Previously on NJPW: Tanahashi challenged the victorious Okada, Will Ospreay almost destroyed his neck for real, and Suzukigun could not handle Naito’s whole gimmick.
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Best/Worst: The Cycle Continues
The first two nights of the Road to Wrestling Dontaku, both at Korakuen Hall, were fairly low-stakes. Something that contributed to that atmosphere was that both shows featured Young Lion one-on-one matches and tag matches in which YLs or relative rookies had the most to do.
We start off Night One with Tetsuhiro Yagi vs. Yuya Uemura, in Uemura’s first NJPW match besides his Lion’s Gate debut. Uemura has a distinctive face, a good physique, and shows personality. He gets his butt thoroughly kicked by Yagi, who I’m sure was happy to be on the other side of the training/abuse match for once.
The other new dojo kid, Yota Tsuji, comes off like a big, dumb lug. Just a total goon. I don’t know if this is a bold choice he’s making as a performer or if this is what he’s actually like, but I’m excited to find out!
I’m also excited to see where Ren Narita is in two years. At this point I think he’s developed enough that we can see he has the potential to be a great heel as well as a great overall wrestler.
Shota “Red Shoes, Jr.” Umino also looked like a future star, or at least significant player, in his match with Yuji Nagata. He showed impressive fighting spirit by going in hot with the strikes, kicks, stomps, and chops to the stronger, sturdier vet. Nagata, of course, dominates most of the match, but Umino gets a missile dropkick in later and still comes out the other side looking good.
Oka vs. Nakanishi was interesting because Oka seems like he could be the next Nakanishi-type character. Oka asks him for more shoulder tackles; Nakanishi asks for more strikes; they both put each other over as tough guys. Nakanishi still gets a ton of offense on Oka and eventually taps him out in the Argentine backbreaker rack, but looks hilariously terrified when he realizes he’s about to be put in the Boston Crab.
Tenzan and Henare vs. Ishii and Yano on the 13th and Makabe and Henare vs. our favorite Chaos odd couple on the 14th mainly serve to further the Henare vs. Ishii feud that’s been simmering in these midcard tag matches for a while now.
After getting one near-pin on Night One, Henare goes straight for Ishii for the rematch. He actually speaks words in the ring, yelling “Everybody wants to see this!” as a reason they should FIGHT IMMEDIATELY. The accuracy of this is questionable, but way to put over your only feud, Henare!
The slow evolution of Henare into a cool wrester continues… slowly! He gets an exciting sequence in which he gets two convincing near falls in quick succession, one after reversing a vertical brain buster into a small package, the other after a rad spear. The attire is still a crutch, but his character makes way more sense now. He still has some issues with selling (how he does it, when he doesn’t do it), but he’s still pretty green.
Worst: The Midcardiest Midcard Tag Matches Ever
Taguchi, Makabe, and Narita vs. Tiger Mask IV, Nagata, and Umino on the 13th was an extremely nothing tag match, and the semi-rematch (Taguchi, Nakanishi, and Oka vs. Tiger Mask IV, Tenzan, and Yagi) on the 14th was even more so. I usually at least have something to say about whatever shenanigans Taguchi gets up to, but he didn’t get up to much. These matches had the strongest house show vibes in two shows that overall had pretty strong house show vibes.
Both Suzukigun (Taichi, Taka Michinoku, Iizuka) vs. Roppongi 3K (Yoh, Sho, plus Rocky Romero) matches were also extremely nothing, but they were slightly more fun. The contrast of the three Suzukigun men is so wonderfully extreme, especially now that Taka has fully committed to always wearing ZSJ catchphrase muscle shirts. I was also very pleased to discover that one of the Japanese announcers says, “Sho time!” when Sho gets tagged in, and now I’m going to think that every time he does anything cool.
The finishing sequence of the second match was the highlight of this whole mini-rivalry: Sho accidentally hits the ref on the head, so Suzukigun takes advantage of this opportunity to come in and beat up our dumb heroes. Sho manages to fend them off for a while, but Heavyweight Taichi gets the pin. R3K looked the most like chumps they’ve looked in a while, and Taichi continued to live his best heavyweight division life.
Worst Ever But Also Best Ever But Also What In The HECK???: BONE FUCKIN’ SOLDIER?
WHAT IS GOING ON HERE? I wrote a whole separate article that is almost 1.4k words long about the inexplicable, imminent return of BONE SOLDIER, so please just go read that because I can’t talk about this unfathomable development anymore. Tl;dr: BULLET CLUB IS NOT FINE. Also, I hope this is Kitamura!
