Previously on NJPW: Chase Owens regained his Tongan citizenship, Taguchi got serious, and Okada continued to wear shorts.
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And now, the best and worst of the New Beginning in Sapporo (and also relevant parts of the Road to the New Beginning.)
Best: The New Beginning’s Endings
One of the most surprising elements of the New Beginning tour so far is that it’s making me have FEELINGS about Takahashi Iizuka! Iizuka is retiring on the 21st, and while his tag matches with Taka Michinoku against Tenzan and Tiger Mask, then Tenzan and Narita aren’t in-ring classics, they do kick off his surprisingly emotional final NJPW angle. Backstage earlier in the tour, Tenzan mentioned that he wanted to tag with his former friend turned rampaging madman one last time. When he tries to actually make this happen, it does not achieve the desired results.
Iizuka and Tenzan were tag partners back when they were both in Seikigun (New Japan’s “regular army,” kind of the precursor to the current “Hontai” or “home team” regular good guy faction) until Iizuka turned heel and joined GBH and became more of a hardcore wrestler/crazy person. NJPW made the April 2008 Makabe and Yano vs. Tenzan and Iizuka match in which Iizuka betrays Tenzan their free match for this week and if you haven’t seen it, I definitely recommend checking it out. It’s really well put together, with Tenzan shielding Iizuka from a chair attack by Makabe with his body like he’s jumping on a grenade and getting busted the heck open by Yano and going on this desperate babyface shine spot… only for Iizuka to just step off the apron rather than accept his tag. I think you could have never seen these wrestlers before and still find it pretty heartbreaking.
After this, Tenzan and Iizuka feuded throughout 2008-9 and again in 2010 after Iizuka joined Chaos, with the highest profile match of their rivalry probably the “Deep Sleep to Lose” match at Wrestle Kingdom V. Like the Makabe and Yano reunion, their current angle almost definitely resonates the most with people who were watching NJPW at least semi-regularly when they were together as a tag team over ten years ago. Still, I am extremely into the idea that Tenzan might save Iizuka so he gets to ride off into the sunset not as a raving lunatic. Or not, and they wrestle against each other one last time in his last match! Whatever unfolds with these middle-aged men and their melodrama, I’m along for the ride.
We also take an emotional ride, this one on a hoverboard, on the January 29 Road to the New Beginning show when Kushida faces Hiroshi Tanahashi in his last NJPW match, at least for now. Sometimes it’s felt like Kushida has Goto syndrome and the NJPW audience doesn’t initially appreciate him as much as they’re supposed to at the beginning of matches, but this time he gets huge cheers upon entering Korakuen Hall. The moment of him just lying down in the ring as Tanahashi’s music starts playing and closing his eyes, maybe overcome by emotion, maybe trying to absorb the feeling of being in this ring for the last time feels very real because it would be such an odd character choice for someone to make.
Tanahashi vs. Kushida ends up being a very beautiful form of what you’d imagine Tanahashi vs. Kushida could be. The beginning perfectly shows off Kushida’s mat wrestling strengths. Then Tanahashi starts really trying to destroy him because he has to – he’s the ace of NJPW and one of Kushida’s closest friends and this is Kushida’s last NJPW match and this is what wrestlers do. Kushida’s able to counter a fair amount, but Tanahashi is able to keep him down with that focus on his knees.
When Kushida gets offense, his usual moves feel extra important. The submission focus of this match, with the countering from the Texas Cloverleaf to the Hoverboard Lock and back again really makes you value how good this guy is, how good both these guys are. The finish is unexpected in a way that works for this situation, with Tanahashi kicking out of the usually protected Back to the Future and Kushida tapping out to the Texas Cloverleaf, which rarely wins the Ace matches. Kushida goes out on his back just like wrestlers are supposed to.
The emotion and the weight of the post-match moment between Kushida and Tanahashi is temporarily broken by who else but Jay White, who gets in the ring and attacks Tanahashi from behind with chairs while Kushida is still recovering. I appreciate that he doesn’t totally ruin it though and Kushida is still able to make his last post-main event speech and tell the audience not goodbye, but “See you later!”
Backstage, the never-quite-as-ace-as-he-should-have-been of the junior heavyweights says, even on his way out, that his goal was always to make the junior division as competitive as the heavyweights, and “I will always carry that burden on my shoulders.” Along with his great matches, that sense of responsibility that Kushida had for the success of his weight class is something that I think is going to be conspicuous in its absence come Best of the Super Juniors, especially with the similarly passionate Hiromu Takahashi out injured and Will Ospreay wanting to play with bigger boys now. The division will probably be fine and Kushida will also probably be fine, but right now he feels like such a significant figure for NJPW not to have anymore.
