Best And Worst Of NJPW: Road to Wrestling Dontaku 2019, Part 2

Previously on NJPW: Suzuki and Liger got back at it from 2002, Naito and Ibushi are back at it from less than a month ago, and Juice Robinson nearly threw his back out defending the United States Championship.

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And now, the best and worst of the Road to Wrestling Dontaku shows from April 22-24, 2019, at Korakuen Hall.

It’s hard to point out any one thing as a Worst on these shows because while the matches didn’t have the highest stakes, none stood out as actually bad. In this middle period of the tour with Road To shows consisting of all tag matches, most feuds progressed logically but more incrementally than dramatically. That is, except for ONE FEUD, the one with the ornery old men who are saving this paragraph from ending in a boring way!

Best: Road To The Ultimate Dad Fight

The beginning of the feud between Jushin Thunder Liger and Minoru Suzuki was a surprise highlight of Sengoku Lord and it continues to steal the show in turns of sheer drama throughout these shows. In addition to still being solid in the ring, their character work is that of veteran stage performers who have been touring for decades and are experts at their craft.

On April 22, Liger is fully the comic book hero and Suzuki brings the sadism and that armbar off the ring apron with crunches that’s basically weaponized Pilates. On April 23, there’s a simmering, not-quite-pull-apart finish. On April 24, Liger’s 30 Year Anniversary [of the Liger character] Match, in the humble position of third match on the card, features an unusual amount of talking for New Japan and even a prop in the form of MMA gloves, but they pull it off before and after the match and backstage.

As much as these two are great at talking and accuse each other of being all talk, it also includes the most interesting in-ring sequence between them when Liger double legs Suzuki and seems to be trying to make a statement and meet him on the shoot style level and Suzuki loves it. This could come back later!

There are also comments backstage that definitely seem like they will come back later and are both so incredibly well done and stressing me out with their possible implications. Liger communicates with his stands up for the honor of pro wrestling and New Japan while also pointing out that despite Suzuki’s King of Pancrase MMA grandstanding he’s being a huge hypocrite by attacking outside of the ring with weapons like a psychopath, including trying to stab Liger in the eye with a pen. Retirement Tour Liger is officially Too Old For This Shit with lines like “Go ahead and try to retire me” and asking why Suzuki is even allowed to compete in NJPW when he pulls this kind of stuff constantly.

Meanwhile, Suzuki seems more and more set on forcibly retiring Liger early and not worried about his position in the company even though he was previously exiled from it for two years. Nobody’s put his career or anything on the line YET, but Suzuki’s the guy who put his hair on the line against Goto at Wrestle Kingdom 12 when he didn’t even need to because he was so sure he could win, so it seems like there are a lot of places this could go while staying true to who these wrestlers are.

Something that I think might actually have weakened these tag matches – or might just be my personal gripe – is the English commentary team falling into that thing they do sometimes where it seems like they want to be recording some kind of podcast companion to the show going on (last-minute edit: an official, corporate English-language podcast was actually announced and then released while I was writing this) before their eyes and the actual action is interrupting them. On April 23 they sound like their conversation is being inconveniently interrupted by exciting parts of action rather than excited by the action. Relevant context along with play-by-play is helpful and historical context is cool in moderation but hearing a really sick forearm land is so much more of why people watch wrestling.

Best: The Submission Subgroup

You know what’s another reason people watch wrestling, or at least some people watch some wrestling? Bitchy heel teams! And Zack Sabre Jr., Taichi, and Taka Michinoku deliver one of these in spades with Z.T.T. (pronounced Zed-T-T or it’s not right.)

Jeff Cobb still isn’t on the tour at this point so these three are up against clearly the babyfaces who do not have anything else going on (at least before Best of the Super Juniors is announced) and decided to have the most fun with it. They commit to the bit of their new team so hard that at first I thought maybe they could eventually commit a faction mutiny in the future, and I still kind of think that, but the way they end the group – with Taichi and ZSJ somehow able to play off each other so well despite not understanding like 80 percent of what the other is saying – when Sabre says he has to go home to the U.K. for a while makes this seem unlikely to lead to even a 6-man Championship match, though they should totally get a 6-man Championship match.

While the TTS to Suzukigun’s Girls Generation wins all their matches, these also lead to 1) possibly a RevPro title challenge by Yoshi-Hashi, which is laughed off, and 2) a reminder the Rocky Romero is a really good wrestler. And what better time than when he’s about to return to singles competition for Best of the Super Juniors!

Actually, both in and out of the feuds for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship and Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships, we get multiple reminders of the skills of juniors that haven’t gotten chances to shine lately. Tiger Mask, Kanemaru, and especially El Desperado (with his romantic/concerning new shirt design) look good and get heated in their tag matches and BOSJ hopeful Ren Narita makes me wish so much I could watch nine singles matches from him instead of someone whose name rhymes with Drip Warden.

Best: Hints Of Higher Voltage

Through his rivalry with Shingo Takagi, Sho has to be currently one of the most anticipated BOSJ competitors, especially now that he’s brought back the Shock Arrow and is showing more of that intensity in his wrestling and persona. He pulls off some sick deadlifts against heavyweights, but both he and Takagi really get to shine during the April 24 main event. Sho is so focused on taking it to Takagi that Shingo questions (as does commentary, repeatedly) if he cares about their feud more than the tag titles and if this will cost them the gold. Going into the tag title match, this feud between individuals overshadows the team vs. team conflict, which doesn’t seem ideal for that title picture.

