The Best And Worst Of NJPW: New Japan Cup 2019, The Quarterfinals


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Previously on NJPW: Ospreay defeated a monster, Sanada defeated a king, and Naito got thirsty for Ibushi to get thirsty for the IC title.

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And now, the best and worst of the quarterfinals of the 2019 New Japan Cup, which took place on March 20-21 in Shizuoka.

Best/Worst: The Stone Sports Psychologist

The first night of quarterfinal tournament action is all Chaos, all the time, with mixed results. Although the crowd gets fairly into Tomohiro Ishii vs. Yoshi-Hashi, it is hurt by the fact that nobody thinks Yoshi-Hashi is going to win. I think at this point nobody believes that Yoshi-Hashi will make it to that next level as a wrestler either, but the story here is that he could. We saw Yoshi-Hashi get fired up for his match against Ishii in the preview tags and he’s more aggressive than usual going into the match, but the flame soon seems to go out.

Still, it’s not a poorly executed match and the intra-faction element does make the story more compelling than it would be against another wrestler. When another member of Chaos gets in the ring with Yoshi-Hashi he almost always sincerely wants him to do better. A guy like Ishii, who has been Yoshi-Hashi’s teammate/faction brother for years, goes extra hard on him because first, he’s Ishii, and second, when you’re in a serious rut in your life, your close friends/family are obviously going to go hardest on you because they actually care about you doing better.

This dynamic results in some great moments like Ishii ripping off Yoshi-Hashi’s shoulder tape and yelling at him and Yoshi-Hashi spitting in his face, leading to a slap fight that does make me a believer for a moment. But then we get a big Butterfly Lock sequence that totally kills the momentum and reminds us that oh yeah, part of the reason Yoshi-Hashi is so low on the totem pole is that none of his moves look cool, which makes him not that exciting to watch wrestle. However, the live audience does get fairly invested in Ishii’s struggle to the ropes and stays about the same temperature for the rest of the match.

Best: Just Bros Being Bros

Kazuchika Okada vs. Will Opsreay unsurprisingly turns out to be the way better intra-Chaos matchup. These two have a brotherly rivalry that comes out when they’re in opposite corners like we saw at last year’s Anniversary Show. Since then, little bro got his driver’s license and had a growth spurt within the same year while Okada went to college and had an anxiety breakdown for a while. With Ospreay aiming at the heavyweight division, the stakes are much higher than their previous exhibition match, but the physical dynamic is still similar, with each man showing they know the other very well.

After a slow, methodical start, this results in the extremely cool sequence in which Okada counters the Oscutter into a German suplex and maintains wrist control, but Ospreay counters the Rainmaker with a Spanish Fly. But ultimately, Okada is prepared for both of Ospreay’s finishers and is able to counter Stormbreaker into a spinning tombstone into a Rainmaker for the win. By the finish, the match has heated up and, according to Okada backstage, Ospreay has earned the approval of his mentor for his goal of competing in both weight classes. So everybody wins, in a way! But Okada wins in the most important way!

The biggest victory out of all of this, though, is that we get Okada vs. Ishii in the semifinals now! Okada brings up the time Ishii kicked his ass in the G1, the memory of which is so much of why I’m looking forward to this. Their preview tag, in which they go hard immediately, also promises very good things. Overall, that Goto-Ishii vs. Okada-Yoshi-Hashi match is exactly what you want to see from that combination of people right down to the finish and almost justifies their faction not just being totally absorbed into the home team by now.

Tag Match Mania

The undercard tag matches on these shows are a mix of fun, skippable, plot-advancing, and that one on March 21 that brings to light the injustice of us not getting a Suzuki vs. Taguchi singles match. Let’s go over the important things that happened!

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The most important development and the source of some of the best tag team action on the midcard is the eventual challenge by Kota Ibushi for Tetsuya Naito’s Intercontinental Championship. As the ladies’ choice two-man tag team of Goto and Ibushi starts to look more and more inevitable, so does Ibushi getting his earned match for the white belt.

On March 20, the Golden Star and the former Stardust genius remind us how good they are in the ring together, but when Naito’s like, “PLEASE TRY TO TAKE MY BELT WHICH I HATE AND POSSIBLY ALSO LOVE VERY MUCH,” Ibushi stays relatively tranquilo. After March 21 tag match, definitely one of the better ones on these quarterfinal shows which ends with Evil using the Scorpion Deathlock, Ibushi and Naito have basically a full conversation outside the ring, and Ibushi reveals backstage that he is FED UP with Naito treating the IC title like garbage.

Ibushi is one of those rare, pure babyfaces who can pull off really caring about the state of titles, especially this title for which he has had intense matches against his personal heroes in the past. It’s because he can pull this off that he never got rejected/disillusioned like Naito, never had to reinvent himself with the help of cool new friends in Mexico. So in addition to these guys just being great in the ring together every single time, their very different personas, stemming from their very different journeys to their current stardom, give their rivalry more gravitas. IN ANOTHER ADDITION, we don’t know when they’re going to disrespect each other’s necks one-on-one again yet, and I really hope it’s on the MSG show to counter the Bully Ray open challenge so I don’t have to pause the show after that and play this video in its entirety in a desperate attempt to save the vibes of the PPV.

