Previously on NJPW: Davey Boy Smith Jr. returned with the world’s most baffling hairstyle, Ishii proved that he has the strongest skull on earth and/or terrible brain damage, and Taguchi revealed that somehow in-ring helmets have been legal this whole time.
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And now, the best and worst of Destruction in Beppu from September 17, 2018.
Worst: Respect For The Aged
Destruction in Beppu started off with a mixed bag of tag matches, most under ten minutes long. The dullest of these was the dads-and-not-yet-dojo-grads six man in which Yuji Nagata, Manabu Nakanishi, and Yuya Uemura defeated Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima, and Yota Tsuji. The teams have a decent old man fight with a few EXTREMELY FIRED UP interludes between Uemura and Tsuji, whose rivalry continues to burn with a fire hotter than that fueling most current feuds in many companies.
This opening match also features some nice nostalgic moments from the recently-returned Kojima on his own and as half of TenCozy (I’ve decided to go with TenCozy rather than TenKoji for the house style spelling of this tag team for this column because, while both are valid, that one’s more fun to me.) He didn’t get a great crowd reaction in Beppu, but Kojima’s return on the Road to Destruction was yet another moving NJPW return from injury this year, this one from a nine month absence after Fantastica Mania. His comeback tag match at Blue Justice 8, Nagata’s anniversary show, pit Kojima, Tenzan, Nagata, and Nakanishi against Makabe, Honma, Juice Robinson, and David Finlay, teams that called back to various mid-2000s NJPW storylines.
It felt very much like the special occasion, exhibition eight man tag that is was, with even the trash talk (Juice’s “Come on, Nakanishi-san!”) pretty respectful. Mostly it reminded me just how absurdly lovable Kojima is with his ridiculous Machine Gun Chops and his coat and his catchphrase. He pinned Finlay after a lariat for the win, and delivered a speech with the common theme of recent NJPW return speeches, that watching pro wrestling will motivate you when you’re struggling with issues in your life. “But Kojima’s always tweeting about what’s bugging him,” says commentary. True! But it was still a good speech, and the New Japan Dads/Third Generation Club were very charming, finally reunited on camera, backstage.
Okay, the time for charming middle-aged wrestlers is over! Let’s talk about Killer Elite Squad defeating the Best Friends!
K.E.S. faces an actual established tag team in their second match back, and one that will definitely be competing in World Tag League and possibly for titles before then. It’s dads vs. millennials, and the millennials… seem to really weird out the crowd that doesn’t really know them with the hand-holding at the beginning and then never fully win them over. But it seems like the match is mostly about depicting the always-over-in-Japan Killer Elite Squad as dominant monsters anyway!
Throughout the match Smith and Archer are definitely playing extra mean and scary, but the way they do that includes moving a lot more slowly than most people on this roster, which, along with the crowd’s lack of enthusiasm for the heroes, gives this match an odd vibe. Beretta and Chuckie T do their best and get in a few moments of creative offense against their larger opponents, but ultimately fall to the Killer Bomb.
The most fun thing about the mini-feud between these teams right now is their EXTREMELY different promo styles, with Beretta calling Lance Archer “your long-leg, horse-hair-having-self.” Archer, on the other hand, is one billion times more keyed up and still hates how much time off he had, and declares, “Kenny Omega… dead. Your golden boy, Okada… dead,” like he thinks literally killing people is legal in wrestling. Davey Boy’s promo actually earns a JUMP CUT before he starts talking, which New Japan never does! They just let people ramble, usually! So what the heck happened there?
(I probably didn’t need to spend a whole paragraph on that, but it made me laugh a lot. A heavyweight tag division of mainly K.E.S., Best Friends, G.o.D. and Evil and Sanada sounds very fun to me right now for the promos alone.)
I thought the best of the weaker tag matches on the show was David Finlay and Ren Narita vs. Toa Henare and Shota Umino. All these guys really want to fight each other for C Block rival reasons and dojo rival reasons! Both of these pairs have worked together enough at this point that they show good tag teamwork as well. They also all, as characters and wrestlers, are at points in their careers where they have something to prove, so the energy and passion levels are high. Umino, who gets hit in the face at some point during the match and has to do an extra-intense Boston Crab spot with blood streaming out of his nose, gets a close nearfall and some good kickouts, but ultimately eats the pin after a Stunner from Finlay.
INSANITY: Biting Spirit Unleashed
New K-Dojo Young Lion Ayato Yoshida has been working to prove himself since he debuted on regular NJPW programming in tag matches and a singles against Chase Owens, so in Beppu New Japan is like NOW FIGHT A CANNIBAL!