Best/Worst: Yoh Are The Weakest Link

Unfortunately, while the Yoh vs. Bushi half of the tag title feud features quality wrestling, it noticeably hasn’t grabbed the attention of the crowd the way Sho vs. Takagi has. The other two set their sights on each other so much further in the past and have so much more unique chemistry, especially for the smaller guy division, and have the novelty of a possible First Time Ever singles match on their side. Yoh vs. Bushi, meanwhile, are clearly just fighting each other because the other person they could be fighting is busy, which seems to contribute to the quietest crowd reactions of these three Korakuen shows during their part of the main event on April 23.

The IWGP Heavyweight Championship feud also continues to feel like one of the least passionate and interesting on the tour, even as Sanada and Kazuchika Okada start to one-up each other with variations on their finishers to win the April 23-24 main events. Showing Sanada can also set up his finisher with a tombstone piledriver isn’t the most exciting wrestling revelation in the world, though it fits the story of their rivalry, with the theme Sanada still being just a step behind Okada. It’s not bad, but we saw their most last singles match very recently and the ways they’ve heightened this feud so far haven’t raised it to the heights of those around it.

A Lot Better Now: Kleptomania Klub

A feud that has recently picked up is that between Togi Makabe and Yano and the Guerrillas of Destiny after the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship match that also included Taguchi for good guys and Hikuleo for the bad boys good bad guys. Everyone goes way more over the top, starting Yano selling Hikuleo’s chops like they’re killing him, and generally leans into the goofiness of a feud based around belt theft. While the Sons of Haku are more athletic, they also haven’t wrestled as a team in a while and a lack of coordination with Jado gets the team hoisted by its own kendo stick. The champs also get in their ideal trios sequence, a chair shot from Yano leading to a hip attack from Taguchi leading to a clothesline from Makabe, and its overall a fun match to watch.

G.O.D. and MVP keep this energy up in the tag matches over the following shows and spread some of it on to the U.S. Championship Quadrangle Of Friendship/Rivalry on April 23. When Chase Owens, Juice Robinson, Mikey Nicholls, and Bad Luck Fale aren’t cordoned off by themselves their angle – now in its most repetitive stretch as we head towards Owens vs. Robinson III for no discernable reason – doesn’t feel as stale.

Meanwhile, in the higher profile Bullet Club feuds, Dragon Lee and Taiji Ishimori continue to all but guarantee they’ll have a great title match and invoke Hiromu Takahashi while they’re at it, and Hirooki Goto continues to look so much cooler than he has for so long against Jay White. In the main event of April 22, a strong showing for Goto comes to a frustrating end when White pins him after a low blow to a Blade Runner, the type of heel TV match win that definitely makes you want to see the babyface win on the PPV (not exactly, but, you know, the Japanese wrestling equivalent.)

It drives Goto to be even more aggressive while keeping his head in the game enough to escape some Blade Runners in the following matches. If this turns out to be just a temporary power-up for him to give Jay White a more impressive first win after his Heavyweight Championship loss it won’t be shocking, but it will be disappointing.

Best: Star In Their Eyes

As these two battle to maybe get into a title picture soon, we learn that one of our champions, Kota Ibushi, apparently just now signed exclusively with the company even though it very much sounded like he did when he returned from injury over two months ago. Now that he’s exclusive he’s suddenly a Full Company Man and NJPW Homer, saying New Japan was always his ultimate goal and the timing just wasn’t right before, but now that the situation is right, “Actually, I’m thinking I’ll stay here until I die.

At first, I wondered if could be literally, legally true, but then I remembered marriage exists! The jokiness of this exchange with Chairman Sugabayashi made it seem like this might not be the actual term of his contract, but still, this coming from historically a difficult wrestler to lock down is a strong statement.

I don’t think the fans will ever turn on Ibushi or anything like that, it seems like this new commitment has kicked off a honeymoon period for Ibushi and the NJPW live audiences. It makes his decision to commit to the company make even more sense. If he went to AEW, for example, he would always be at least somewhat in the shadow of Kenny Omega, existing, even if the Golden Lovers relationship was dropped, as The Ace’s Boyfriend. In NJPW, he is rabidly loved as a man with no attachments, as well as currently main eventing and in dream team tag matches and in an angle about working to respectfully surpass two of the New Three Musketeers.

There isn’t much to say about the wrestling in this iteration of Ibushi vs. Naito at this point- even less than between Evil and Ishii, who at least change things up with some more technical maneuvers during one tag match and OH MY GOSH THAT HEADBUTT OVER THE ROPE FROM ISHII. Ibushi and Naito have mostly been preview tagging their way down the road and being great at wrestling, as usual! But they also clear up something about Naito’s intentions with the IC title – he doesn’t want the white belt on its own at all.

Naito’s double champ goal now seems like it might be borderline delusional and/or include an unspoken desire to get that win back over Ibushi as an individual, and it makes a lot more sense now with this clarification that it might not be supposed to make sense.

With many, many words about tag matches and character work now behind us, I’ll see you back here after the weekend to talk about the section of the long road to Wrestling Dontaku on which a lot of these previewed matches actually happen!