A challenge for an even more mysterious time in the future is made by Taichi to Will Ospreay for the NEVER Openweight Championship after a tag match in which Ospreay makes these faces when he realizes he has enough time to make a tag to Shota Umino:


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Anyway, the actual important part of it is that Taichi doesn’t get the win over Ospreay, but he does submit Umino at him with the Holy Emperor’s Crucifix Tomb, his new favorite move in the whole entire world, before taking the belt, trash talking, then stomping Ospreay. It seems like this will go down after the G1 Supercard, but maybe Taichi could be added to the match with Cobb? Or maybe Taichi could beat Ospreay and this match could be against him instead, but probably not?

Regarding the upcoming match that will probably just be Cobb vs. Ospreay, the NEVER champ tells Cobb to “sweeten the deal” and put both titles on the line. Ospreay acts like he came up with this stipulation idea, but Cobb brought it up during his original challenge – but the video of that has been taken down from ROH’s Twitter account, so maybe that wasn’t supposed to happen and they’re hoping everybody forgets about it. This is dumb!

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In pre-existing challenge news, the feud between Chase Owens and Juice Robinson for the United States Championship has yet to hint new anything about their title match from a purely wrestling perspective, but it has brought back a side of Robinson’s character that we haven’t seen since he went to ROH and became all about that very professional, handshake life. Owens keeps messing with Juice – not being particularly evil, just annoying – and Robinson is increasingly pissed off.

A consistent character trait of Robinson is his hotheadedness, and now it suggests that he might be his own worst enemy in his upcoming title match by getting too psyched out about Owens cheating. It’s part of Robinson’s everyman appeal that in addition to seeming like a fun guy to get beers with, he struggles with this type of thing in a very human way. The element of his friends trying to calm him down – Taguchi giving him a yellow card, Nicholls holding him back from just going to fight Owens – helps keep this relatable rather than turning him into a rampaging rage monster. Everybody gets that it sucks a lot that this other guy pretended you were pulling his hair and then punched you in the face, but you need to chill out or you’re going to make dumb decisions, dude!

I still don’t think for a second that Juice will lose his title and this angle is still not a highlight of this tour for me, but I respect that they’re escalating it as it goes along in a way that makes sense.

Worst: I Just Corrected So Many “Sabana” Typos

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Sanada vs. Colt Cabana is a tonally weird match. In the preview tag match that also reveals that Henare should never be paired with an American indie guy again if he’s going to keep this gimmick because it will get too uncomfortable, it looks like the goth and the comic book geek are going to have a straight-up comedy match. They have good chemistry and sharply contrasting facial expressions and do that handshake-to-leg-catch spot that every New Japan guy who does an ROH crossover tour falls in love with immediately.

In their actual singles match, it looks like they might go a different route when they start with much more straightforward grappling. After a promising extended headscissors spot, it looks like actually they might transition to comedy instead. Okay, cool! But then they never seem to really decide on a tone for the match and I think that inconsistency hurts the volume of the crowd reactions. Cabana tapping out immediately when Red Shoes stops him from pulling Sanada’s mohawk while in Skull End is a weird finish too.

Best: Destruction In The Clutch

Towards the end of the Best and Worst of round two, I wrote that I was completely convinced that Tanahashi was doomed against Zack Sabre Jr. This was because of the fact that Tanahashi’s kayfabe joints are held together by scotch tape at this point mixed with my desire to see ZSJ vs. Sanada wrestle again because of how good their G1 match was last year. But though their tag match on March 20 ends with a spiteful submission victory by Sabre over Shota Umino, it also reminds us why we should never count out the Ace – he’s a smart wrestler and he knows to use his higher impact moves against Sabre rather than get caught up in a mat wrestling contest.

Their singles match, for which TANAHASHI’S PARENTS ARE IN THE AUDIENCE and his hair is in a prom-ready up-do, goes a slightly different route than either of the preview tags. They start with mat wrestling, which seems like an unwise game for the Ace to play, but it looks like a test of strength could turn things around. ZSJ manages to get firmly in control of the match, but gets too cocky and thinks he can get away with some fisticuffs despite having felt the size of Tanahashi’s arms while trying to rip them off about a second before. Tanahashi does get control with strikes, then his usual offense, but these two very different wrestlers are still very evenly matched and it consistently looks like it could be anyone’s game.

Their contrasting styles make Tanahashi’s moments of offense feel more dynamic in contrast two ZSJ’s grinding torture, but he ends up winning with A BRIDGE, THE JAPANESE LEG CLUTCH HOLD. So first of all, as commentary points out, this is Fujinami again, and SECOND OF ALL, this is SUCH a ZSJ win over ZSJ, which OWNS. I love, love, love Sabre grabbing Red Shoes’ hand like “No, this literally could not have just happened to me!” This is what you get for not targeting Tanahashi’s knees, dude!

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So we close the quarterfinals with some classic, cheesy air guitar that the crowd loves and a generational handsome battle impending. I’ll see you back here after the weekend to talk about Sanada vs. Tanahashi and Okada vs. Ishii in the semifinals, along with the final show that could give us our first Tongan United States Champion.

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