Best/Worst: Papa Roach Last Resort.mp3
Night One’s main event was an elimination ten-man tag match between Taguchi Japan and Chaos to further Jay White vs. David Finlay for the US Championship, Kushida vs. Will Ospreay for the Junior Heavyweight Championship, Juice vs. Goto for the NEVER Openweight, and Okada vs. Tanahashi for the Heavyweight belt and all the ace glory. (Michael Elgin and Yoshi Hashi were also there!) It suffered from the same lack of urgency and aforementioned house show vibes as the rest of the shows, but featured a lot more good moments.
In the US title picture, Finlay is either trying to look more intimidating or legitimately being pushed to the edge by his old dojo rival, master of mind games Switchblade Jay White. Finlay’s hair is much wetter and more tangled than usual and he tries to act edgier, but he just can’t stop himself from dishing out those babyface highfives and thumbs ups. I think this might be about as dark as David Finlay gets.
We get a nice shot of Finlay’s angst-ridden profile as White’s titantron plays in the background and a pre-match stare-down between the two. They target each other with intensity (especially White, who’s just a more intense wrestler), and are the sole survivors of their respective factions. After a failed stunner attempt, Finlay eliminates White for the win, and though I still don’t buy him as a legit championship contender, I was happy for him. The wrestlers and production are working hard to make this feud work (including making White and Finlay’s last singles bout the free match of the week on NJPW’s youtube channel), but it’s still just not doing it for me.
My main takeaway from Kushida vs. Ospreay, and all of Ospreay’s other stuff, was that he is going to continue to sell that Sakura Genesis neck injury, to the point of literally screaming whenever it is attacked, but not on offense! Ospreay tends to just go into invincible acrobat mode for his big offense spots, no matter what had happened earlier in the match, but it really stands out when he’s being all Matt Jackson about this injury the rest of the time.
Juice and Goto get to do enough of a preview to show they’ll have a good title match. They have the barest minimum of a story, but Juice puts the feud over pretty convincingly in his backstage promo, declaring “Goddmamnit, Juice Robinson’s gotta get a title at some point in his fuckin’ career.” He calls Goto the “benchmark for what a New Japan wrestler is supposed to be” and says he defines strong style in 2018. I’m not sure if he does, but I like this motivation! It helps me get out of that smarky, “Of course they’re going to put the belt on Juice soon; he’s so over an audience lady kissed him when he stuck his face towards her” headspace.
Best: Suzukigun Is Brought To You By Children’s Tears
The Night Two main event, the elimination ten-man tag between L.I.J. and Suzukigun, was my favorite match of the weekend, and probably the best actual wrestling match too.
But first, we have to talk about Lance Archer. Lance Archer has been dubbed “Psycho Sprinkler” and “Mr. Moisture” by the Japanese announce team due to all that water spitting, and I love it. He is also now actively trying to make little kids in the audience cry since that kid crying at Sakura Genesis became such a thing. Hilariously, both kids he tries to get (one a literal baby!) on the 13th are super brave and don’t react. That little girl on the next night was freaked out though, much to her grandma or whoever’s amusement. Watch Archer try to pull this at some indie show in America and get sued.
We didn’t get anything new from Naito vs. Suzuki, but what we got was very good and promised better things to come. After the two exchange strikes in the ring early in the match, Naito saves Evil from a crazy submission hold by just slapping Suzuki upside the back of the head. Suzuki tries to break Naito’s arm with the help of the barricade and looks like he might tap the L.I.J. leader out of a while, but their confrontation is largely a brawl. After escaping a piledriver on the apron, Naito (in true Naito fashion) eliminates himself to eliminate Suzuki, and looks super pleased about this. This, of course, enrages Suzuki, who attacks him (and a Young Lion for good measure) (I think Uemura and Tsuji might just die during this feud.) He and Naito again brawl to the back, and keep brawling to the back during the post-match comments. I’m glad the camera crew let us know what they were up to! This title match is going to be hard freakin’ core.
The finish of this match is really fun too, and leads us right into our next televised/streaming Road To show on the 23rd, at which Kanemaru and Desperado will defend their titles against Hiromu and Bushi. The Ticking Time Bomb is left as L.I.J.’s sole survivor to face off against Lance Archer, in a junior heavyweight crowd fave vs. giant monster heel matchup we can all get behind. When Hiromu eliminates Archer with a dropkick off the apron, he still has to face his current main rival, El Desperado, to pick up the win for his team. We get another taste of a more fired up and serious Hiromu before Kanemaru interferes to help his partner get the cheap-ish pin.
All these people have had better matches in the past, and are likely to have good to great matches over the next few weeks. For the most part, these matches at the start of the Road to Wrestling Dontaku sure happened. I’ll see you back here for the next Best And Worst Of NJPW after some higher-stakes bouts on the 23rd and 24th!