Takahashi Iizuka’s last singles match was at the TakaTaichi show in January, a hardcore match with Jun Kasai that ended in a No Contest. His last singles match in New Japan was at New Beginning in Sapporo in 2017, when he was defeated by Yoshi-Hashi. His last singles match in New Japan before that was in 2013, so his entrance video is still from before the 52-year-old developed a taste for human flesh. Iizuka enters through the crowd from like three flights of steps away from the ring, doing monster arms and raving the whole time, so you know this is going to be amazing.
He attacks Yoshida with a chair outside the ring, that muzzle forcing him to do more normal wrestling things. But he doesn’t want to do normal wrestling things! He wants to BITE! So he GRABS KEVIN KELLY AND FORCES HIM TO REMOVE THE MASK and then tries to bite him and knocks him over! This… may have been one of my top New Japan moments of the year.
Iizuka, in the ring, goes after his poor young opponent and the referee with his powerful jaws. Yoshida actually gets in some offense and a few nearfalls! But, like all human, it turns out Yoshida is very vulnerable to BEING STABBED. Fortunately for him, stabbing someone with a metal, pointy-fingered glove is extremely illegal in here in the King of Sports, so Iizuka gets DQ’ed.
Most of the time in these trainee matches the most important thing is that you do your best and show fighting spirit, but in this one, the important thing was for Yoshida to survive! And he did, while picking up his first NJPW singles win! Yay for Yoshida!
Best: The Junior-weight Eight
The junior heavyweight division is still working on rebuilding in the wake of Hiromu’s injury and in preparation for Super Junior Tag League, and we see lot of progress with that in Beppu and Kobe. On this show, we get a rare all-junior eight-man tag in which Taguchi, Kushida, Tiger Mask, and Jushin Thunder Liger defeat a Chaos team of Will Ospreay, Rocky Romero, Yoh, and Sho. It’s a really fun showcase of talent and personalities that also reveals that Rugby Taguchi is here to stay, possibly until the end of the Japan-hosted 2019 Rugby World Cup.
We get some fun rugby-based spots, baseball-based spots for some reason, and Yoh making the brave decision to STAB TAGUCHI IN THE BUTTHOLE with his fingers because YOU LIVE BY THE BUTT, YOU DIE BY THE BUTT, and then making it one million times grosser by WIPING HIS HAND OFF ON WILL OSPREAY’S PANTS. There’s also some straight-up good wrestling along with the slapstick between possible tournament finalists Kushida vs. Will Ospreay.
Rocky AGAIN loses the match for his team, and again to his old enemy Tiger Mask! Could this mean we’re really getting Tiger Liger tag champs and then a feud between them and Roppongi 3K?
Backstage, Romero blames the now much less plausible jet lag for another loss to Tiger Mask, otherwise impossible because he and his boys are “just three Greek gods carved from the finest Italian marble that was ever made on this earth.” Yoh and Sho remind us that “Today Rocky lost. It’s always Rocky who loses,” and they are ready for and serious about the junior tag tournament, which they won as a very new, fresh from excursion tag team last year.
Kushida is, as always very serious about his Lower Weight Class Pride, and, in what turns out to be a misdirect, believes he’ll face Ospreay at King of Pro Wrestling, telling the Brit, “See you in Sumo Arena, bastard.”
Best: The Halloween Slanderer Has Logged On
We got hints of it before, but the Suzukigun (Zack Sabre Jr., Kanemaru, and Desperado) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Evil, Sanada, and Bushi) six-man tag finally, truly starts to bring Los Ingos out of limbo with a fresh storyline.
It starts with a nice moment of Taka Michinoku and ZSJ playing off this not super enthusiastic crowd, with Michinoku unsatisfied with the volume of their response to “WHO’S GONNA WIN?” and Sabre looking openly pissed off about it. Taka also sets up the focus of this match by introducing the King of Darkness as “Everything is NOT Evil!” SHOTS FIRED.
What follows is a solid trios bout in exactly the way you’d expect from these teams, and does indeed conclude with the continuation of the Evil vs. ZSJ feud. Evil gets the crowd going with a fisherman buster on Sabre, who focuses on his powerful right arm and locks on a modified octopus hold that Evil has to escape with a teeth rope break. Sabre ultimately wins the match for his team by countering an Everything Is Evil set up with a surprising bridging hold. Evil is SHOCKED.
He’s so shocked and angry and stays in the ring going on a somewhat-smoldering FACE JOURNEY!
Is it a Face Journey Of Future Revenge??? The backstage comments say yes, as Evil threatens to, again, “THROW [ZACK SABRE JR.] INTO THE DARKNESS OF HELL.”
