Best And Worst Of NJPW: Road To Wrestling Dontaku 2019, Part 1

Previously on NJPW: Matt Taven revealed the ultimate ladder match hack, Enzo and Cass showed up to work, and we felt The Allure of 2008 American women’s wrestling and hairstyles.

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And now, the best and worst of this year’s first Road to Wrestling Dontaku show from April 13, 2019.

Worst: Shots Being Shot

I’ll kick off this article with a Worst section, but it’s going to be a pretty positive one. While the tag matches involving the Bullet Club were the weakest parts of this first Road to Dontaku show, they weren’t that bad. They do contain some odd feud choices, though, most notably the Juice Robinson-Mikey Nicholls-Chase Owens-Bad Luck Fale situation surrounding the United States Championship. Unlike most of the other angles on this tour, I don’t think this does much for almost anyone on paper. It doesn’t redeem itself in the ring on Night 1, but it doesn’t damn itself for the rest of the tour either, I guess.

Robinson wins the eight-man tag (Taguchi, Nicholls, Robinson, and Goto vs. Hikuleo, Owens, Fale, and White) for the good guys with a Pulp Friction to Hikuleo and shows through his promo backstage how this feud could possibly escalate to a fun place. He clarifies that his new rave circus gear is “the costume of a man who is focused, of a man who ain’t messin’ around,” drives home that a key element of this feud will probably be if he can bodyslam Fale (If not, we know he’s physically way weaker than Okada), and does it with that energy that made people fall in love with him.

In the same segment, Hirooki Goto reminds us why it will be very sad if he loses his singles match with Jay White and also makes it seem like he’s probably going to lose that singles match with Jay White. These two are beefing because of that exchange they had in a tag match on the last New Japan Cup final. The crowd was extremely into that, but the audience wasn’t as into their exchanges here. Their upcoming singles match seems promising, but there isn’t as much to latch onto leading up to it as is with some of the others on this tour.

The G.O.D. and Taiji Ishimori vs. Basically GBH; Can We Just Call Them G.B.H. Again? team of Tomoaki Honma, Togi Makabe, and Toru Yano has potential as a comedy match but never gets over-the-top enough to be very entertaining. The funniest part might be that Yano seems to agree with Tama Tonga’s statement that “nobody gives a f*ck about no ROH” because he enters having stolen only the IWGP tag belts and then AGAIN steals only these belts even though the ROH ones are also really close by.

Speaking of ROH, the most fun part of this whole feud/G.O.D. double champ reign so far has been the Guerrillas burying Ring of Honor all the way down to the earth’s core directly after their MSG win and the nZo and CasXL (!!!) attack that it has now become clear was 1) a work, and 2) a work only the ROH guys in the match (and Bully Ray) knew about, which is insane. Both promos, but especially Tama’s, are business-exposing, but the closing tie-in to kayfabe with the “you saved energy for that bullsh*t” line is very well done and absolutely brutal.

Best: Princes Of Sport

On the first show of a tour jam-packed with feuds, the best matches might have been the ones not directly building to anything. Everything involving Young Lions killed on this show!

Yota Tsuji finally defeated Yuya Uemura in a one-on-one match – the first straight-up dojo boy battle we’ve seen in a while – and Toa Henare defeated Ren Narita in a match that had a more predictable result, but way more engaging in-ring action than I anticipated. The dynamic of power vs. technical skill (and I am so hyped for Narita to finally join the Adult Lions with that technical skill!) worked perfectly between these two and the fact that Narita had a counter prepared for the first Henare’s first uranage attempt made the finisher feel like a bigger deal when it actually hit.

The six-man tag in which Minoru Suzuki, El Desperado, and Yoshinobu Kanemaru defeated Shota Umino, Yuji Nagata, and Satoshi Kojima also over-delivered – beyond just providing some of my favorite crowd shots of the show. It seemed like this might just be a nothing, mostly dad match, but turned out to be an effective showcase for Future Ace Umino. He gets Gotched in the end, but watching him forge on against Suzuki + goons when they cut him off from his teammates is compelling. I’d definitely be on board with Suzuki being the next big singles match opponent for this kid.

Best: No Gods, No Animal Products

The Kota Ibushi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Intercontinental Championship match feud not only involves some of the best wrestling on the tour so far, which isn’t surprising as these two are very well established to be amazing together by now, but the most interesting character stuff.

After Ibushi won the white belt, he talked about how this meant a lot to him not only because of his rivalry with Naito, but because he had previously fought his “gods” for this title – and the fact that one of them (Shinsuke Nakamura) now wrestles in America made winning it in America even more meaningful. He continued this theme of his IC title story by choosing Sabre as his next challenger because not only had ZSJ beaten him in the New Japan Cup, but he had become “the man who beat a god” as of the previous match.

In contrast to Ibushi’s worshipful respect for the pillars of New Japan’s past, Sabre is narcissistically convinced that he is the company’s future, so throw everyone else in the bin. He declared that both World of Sport and strong style are dead after he beat Tanahashi at MSG and that “Sabre-ism” (definition needed) is the ruling ideology of the day.

After the first night of the Road to Wrestling Dontaku, he gloats about forcing the beloved Ace off the tour with an injury, is an obnoxious internet atheist, and joins Taichi in making fun of Jeff Cobb for being fat. Basically, ZSJ has been writing off everybody in a way that makes it really fun to see him get his ass kicked by babyfaces. His New Japan record at this point means you can never be sure one will, but it also seems very unlikely he’ll beat Ibushi in his first title defense. All this passion and trash talk will definitely make their match more fun though.

I should probably talk more about the actual six-man tag that furthered this feud too, but my observations are basically that it was good, I was surprised by the ending in a good way, you should watch it if you haven’t already, and it reminded us that the Zack Driver is a thing.

Best: Finally, Some True Gang Warfare

The show closes with the purest faction vs. faction match on the card, L.I.J. defeating Chaos in a ten-man tag. All the feuding pairings deliver when its their time to face off in the ring. Roppongi 3K vs. Bushi and Shingo Takagi has great intensity and Ishii vs. Evil rekindles its aggression and makes things more interesting when Evil gets Ishii in the Scorpion Deathlock while Naito pins Rocky Romero for the win. Okada vs. Sanada is the least exciting, but seems to promise better things down the road.

Overall, the Okada-Sanada rematch is one of the weirdest creative choices on this tour. It makes sense in a way because Okada had promised Sanada a title shot out of babyface respect after their New Japan Cup match, but the fact that it’s happening as the Rainmaker’s first defense makes the result seem even more set in stone. They’re going to have to change things up to keep the IWGP Heavyweight Championship feud from being overshadowed by others on the tour, but the fact that Okada basically said as much backstage makes it seem like they might.

Another odd choice that you have to admit makes sense in kayfabe logic, the one to give Tetsuya Naito nothing to do on this tour, is also pointed out in a way that makes it more digestible. The lampshading of his L.I.J. support role could be a legitimate tease or just trolling, but it assures everyone he’ll have more important things to do in the future. Naito at least gets an exchange with Okada that makes me go HMM, A MAIN EVENT PREVIEW FOR DOMINION AND/OR WRESTLE KINGDOM 14 PERHAPS QUESTION MARK and gets the win in this match and gets to make a speech. It’s an entertaining ending to an overall entertaining show, a really solid first night of the Road to Dontaku.

I’ll see you back here to talk about the pretty weird-looking Sengoku Lord in Nagoya on the 20th and will leave you for now with this link to a picture of a Japanese newspaper article about Okada’s recent marriage to voice actress Suzuko Mimori because OMG they’re so cute and congratulations, champ!