Best and Worst of NJPW: New Japan Cup 2019, Round 1

Previously on NJPW: The Bone Soldier drove the Beast God to retire in ten months, Goto got to look cool, and Jay White figuratively stabbed Will Ospreay (that’s my new working theory on what his catchphrases mean.)

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And now, the best and worst of the first round of the 2019 New Japan Cup, which took place from March 8-11.

Worst: Starting Off With A Whimper

I’m going to start off talking about the first two nights of this tournament in themselves, because on paper they showed exactly what the cons on a pros/cons list about doing a 32-man New Japan Cup would be, and then in reality also showed exactly the cons of doing a 32-man New Japan Cup. If someone who hadn’t been keeping up with the tournament asked me what matches were definitely worth catching up with on these shows I would say Ishii vs. Nagata. That’s about half an hour out of about six total hours of wrestling.

I don’t know that there was a uniform reason why the first two nights of tournament action were so weak, but a big theme was that the guys who don’t normally get singles matches didn’t make it seem like they should get more singles matches. For example, Honma really brought it as much as he could against Taichi. The live audience got into the match because the live audiences in Japan love Honma – everything about why this match happened and how it happened with the story of Taichi underestimating his opponent – made sense in that respect. But for the TV viewer, it was very long and for people not already super into Honma’s comeback story, there wasn’t anything to latch onto.

Okay, just kidding – Taichi reaching deep into his bag of Kawada-inherited tricks to submit Honma creatively with the Holy Emperor’s Crucifix made him look brutal and skilled, and his entrance through the crowd due to the SPIRIT OF IIZUKA ruled. I latched onto those things. When will we see a stabbing???

Another match that included a theme of one wrestler underestimating another and was supposed to be impressive in a much more relevant way to the up-and-coming NJPW generation was Chase Owens defeating Juice Robinson to mess up my bracket for the first time this tournament and ruin my fantasy booking for United States Champion Taichi. As a match, there’s not much to say about this. It was twenty-five minutes long and featured a lot of almost-count-outs. Also, some douchebag came all the way from America and heckled Juice about his WWE career.

There was no reason for anyone to think Chase Owens the performer couldn’t deliver in a singles match. In kayfabe, this seemed to take the “politicker” aspect of his character and transition it from a joke about how he’s such a slimeball to a scheming ability that can help him win matches. So you could call that an “interesting development,” but the match in which it happened sure did not interest the crowd for a long time. Now Owens has pinned the IWGP United States Champion and if their title match is at MSG while all of L.I.J. is in the Honor Rumble or something it’ll be the biggest joke about New Japan’s American expansion. Maybe they’ll have it on the final tournament show and give Juice an ROH opponent for that or something.

On March 9, most of the tournament action seemed to be hurt by not playing to at least one performer’s strengths. We start with Lance Archer defeating Toa Henare, which is very much a one-sided beatdown. Archer can be the exact type of monster NJPW needs to him be all day, but Henare hasn’t done his most compelling work on defense at this point. He’s stood out recently by challenging his intensity into hard-hitting offense that keeps getting better and better. The crowd cheers for him respectfully, but his New Japan Cup debut isn’t a breakout match.

(However, Henare calling Archer “majestic” in his backstage promo was very much a promo highlight of the tour for me so far because “majestic” is an adjective I most associate with horses and Archer is established to be a “horse-hair motherf*cker.” (Copyright Trent?))

The New Japan Cup debut of both Mikey Nicholls and Hikuleo doesn’t do much to establish either of them as singles competitors in a meaningful way. The former Nick Miller is obviously a good wrestler and in his first promo back in Japan, he establishes by YELLING INTENSELY that he is planning on really earning the “Mad” in front of his first name in his entrance video. Hikuelo, though, still isn’t established as anything besides G.o.D.’s little bro. He’s got a nice, dramatic new hairdo, but his in-ring work doesn’t look much different than when he was injured here. Basically, we don’t know what this guy’s strengths are yet besides size – which may not be a kayfabe strength at all because it’s not helping him win.

Something that should also be mentioned about this match is that a sudden, jarring cut to Jado prevented us from seeing the moment that got the best crowd reaction – Nicholls’ escape of Hikuelo’s finisher, The Headliner, which I think is new, but if it’s not I don’t remember it at all. I won’t be able to tell for a while because they didn’t show it on camera! Thank goodness we got that extended shot of the Bullet Club’s main sponsor’s kid holding a banner upside down though!