Our villains cut a promo that cuts to THE VERY CORE of Evil’s identity, with Taka claiming, “you are not evil anymore” and “everything is NOT evil” in English again because I think he thinks this is very clever. Zack says he’s the real evil one, so this feud is now fully based around WHO IS MORE EVIL, our babyface named “EVIL” or this bratty socialist tentacle monster? I’m extremely invested in this. You can’t being evil from Evil, you monsters! It’s EVERYTHING to him!
Best: Guitar Dad Vs. Depressed Millennials
When Yano is the least volatile person on your four-man team, you know your faction has a problem. But I’m pretty sure Okada, Yano, Yoshi-Hashi, and Jay White knew that way before Tanahashi, Makabe, Honma, and Juice Robinson beat them in this extremely Can They Coexist tag match.
In addition to the Chaos drama, Okada and Tanahashi have been escalating this chapter of their rivalry (and this is the last preview before their next singles match), so both teams enter in serious business mode. Okada backs Switchblade into the corner so he can start against Tanahashi, and White actually lets it happen… for a teasing moment of very fired up wrestling before he tags himself in to huge boos. Within the solid tag action, Okada holds out an olive branch by holding Tanahashi back for White to hit him, and White just doesn’t do it and gets back in the ring instead. YOU COULD HAVE BEEN SOMETHING SPECIAL. Imagine the potential power of a Rainmaker-Switchblade heel tag team!
The tag match largely continues as normal – something that makes NJPW screwy booking and shenanigans and betrayals easier to swallow than in other companies is that they still mostly let good wrestling happen around them – until Yoshi-Hashi escapes Pulp Friction. White runs in to try and attack Juice, but Juice dodges, causing White to knock down Yoshi-Hashi. THIS IS THE EXACT SAME THING HE BERATED OKADA ABOUT IN HIROSHIMA. But White, of course yells at Yoshi-Hashi here. Juice pins Yoshi-Hashi after Pulp Friction to win the match for this team, and White yells at OKADA again despite basically having just lost his team the match. Okada looks like he’s barely tolerating it, while Handsome Prince Tanahashi goes directly to Yoshi-Hashi’s side before either of the Head Hunter’s stablemates.
Okada does eventually help Yoshi-Hashi, the most desired man in professional wrestling, out of the ring, but Hash ASSERTS HIMSELF IN THE WORKPLACE and shoves his sometimes-friend off.
During his exit and backstage, Juice Robinson continues to play Clint Eastwood at that one Republican convention and cut a promo on the absent Cody.
Best: The Greatest Day Of Miho Abe’s Life
Hirooki Goto vs. Taichi for the NEVER Openweight Championship is the culmination of a feud that started in APRIL and honestly, it pays off in spades.
We haven’t seen any Suzukigun title match shenanigans in a while, but Kanemaru’s at ringside from the beginning for this one, so we have an idea of what to expect. Goto enters looking serious, as usual, in even better shape than usual, and ready for anything. So of course, the unbelievable dirtbag that is Taichi powders out almost immediately. He keeps getting in the ring just enough to restart the count and does it enough to earn those rare actual, audible boos. The Holy Emperor finally graces us with some offense after distracting Red Shoes by rolling Miho Abe into the ring. But even that’s just to throw Goto out of the ring and then get involved in the ref dispute so Kanemaru can beat the Fierce Warrior up pretty brutally on the floor.
Taichi’s been getting DQ’ed a fair amount recently, but he also really wants this title, so we get Suzukigun on their absolute most skillful cheating behavior. After some fighting in the audience and something closer to wrestling in the ring, Taichi goes for a powerbomb on the ramp, but Goto escapes to hit a suplex and then suplex Kanemaru onto his opponent. It’s a really good moment of our hero prevailing, and he continues to dominate back in the ring now that things are actually operating like a wrestling match.
Taichi soon brings it to him, though, and, as always, the crowd is extremely into Surprise Hoss Taichi. Still, it looks like Goto could win it with a lengthy sleeper before he sets up for the GTR… only to find himself with no ref and facing the Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions. Things get even more chaotic when Chaos juniors come out to even the fight and Goto dodges the mic stand, but Red Shoes is too straight up unconscious to count his definitive pin.
Goto works to keep Taichi down, but he’s recovered enough to kick out when Red Shoes is actually available to count the pin. And now everyone has Iizuka to deal with! Taichi hits a low blow while the ref is again distracted, but it still takes a few very fired up nearfalls before he wins after busting out the Black Mephisto, which I can’t even remember the last time we saw. AND TAICHI IS NEVER OPENWEIGHT CHAMPION! No one is more emotional about this than Miho Abe, who is so happy she starts WEEPING HEAVILY.
