashi and spread throughout the group. The dynamic of these isn’t so much “Can they coexist?” as “Hey, tag team wrestling is an actual skill and we don’t normally wrestle together – can we win at this?”
Hirooki Goto and Ryusuke Taguchi go full slapstick as they try to figure this out, between sequences of quality submission-based wrestling, while facing Zack Sabre Jr. and Taka Michinoku. ZSJ vs. Taguchi, which includes Sabre upper-cutting Taguchi in the ass and Taguchi faking out an ankle lock into a cartwheel to a hip attack, makes you wish ZSJ was a junior heavyweight like he really should be because there’s no way this dude is 220 pounds. Michinoku actually breaks out some of his wrestling skill here too, and overall it’s a really enjoyable, technically good, and fresh match.
Backstage, we learn that thankfully, the Coach realizes his heavyweight time has come at last, which is all I really want from the reign of specifically the 68th IWGP Heavyweight Champion.
RISE, TAGUCHI.
The team of Will Ospreay and Hiroshi Tanahashi used to have this dynamic back on the Road to the Tokyo Dome, though not quite as much because the dynamic of that match was “Look at Will Ospreay!” It still seems like they should lose their match against much more experienced tag team Killer Elite Squad, but, as we previously established, Suzukigun Be Losing on this show!
An early highlight of this match is Lance Archer getting a big pop for revealing he’s wearing an Iizuka shirt BECAUSE HE’S A GOOD FRIEND AND FACTION-MATE… and then gets that heel heat back by dropping it in the ring after teasing he’ll throw it to the fans. KES continues to be Jokes Allowed as they start the match by trying to “take down the Ace,” but after an abandoned test of strength, Ospreay is again the focus.
With people constantly saying “He could be a heavyweight!” about Ospreay, which is like, “I guess,” and “He’s the next Ibushi!” when CLEARLY Mao from DDT is the next Ibushi because he’s flippy and more likable and weird and also has a Canadian tag team partner, it’s pretty satisfying to see him get wrecked by Smith and Archer for a while. I’m glad we’re not pretending Ospreay is big now! When he eventually hot tags in after Tanahashi throws hands with the monsters for a while, his flippy stuff feels very earned. With their opponents weakened up, Tanahashi and Ospreay are able to hit offensive moves on their opponents that got blocked earlier in the match, and an Oscutter to Smith ends it.
Backstage, closer to a camera, Ospreay does not look healthy in his face, partly because of that black eye-broken nose combo he apparently sustained during the PAC match. But also, I think he might just look like he’s falling apart physically for the rest of his wrestling career. He tries to sound like a tough guy, which has never worked for him, as he challenges Jay White to a champion vs. champion match at the Anniversary Show. White vs. Ospreay will probably happen and probably be fine, but boy is that a match I would skip if I didn’t have to watch it for this column.
Best: Rampage Against The Dying Of The Light
In the show’s main event, Takashi Iizuka really does it. He commits to the gimmick he’s had for the past eleven years until the very end and gnashes his teeth and raves off into the sunset. It’s pretty amazing.
Before the actual match, it’s worth noting that in addition to making all their free matches Iizuka matches for the past month and promoting some VTRs connected to the Friendship Tag and GBH angle on their YouTube channel, all the recommended videos on New Japan World, even the following day, when I’m writing this, are Iizuka matches from 1989 through 2018. This guy was a midcard babyface or a bizarre wild man heel for his thirty-two-year NJPW career, as well as a dojo trainer at some point, and for him to get this kind of a sendoff is both odd and cool.
For his final match, Iizuka gets to face to two men he most dramatically betrayed (Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Toru Yano) and the ace of the company (Kazuchika Okada), teamed up with Taichi and his three-time World Tag League partner Minoru Suzuki, who debuted against Iizuka back in 1988 and became the 1 in his 0-1 MMA record fifteen years later. Okada said in an interview that he thought Iizuka would be a monster until the end, Tenzan held out hope to the point that he held a vigil at a shrine that he thinks entombs Iizuka’s soul because apparently Iizuka has a Buffy vampire/demon metaphysical situation, and announcer Shinpei Nogami, who Iizuka tortured for years, hopes he leaves the wrestling world as “the normal, good man he was.” Basically, the stakes of this match are extremely high and extremely weird, and this six-man tag has more build than several Wrestle Kingdom 13 matches.
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The match is set with Nogami returning to commentary, Suzuki and Taichi entering to Iizuka’s theme as he gets a huge pop for entering through the crowd, some of whom brought homemade IRON FINGERS FROM HELL. He immediately attacks Nogami, who has to call the match shirtless now, and gets cheers for all his normal heel stuff. Tenzan, getting a top star pop and again wearing a Friendship Tag shirt, makes another emotion plea to Iizuka, but a Suzukigun bell-jumping attack ends up starting the match.
Iizuka vs. Tenzan within a tag match in 2019 isn’t normally something you’d care about, but in this context, everyone cares a lot and it’s awesome. The extra-mean – because there’s an emotional torture component this time – heels trap Tenzan in their corner, and while the ref’s distracted, we get the segment’s first amazing Suzuki moment. We see him make the conscious decision to not just twist one of Tenzan’s hands, but also try the taste of HUMAN FLESH because it’s Iizuka’s last match, might as well see what this is all about!
We get Yano stopping Taichi from removing his own pants and then ripping them off himself to fill Taichi with shame, some actual good wrestling between Suzuki and Okada, and a surprise good wrestling moment from Iizuka when he traps the Rainmaker in a knee bar that he really struggles to escape. But in the end, the match appropriately boils down to another, more lucid Iizuka vs. Tenzan exchange. Tenzan pins his former friend after a moonsault to win the match and CRIES over his body, and the fact that this comes from two tough old men takes the moment to another level.
The post-match sequence is just melodramatic theater in a way that NJPW doesn’t do all that often, but that is so over on this very special occasion. Iizuka looks tortured by the support of the fans as they keep chanting louder and louder – as Japanese commentary points out, with the loudest chants of his entire career – and Tenzan refuses to give up hope. Iizuka holding back his own hand from a handshake, finally doing it while covering his eyes, and then just biting him when he goes for a hug, triggering a Suzukigun beatdown/sendoff? Incredible. It’s dramatic and so silly and everyone is into every second of it.
The kicker ends up being that Taichi’s not even sure if Iizuka’s retiring and tries to get him to make a speech while the “Bald Malice” just monster-arms his way out of Korakuen Hall. Everything ends in chaos as noted Iizuka-whisperer Suzuki grabs the bell to make an almost indignant ten-bell salute for his… friend (?) while Shinpei Nogami is crying.
In a world where wrestlers never seem to retire and kayfabe is a lot weaker than it used to be, Iizuka doesn’t come back for an encore or make any backstage comments. He commits to the gimmick until the very end. Taichi picking up the Iron Fingers, left right in the middle of the ring, and his promo backstage end up feeling like a post-credits sequence in a Marvel movie.
So… goodbye, Iizuka! Your gimmick was insane and you caused a lot of disqualifications via stabbing and your matches could be hit-or-miss in terms of entertainment value, but it turns out everyone loved you a lot!
It’s going to be weird not having this guy around anymore, but wrestling goes on, and I’ll see you back here after the weekend to talk about Ring of Honor’s annual field trip to New Japan.