The crowd reacts well to Will Ospreay defeating Bad Luck Fale on his Giant Slaying Tour 2K19, but man, how hard would it have been to have a straight-up giant-slaying match like those that have been some of Ospreay’s strongest work in promotions around the world? Instead, after a nice shotgun dropkick out of the gate from Ospreay, we get the exact same Jado interference as the previous match. There are goofy ref bump and/or distraction spots in almost every tournament match on these first two shows – something that I doubt helped them – and the ones in this match are the dumbest. The finish doesn’t look great either, with the type of rollup pin they’re trying to achieve not being completed because either Ospreay couldn’t grab Fale’s legs or Fale couldn’t get his legs high enough.

The best thing I can say about anything related to this match is that Ospreay’s super-babyface reaction to his win and promo backstage come off a lot easier and more natural than the tough guy stuff he’s been doing since Wrestle Kingdom. Maybe Ibushi’s forgiveness lifted a weight off his kayfabe shoulders.

Surprise Best???: The Power Of Breakfast

The shockingly compelling match out of this batch somehow ends up being Yoshi-Hashi vs. Manabu Nakanishi! Yoshi-Hashi, determined to win at least one New Japan Cup match in his entire life, starts out playing it smart, focusing on how Nakanishi is slow and has restricted mobility and terrible joints. But what turns the match from “interesting” to “WHAT??!!” is Nakanishi deciding to be insane when he finally takes control, going over the top rope to hit a messed-up plancha to Yoshi-Hashi on the outside! And then getting screwed by a ref bump despite getting a visual pinfall! He ends up tapping to the Butterfly Lock, but by the time he does the crowd is so invested in this match. You’ve got to love that Nakanishi went just went completely balls to the wall here despite it looking like it is not at all easy for him to do physically at this point.

Best: The Heavy Hitters

The most actually good and also entertaining matches from the first two nights end up being the main events, so at least it’s good that they put these matchups in the main event slots! On March 9, Elgin vs. Okada delivers way more than I thought it would, given that I didn’t write about an interesting Elgin match all last year, including the one in the G1 around which Okada dragged him within an inch of his life in promos.

At this point, Elgin in NJPW is in a weird place where yes, he’s Big And Strong, but he hasn’t had any big wins or accomplishments in a long time, so it’s hard to take him seriously as a threat. Okada’s also in a weird place, but one with novelty – since he returned from excursion in January 2012, he’s been IWGP Heavyweight Champion in the spring so much that he’s only been in the New Japan Cup in 2013 (when he won and then beat Tanahashi for the title at Invasion Attack) and in 2015 (when he was beaten by Fale in the first round.)

But though this is a new phase of Okada’s career, we see the old Rainmaker here, the killer side of him we haven’t seen in a while. And Elgin brings it out of him, building tension by using his power to stop everything Okada tries to do in the first part of this match and totally controlling the pace. The drama doesn’t stay as amped up for the entire, fairly long bout, but the finish of a Tombstone to a Rainmaker is satisfying.

Much more satisfying is the first night’s main event, the much-anticipated old school, strong style battle between Ishii and Nagata. In case you couldn’t already tell, Nagata slapping Ishii in the face when he’s against the ropes after their lockup shows you that this is 1) going to be two guys beating the tar out of each other, and 2) going to be fun. Neither man is willing to back down as they just keep forearming and kicking and sometimes suplexing each other and then somehow keep getting up. Ishii looks stronger overall, but the Nagata Lock with mouth blood included from Blue Justice might be the match’s best visual.

They go so hard that after Ishii wins with the vertical drop brainbuster, the amount of time the ref talks to both men is a little concerning. But after Ishii pours ice water on Nagata’s messed-up chest (that means he likes you!), he’s able to cut a rare, long-ish promo, calling out Nagata to change his New Japan dad life if he wants to make it back to the top and become IWGP Heavyweight Champion in his fifties.

Reenter the Dragon

I haven’t talked about the tag matches much so far in this article because there are sixteen singles matches to cover, but one non-tournament-related thing from them has to be noted – Shingo Takagi pins one half of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions on March 8. He cuts a promo on Roppongi 3K backstage and Bushi shouts out the champs at one point as well. I expect another, higher profile pin or challenge of some kind before the rematch gets scheduled, but it’s definitely happening, and in a way that makes it seem like the L.I.J. team cares about this more and more personally.

Bullet Wub

The other big development from the pre-tournament-competition is that a MYSTERIOUS, PURPLE, EDM-THEMED MAN is joining the Bullet Club! This man is clearly El Phantasmo, who’s been based in the UK and has worked with NJPW talent in RevPro over the past few years. Given the timing of this announcement and that he’s a cruiserweight over there, I’m guessing he’ll show up for Best of the Super Juniors, although bringing in a new junior for the tournament to get a shot a the junior champ when the junior champ is already in your faction doesn’t fit Bullet Club standard operating procedure. Whenever he turns up, this is a really good opportunity for a good wrestler, and NJPW’s junior division could use to beefing up right now.