Taichi is too exhausted to gloat or evil laugh or even lipsync most of his theme song.
Backstage, he puts over the G1, reestablishing that being left out of it (the “MISSED CALL OF THE CENTURY”) was a big part of why he returned to TV even more aggressive. He suggests a THIRD PARTY COMMITTEE deal with this issue! I am very much ready for this guy’s championship reign.
I’m also very much ready for Goto, after a match whose screwy booking played to his strengths as an experienced and stalwart hero, not to have this title anymore. His feuds after winning it from Suzuki in the hair vs. hair match resulted in some solid matches but were rarely super engaging. Maybe without the pressure of elevating a title, he’ll have some breathing room for a wider variety of material.
Best/Worst: Disjointed Joy
The Tetsuya Naito vs. Minoru Suzuki, charisma vs. tyrant, the committed ungovernable vs. the self-proclaimed king, special singles match gets an extremely rad hype video. The match, which I was a lot more entertained by than their last one even though I think it had some issues, starts strong from the staredown. Suzuki jumps Naito as he looks away to take off his pants and they quickly start brawling outside the ring. Naito’s on fire when he struggles back from deep in the chairs, delivering chops, but Suzuki soon starts trying to basically yank his arm off with the armbar off the apron.
Commentary notes “the atmosphere has turned dark” because Naito is so beloved and Suzuki is dominating so thoroughly at this point in the match. He prowls around the ring, attacking Young Lions, stopping to tie his shoe, and yelling back at the crowd cheering for Naito. Our hero struggles up only to eat strikes and kicks. After a nearfall, it’s submission torture time with a double wristlock with a bonus, illegal attempt at pinky dislocation behind the ref’s back and a Fujiwara armbar aided by one of Naito’s own wristbands. Naito’s in such bad shape after this that Suzuki sarcastically cheers him and the crowd sounds concerned.
After the first ten, Naito finally starts to even out the match with the forearm exchange. He does his pose while grinding Suzuki’s head with his food, but Suzuki soon dominates again and it seems like he might have snapped (if that’s even a possibility for him.) Back outside the ring, he hits Naito with THE WHOLE TIMEKEEPER’S TABLE, which leaves A DENT.
Red Shoes stops other foreign object attacks, buying Naito some time, but Suzuki meets him on the apron and locks on that hanging sleeper that devastated Naito in Hiroshima. He sets up for what would be a Gotch through the table, but can’t quite get it up, and the spot transitions a bit awkwardly into Naito sending Suzuki through the table with a neckbreaker. It’s a really effective moment and seems like maybe it should have been closer to the end of the match, but it turns out there’s still a lot of the match to go.
Things start to feel like almost a separate match when the MMA psychopath NOW goes for the leg locks. Maybe his reasoning is “Okay, the outside-the-ring stuff backfired with a table spot that maybe should have hurt me for a longer period of time, but there’s always Naito’s taped-up knees!” Suzuki’s in his element, happy to be showing off his grappling skill and for Señor Tranquilo to be screaming and unable to deny his pain, and Naito is freaking dying. Though the match feels long now, the crowd is still invested.
Naito finally makes it to the ropes, but Suzuki starts on the home stretch for the Gotch, which would be an INCREDIBLY depressing ending for the show. Naito escapes, thank goodness, and hits a time-buying Destino. After an open-handed strike exchange, Naito looks like he’s going for his own Gotch, which would have been cool, but turns it into a powerbomb. Another then the Destino wins the match, but I feel like maybe the Gotch was supposed to work out there!
After that choppy but entertaining match and so severely needed win, Naito does an L.I.J. roll call and promises Beppu that next time New Japan is there his team will be reunited. Backstage, he talks about “the courage to accept change,” but keeps it real mysterious. We now know we was referring at least in part to the new L.I.J. member, but what’s next for Naito personally? It seemed like ZSJ for a while there, but now he’s wrapped up with Evil.
Is it Jericho again at Wrestle Kingdom? If so, will it be worth the company’s biggest or second biggest star having little meaningful to do since June and the IWGP Intercontinental Championship disappearing for months? Naito deserves better than to wait around working his butt off and killing it in a heartbreaking G1 and exhibition comeback tags and filler feuds because he somehow needs to prove himself to the international audience against a dude who’s busy touring with his dumb dad rock band.
Will everything eventually work out for Tetsuya Naito, character and performer? L.I.J. sells a heck of a lot of merch, especially in Japan, and everyone who finds out about him loves him, so it seems like they should. But for now, Beppu leaves him with a much-needed but still kind of frustrating victory. I’ll see you back here soon to talk about what went down for in Kobe, which sort of the end of the Destruction tour, but not really because a lot of things really conclude in Long Beach!