Best: Boy Bands And Ankle Locks
On a drastically different tonal note, PLEASE, if you still have not watched it at this point, watch this video of Taiji Ishimori performing the song “Keep On Journey” as part of the Sailor Boys idol group back in Toryumon:
As Ishimori plays the buzzkill straight man and shows off some of his impressive skill in the ring on the New Beginning tour, his challenger Taguchi’s been thriving even more in a feud that’s giving him the opportunity to use both his comedy chops and underrated technical skill. Taguchi started bringing up Ishimori’s extremely pre-reborn gimmick either on social media or a house show, brought it to the Fantastica Mania tour, and it looks like he’ll keep doing it until their Junior Heavyweight Championship match. It drives Ishimori insane while the threat of Taguchi’s ankle lock also stumps him in the ring. One of the most surprising endings to a match on this tour is Taguchi, Yano, and Makabe (are we calling them the Most Funky Players?) defeating the Guerrillas of Destiny and Ishimori for the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championships by Taguchi tapping out the champ.
Taguchi has some unwitting help, sort of, from like the fourth most prominent element of the greater Bullet Club vs. Hontai feud, the fact that “the Good Guy” Tama Tonga WILL NOT GIVE UP ON HIS DUMB NEW YEAR’S RESOLUTION. This has played a role in him losing TWO TAG BELTS IN A MONTH, and his brother is now furious about it so close to the point of actual murder. It started with Tonga just refusing to cheat and going for handshakes and hugs before matches, which Yano and Honma have yet to accept, and has turned into him barely being a functional wrestler and just going into moral anguish about hitting people under almost any circumstances.
Live audiences have been into the bit and it gives G.O.D. some leeway if they’re going to be out of the tag title picture for a while. If Makabe and Yano beat them in Osaka to continue the MVP comeback, it’ll still be a good moment for them and might lead to them challenging for the tag titles or something, but also won’t really hurt G.O.D. – they’ll have lost due to one of them being completely out of his mind and/or really, really trying to sell tickets to the Bullet Club Block Party. It’s been ridiculousness for a reason, basically, and both the main Jokes Allowed storylines on this tour have provided some fun variety and let these performers show some range.
Worst: Flying Fale Airlines Again
The weakest part of the Bullet Club-Hontai storyline is Kazuchika Okada vs. Bad Luck Fale, round whatever round of this they’re on now. (Cagematch tells me it will be number six overall and number four outside of G1 Climax tournaments.)
It makes sense why this feud is happening. After being devastated by the loss of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, Okada was supposed to finally get his groove back for real in his non-title grudge match against Jay White at Wrestle Kingdom 13. But that didn’t happen, so now he’s starting from the bottom – he has to beat White’s monster bodyguard, or “Rogue General” now, which may or may not be a promotion from Underboss. Okada will almost definitely beat Fale and their match will probably be fine and the crowd will almost definitely be into it. As a viewer who’s seen these guys go at it a few times already though, it’s the least interesting thing happening on this tour.
Best/Worst: Naming A Submission After The First Guy You Tap Out With It And Then Quickly Using It To Tap Out Other People
The feud for White vs. Tanahashi IV: This Time It’s For The IWGP Heavyweight Championship And Hey, Jay Might Actually Win is also more of what we’ve come to expect from these two. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. After that weak start to White’s NJPW main roster career at Wrestle Kingdom 12, he and Tanahashi have had really good matches together in the G1 and for the Tokyo Dome main event contract and have faced off in Dream Team vs. BC tag matches. Their title match is likely to deliver, and the addition of a new, knee-targeting submission to White’s arsenal will make it a little more interesting, just like the new threat of interference by Gedo helped make their third match that much different from their second.
The main highlight of both Okada and Tanahashi’s current angles is the fact that they’re actually a functioning two-person tag team as of the main event of Night One in Sapporo, which is such a big deal that it gets a special bonus video showing them getting ready to make their entrance. They have a tag team finisher (a tombstone piledriver to a Styles Clash) (and then to a diving elbow drop to a High Fly Flow) and they do a sweet double elbow drop now! They’re finally actual friends according to their promos too. The crowds are into all of it. It seems like the new Seikigun will probably split in some way sooner or later, but I doubt it will initially be along Team Tanahashi vs. Team Okada lines considering how well this act is going.
Sure: Mask4Mask
When Yoh and Sho got a win over the Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions as Fujin and Raijin during Fantastica Mania, wearing masks they never wore as these characters in Mexico but that sure look nice on t-shirts, I became 75% sure they were going to get added to L.I.J. and Suzukigun’s title match and the Super Junior Tag League/Wrestle Kingdom tag title triple threat was going to happen again. Instead, Bushi and Shingo Takagi just mocked Roppongi 3K for being mask posers for a few weeks, then picked up their feud with former champs El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru on the last night of the tour.