Best: TAGUCHIMANIA

The March 10 show looked on paper like the best night of the first round and it ended up being exactly that. The Tenzan vs. Taguchi match is entertaining, well-executed, and plays to both performers’ strengths – which for Tenzan, physically, are a lot more limited than they used to be – with a mix of comedy spots and very logical wrestling. Tenzan focuses on Taguchi’s neck to weaken it for the Anaconda Vice and it looks like Taguchi’s endgame might be his own submission finisher, but he ends up surprisingly countering a brainbuster into a Kido Clutch for the win. The dream of 69th Heavyweight Champion Ryusuke Taguchi remains alive and well!

Best: Looper (2019)

This is followed by a very different, clearly very significant match between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Shota Umino, the kid already being put over by everyone as the future ace of the company. With Red Shoes officiating, which doesn’t seem like it should be allowed to happen, these two start off showing STRONG FUNDAMENTALS, but not just normal Young Lion match strong fundamentals, like Meiko Satomura-tier fundamentals where it looks like Umino really thinks he might choke out the Ace with a headscissors.

Of course, this turns into a battle of strikes and Umino clearly being not as good at them but always getting back up and each wrestler going for both the Boston Crab and the Cloverleaf. Umino the character taps to the latter to lose and be eliminated from the tournament. However, Umino the performer clearly just did the opposite in respect to his role in NJPW’s future, something that is also made very clear backstage.

Best: Counters On Counters On Counters

After the Tanahashi vs. Hijo de Red Shoes rivalry gets started, the one between Evil vs. Zack Sabre Jr. continues. We know how it goes with these two right now, power vs. technique. Each man keeps learning more and more counters to the other’s moves as the feud goes on, making their matches and interactions in matches now a question of who will have the last counter.

Although it’s been supported well by promos, including Sabre’s very good/English one after this match, they’ve had an almost purely physical story, and it continues to be that and be really engaging to watch in this match. Evil dominates for so long that it almost seems too good to be true, but ZSJ shifts the momentum with a fully-body octopus stretch of hell soon after the ten-minute mark. Evil tricking Red Shoes into becoming half of a Magic Killer is very silly and feels out of place in this match, but the moment doesn’t make the subsequence dueling counters and nearfalls less exciting.

Sabre wins with his unstoppable Smiths submission, but Evil comes out of the match looking amazing too. I thought Evil might beat ZSJ (leading to a RevPro title shot) and go on to Do Things in this tournament, but instead, we still have the looming threat of a repeat heel winner and an incoming Sabre-Ibushi match, so I’m not complaining!

More Of Nothing To Write Home About (But Here Is Writing About It)

Night four isn’t as weak as nights one and two, but the tournament competition does kick off with three matches that don’t really deliver. Toru Yano and Davey Boy Smith Jr. made it look like they might get crazy from their interactions in tag matches, but this ends up being one of those Yano wins that’s just out of nowhere because it’s with a rollup and happens in about five minutes. They don’t do any big comedy spots besides Yano getting DBS to chase him around part of the venue at the beginning, which makes this feel more like a functional segment to lead us to the EXTREMELY ANTICIPATED Yano vs. Cabana second round match/rematch from Global Wars 2017.

Suzuki and Kojima did some interesting things in the build to their match – Kojima using a clawed hand on his Machine Gun Chops to make the results look more extreme, Suzuki doing a terrifying spider crawl on his back (which commentary told us about during a previous match but the camera missed and we finally saw on March 8), and Kojima calling back to their thirteen years of on-and-off rivalry while Suzuki basically wrote him off and cut a promo on Jay White instead.

Their tournament match ends up being fine but unmemorable. This isn’t surprising! Kojima still has charisma for miles, but I don’t think his post-injury work has made anyone yearn to see a lot more singles matches from him. Overall, this match just feels like a New Japan dad fight and doesn’t even seem to get that much nostalgia-enthusiasm from the crowd.

A huge Best about this though is Suzuki’s nuclear post-match promo. He absolutely wrecks Kojima, moves on to describe his intense devotion to Our Sport, and then points out that oh yeah, if this fifty-year-old wrestler faced Jay White at MSG and became IWGP Heavyweight Champion for the first time there the American fans would love it, which is just true, no heel twisted logic involved. Suzuki could be ejected in the next round, but for the anti-Jay White promos alone I really hope he stays in the game for a while.