The removal of Bushi’s mask by Desperado (who just got back from vacation in Mexico, and on an unrelated note, how nice to see Namajague on the tour! I thought he was unmasked?) was the turning point in this feud going from just the L.I.J. team wanting a direct victory over Suzukigun to something more heated.
By the time of the junior tag title match, I think that had mostly worked. Even if the viewer wasn’t extremely invested in wanting to see Bushi and Takagi really kick their rivals’ asses, the tone of the match made sense. The Takagi vs. Kanemaru and Bushi vs. Desperado singles matches, which were fine but, I think, forgettable, partly due to card placement that made them feel extra low-stakes, solidified that this is supposed to be a blood feud now.
The crowd is way more into the actual tag title match, which is appropriately messy and looks and feels like a grudge match. It also ends up being one of those tag matches that feels more like a series of singles match sequences than two actual teams working together against each other. Everyone gets some good moments and Bushi gets his revenge by snatching Desperado’s “disgusting” mask, but, like at the Tokyo Dome, it feels like Shingo Takagi is the star of the show in a way that makes me wonder what the plans are for him over the next year or two.
Best: Sickle Pen Lights Are For Winners
The IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship feud and title match overall worked better than those of their junior counterparts. It combined a fresher L.I.J. vs. Suzukigun matchup with probably the most frustratingly unresolved feud from this fall, Evil vs. Zack Sabre Jr. On and off for months The King of Darkness and the Comrade of Veganism have effectively portrayed ever-increasing hatred of each other while telling a very clear in-ring story. Evil has the strength and weight advantage, but ZSJ is a technical genius. In many tag matches, it’s looked like Evil would finally be able to defeat him, but Sabre’s been able to counter first Darkness Falls, then the finishing move with the same name as its user with a European Clutch.
Their singles match on the first night of the New Beginning in Sapporo ends up being exactly what you’d expect. That’s not necessarily a bad thing; it’s just because they’ve been telling such a logical and straightforward story. Evil starts the match using his power advantage as much as possible, then Sabre takes over and starts intelligently and spitefully focusing on one of Evil’s arms. Sabre’s able to counter some high impact moves, but Evil’s able to counter a lot of these counters by now, and, like in his recent match with Naito, Sabre’s skinny body ends up taking some serious damage.
The match’s most exciting and surprising moment is the finish, with nearfalls that really heat up the crowd. Sabre counters Evil’s finisher the same way he has been, but Evil finally has a counter for that and is able to pin Sabre for the win. This match definitely would have had more hype and a more invested crowd if they had just done it at the time Chris Jericho messed it up, but it was overall still pretty fun and satisfying.
It also seems like it isn’t the end of the ZSJ vs. Evil rivalry either. To skip ahead a little, Sabre’s challenge for the L.I.J. boys to come try to take he and Suzuki’s RevPro tag titles in the UK sounds like something that will actually be followed up on, and I’d bet money (but, like, a small amount of money) that leads to Evil pinning Sabre again and getting a British Heavyweight Championship match. Especially for an audience that hasn’t seen these two go at it before, extending this rivalry a little longer in that way seems like a case of “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
There was no way whatever feud heat Sanada and Minoru Suzuki could generate before their singles match was going to equal that of their other halves, but they do get some sparks going in their relatively brief time in the ring together. They knock each other out of the ring at the same time during that five-on-five elimination match, Sanada becomes dead set on getting Suzuki in the Paradise Lock, and Suzuki commits to trying to kill Sanada outside of the ring along the Road. (Also, it is my personal theory is that this rivalry is why Suzuki is suddenly growing a mohawk at fifty years old.)
This leads to a way more intense (although not that intense) singles match than I think a lot of people expected. Suzuki seems to dominate early, but just freaking kidding, SANADA GETS HIM IN THE PARADISE LOCK. The main difference between Suzuki the performer and Suzuki the character is that of course the performer would be one hundred percent down to get put in an unbeatable comedy submission, but the character is ENRAGED ABOUT IT and almost gets himself actually disqualified as he seeks to avenge this humiliation. The match continues to be fun when it becomes more normal wrestling in the ring, especially the finish with Suzuki countering Skull End, which he’s been trapped in a few times before, to the Gotch Style Piledriver. Sanada leaves the ring looking like a destroyed parakeet, and the teams are 1-1 going into the tag title match. It’s anyone’s game!
And that is how the match on February 3 ends up feeling in a really fun way. The actual tag team wrestling parts are the most impressive and entertaining. Suzuki and ZSJ bust out their simultaneous submissions that I refer to in my notes as either “father-son bonding” or “aggghhh the TWISTING,” which is the most fun and unique part of their act as a team. But unfortunately for them, a big part of Evil and Sanada’s whole deal is that they can pick up wins after getting their butts kicked the first two-thirds of most matches.