Worst: I Don’t Know What I Expected

In between these, we get Colt Cabana defeating Togi Makabe in a match that’s almost more throwaway than Smith vs. Yano. There’s a hint of Comedy Guy vs. Tough Guy tension, but it never goes very far. There aren’t any standout funny moments, there isn’t much interesting wrestling, and Cabana wins with the Superman, which takes Makabe by surprise. Makabe’s very disappointed promo backstage about feeling like a “dumbass” and losing to “another Yano” is charming, but that’s about the only upside of this match besides it showing that the NJPW audience is still very happy with Cabana.

Best: Neck And Neck

The ultimate highlight of the first round comes in the main event of that strong March 10 show when it’s time for Mutually Respectful Neck Murder (the time directly after Zack Sabre Time) between Kota Ibushi and Tetsuya Naito. It’s Ibushi’s first singles match since Wrestle Kingdom and Naito’s first step in his desired journey to becoming a champ-champ. There is all the babyface heat.

A great thing about this match is how much they delay the fireworks factory. It’s not all that long – this is a much-hyped New Japan main event with no time limit and yet only goes twenty minutes, which is awesome too – but they pace it with a moment of tension before the lockup and then mind games from Naito before he takes control of the match outside the ring. He fights like such a jerk that even if you’re rooting for him to win, you have to pop for Ibushi finally hitting that dropkick.

This match was so heavily advertised as “Let’s see which of these two can still walk at the end!” even by English commentary and ZSJ in his promo right beforehand, but that doesn’t make the Neck Danger half of it any less exciting. That Hangman’s neckbreaker to the apron by Naito that stops Ibushi from completing a Golden Triangle is just insanity. The fact that there’s more great, normal, hard-hitting wrestling before Naito hits that brutal sit-out tombstone piledriver on the apron makes it even better. The big spots are so well-chosen and well-timed.

It’s neck-and-neck, in more than one sense, right up until the end, but the slip-up that dooms Naito seems to be that time he spends looking to aim a Destino that allows Ibushi to hit him with a huge clothesline. He still dodges a Kamigoye and hits a twisting version of his finisher, but Ibushi is able to deny a second and hit a Bomaye, then a Jay Driller of neck doom, then a Kamigoye to end the match. It rules.

We get a shot of the Intercontinental Championship to remind us that Ibushi has just pinned the IC champ, so whether he wins or loses the tournament, he gets a shot at the belt he’s of which he’s come short in some of his most memorable New Japan matches. Now that he’s here to stay, it seems like his chances are pretty good!

Backstage, the New Ibushi points out that he thinks Naito hasn’t changed since they wrestled in the G1, so maybe we’ll see a thing with Naito having to take just one step further before his next achievement. Or not. Who knows. But this match lets both of these wrestlers shine like the stars they are, so hopefully its indicative of star treatment to come for both of them as the year continues.

The March 11 main event is the non-top-guy version of this match, Sanada defeating the man he subsequently called “the most handsome prowrestler in Japan,” Hirooki Goto. The crowd isn’t as face vs. face hot as for Naito vs. Ibushi, but they’re enthusiastic and split pretty evenly. The wrestlers playing to them beforehand is an example of a strength of this match, the personality they show along with their athletic and technical wrestling skills. The match is really even for the most part, but Sanada’s absurd athleticism puts him over the edge. After he misses the moonsault and Goto makes a comeback, the really well-done race of mostly finisher reversals until Sanada finally does hit the moonsault after Skull End for the win ends the show strong. It’s not a game-changer for either man, but it’s a worthy main event and a good look for Sanada, who even talks backstage afterward!

With half our wrestlers now eliminated, I’ll see you back here to talk about the beginning of round two, the round that features:

• Yoshi-Hashi vs. Chase Owens
• Tomohiro Ishii vs. Taichi
• Will Ospreay vs. Lance Archer as the Will Ospreay Giant Slaying Tour 2K19 continues
• Kazuchika Okada vs. Mikey Nicholls
• Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, a battle of the bug heel tag team from that movie and a matchup that’s already gotten pretty heated and/or goofy from its one preview tag so far
• Kota Ibushi vs. Zack Sabre Jr – ZSJ beat him in the last New Japan Cup, but Ibushi got the win back in the G1
• Colt Cabana vs. Toru Yano in a clash of the clown titans
• Minoru Suzuki vs. Sanada in a rematch of a recent singles match – Suzuki beat him in that, but Sanada pinned him to retain the tag titles the following night