After a false start that leads to Suzuki trying to submit Sanada the way he did Tanahashi on this same show last year, L.I.J. makes that comeback by simultaneously countering the Zack Driver and the Gotch into Darkness Falls and a TKO. After some exciting close calls, a Magic Killer and a moonsault to Suzuki leave our champs AND STILL with the titles. It’s the type of tag team match that reminds you that tag team wrestling is so freaking fun.
Best: Go-Home Show
At last year’s anniversary show, Tetsuya Naito and Taichi shocked the world by showing everyone that the Holy Emperor kind of rules as a heavyweight. At that point, people could say that maybe Naito carried Taichi to a quality match, but about a year later, we know that isn’t the case. Another thing that sets Naito vs. Taichi II (in NJPW, Naito vs. Taichi III counting that TakaTaichi show) apart from their first go-round is that in the place of a novelty/confusion factor, it has a pretty long build. Some of that actually happens on the Fantastica Mania tour via SURPRISE RUN-IN, which is not usually the kind of thing that happens on the Fantastica Mania tour! Taichi lampshading that backstage by saying he “goofed” and thought he was showing up to the first day of the New Beginning tour is a nice touch.
In tag matches on the Road to the New Beginning, we get a lot of obnoxious posing, some spitting and dick mockery, and some moments of darn good wrestling. Taichi kicks Naito over the top rope, in a roundabout way, to win the really fun Suzukigun vs. L.I.J. ten-man tag team elimination match. While in the kayfabe world it seemed like might give him momentum to help him win the Intercontinental Championship, his opponent also starts talking about how he’s going to be the first person to hold both the IC title and the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at the same time. He ends up mentioning it so many times that the idea of Naito Two Belts had to be on the minds of more hardcore fans going into his first title defense, though it doesn’t end up nerfing the drama.
Another element of foreshadowing that I didn’t really recognize is part of the INCREDIBLE hype video that shows Taichi in his house, eating junk food and drinking while playing Fire Pro as himself against Naito while Wrestle Kingdom 13 plays on another screen, is the mention of the 1984 attack by Fujiwara to Choshu in Sapporo while Chono was in the ring. So I was in the part of the audience that didn’t expect Iizuka to SMASH NAITO WITH A LADDER during his entrance. Sure, Taichi’s used Suzukigun interference in his matches before, but not every time, and not in his first match with Naito.
The pre-match attack and use of a rampaging monster man ends up working even better than it did in Taichi’s match with Goto, partly because, well, this is Naito and the average fan just cares more about his well-being, but also because of how well this segment is executed. Despite commentary reminding us how the first scheduled ZSJ vs. Evil match was thrown out because of an attack by another WCW alumni, I don’t think anybody got legitimately worked into thinking NJPW was going to cancel this main event. The actual thing this segment accomplishes is building even more heat for Taichi and also making me laugh at this dude repeatedly telling everyone to just go home, trying to fight Makabe and Chono on commentary, and even getting on English commentary to say, “Already done. Already finish. I’m champion,” and throwing the mic at Kevin Kelly. Even the way he drinks water at ringside is obnoxious. Taichi is a generational talent, is what I’m saying.
The other thing this achieves is creating this wonderful return moment for Tetsuya Naito, helped by Bushi back to the ring because he can barely walk. The crowd is so incredibly supportive and invested and when Naito’s first forearms after the bell rings have just nothing on them there’s a real sense of How will our hero get out of this one?
So we have our cool outlaw underdog good guy and our total shithead cowardly bad guy and now they have to live up to the hype they just generated for the match and also depict the hero somehow coming back from such a devastating attack without taking people out of the drama. They manage to do it. Naito continues to not hit as hard and/or not recover as fast and even gets checked on by the trainer again when a stoppage would make Taichi ACTUAL champion. When it seems like Naito will FINALLY hit the Cabrón Combinación, Taichi is able to halt his momentum with an ax bomber.
The moment when Naito finally DOES turn the match in his favor, that incredible piledriver through the table, is so extremely cool, as is Naito’s the refusal to take a countout victory. But it’s not smooth sailing from here, with Taichi still putting up a good fight, Iizuka showing up again, and the great dramatic irony moment of Taichi hiding the Intercontinental Championship, looking to win it from Naito the same way Naito won it from Jericho. It seems like the mic stand moment could have been closer to the end like in their anniversary show match, but the crowd stays invested through the following excellent reversals of finishers all the way to a second Destino for the win.
After such a fun main event with really good wrestling moments, shenanigans, and drama, the show-closing L.I.J. roll call feels like an even more positive moment than usual. The good guys won; the audience is happy; there’s confetti. Naito again repeats that his goal is to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship while holding the Intercontinental Championship, and the crowd applauds. Whether this means renewing his rivalry with Tanahashi or starting a new one against Jay White, it’ll be exciting to see where Naito, along with everyone else, lands after the New Beginning in Osaka.
