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

Previously on NJPW: Tanahashi Zack Sabre Jr.’d Zack Sabre Jr. into a rage, Chase Owens Old School Southern Heeled Juice Robinson into a rage, the Chaos hierarchy was maintained with minimal rage involved.

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And now, the best and worst of the semifinal and final shows of the 2019 New Japan Cup from March 23-24 in Niigata.

A Real Mixed Bag: Loitering On The Undercard

I’m going to really hook you into this article by starting by talking about the least important stuff on these shows! The undercard tag matches started to feel directionless as the New Japan Cup wore on because fewer and fewer wrestlers in them had any real direction for this tour even as new title feuds began. They were just here to fill up time and fill up the card. There were some standout tag matches on these last two shows, but they stood out from a relatively weak field.

This hadn’t been the best tour for Dads-and-Young-Lions matches, but the eight-man on March 23 is an energetic opener that wins over the crowd. Afterward, we learn via Uemura’s professional jealousy that Ren Narita will probably be in Best of the Super Juniors this year!

And in both his match with Umino against Shingo Takagi and Bushi and his role – again pairing off with Takagi – in the L.I.J. vs. Hodgepodge Of Other Babyface Factions, Narita looks as ready for a big break, showing what’s now his signature mix of fighting spirit and creative counters. The Young Lions-on-junior-tag-contenders tag is overall the exact eight-minute match you’d want to see between these two teams too, featuring good work from the dojo boys but ultimately putting over Bushi and Takagi as a dominant team as we continue to watch for them to get their title shot. I bought into Takagi’s teaser that Roppongi 3K could show up on the last night to mess with them, but I guess we’ll have to wait until the Dontaku tour for anything like that.

The most forgettable of the directionless tag matches are Henare, Cabana, and Elgin vs. Umino, Kojima, and Tenzan on March 24, and both matches featuring Suzuki and K.E.S., who could be a really good NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Champion squad, especially given their team finish on the 24th, but probably never will be. Archer’s quest to get Rocky Romero to fight him in a cage is still great though, at least.

An Extremely Petty Moment In In-Ring Wrestling History

I hate that there is as much information about this in my brain as there is about this other Worst event from March 23, so I’m sharing it with you! Will Ospreay appears on these shows tagging first with Taguchi, then with Tanahashi, against the reunited Dangerous Tekkers, Taichi and Zack Sabre Jr. He’s feuding with Taichi for the NEVER Openweight Championship, but he also decides to incorporate his extracurricular internet feud with one of the greatest wrestlers of all time into this match, etching Twitter beef into in-ring wrestling history forever!

Ospreay attempts to use the Japanese Ocean Cyclone Suplex invented by joshi legend Manami Toyota during this match, which Romero on commentary calls “shades of his girlfriend, Bea Priestly, her move,” to which Excalibur replies, “Manami Toyota, her move.” Ospreay does the first part of this move in reference to Toyota shading his GF for using this move in a Stardom match without her permission.

Does this directly involve Will Ospreay? Nope, but I guess it’s still more his business than his last big internet fight in which he publicly berated Sadie Gibbs for leaving a tour of Japan early due to the death of a family member. And it’s is especially rich not only because Ospreay has historically been pretty anal about move-stealing himself, which he now suddenly claims is not a thing, and has claimed to invent a move that he almost definitely did not invent.

About one hour after this tag match, Ospreay deleted his initial, convoluted defense of Priestly and tweeted to “just be happy people.” But though he can delete tweets, he can never delete the incorporation of this feud into this tag match unless it’s lost from the New Japan archive and the memories of everyone who watched it and everywhere people illegally downloaded the show. It’s like “Don’t email my wife!” without the part where it’s hilarious.

The actual most important thing that happens in these tag matches involves the other Brit. Not only does Sabre make me really want to see him wrestle Taguchi one-on-one, but he really mean-spiritedly targets Tananashi, looking to make up for that quarterfinal loss. He reminds us that oh yeah, Tanahashi earned a RevPro title shot, which I at first thought might be a rad main event for the NJPW UK show this summer, but JUST KIDDING, Sabre challenges specifically for MSG! With this and Naito-Ibushi locked in for New York, the G1 Supercard climbed about ten hype levels in under twelve hours!

Best: Protect Ya Neck

And speaking of Naito and Ibushi, they continue to kill this feud in which they try to kill each other! They kick off their March 23 tag match against each other and we quickly see Naito’s heelier side come out, mostly in service of mind games. This very focused Naito fits how these two are wrestling, with none of that “feeling each other out” preview tag energy we get in some feuds, but like they really, really want to beat each other. This and their next-level in-ring skill helps make both of their tag matches highlights of their respective shows. Ibushi breaks out a freakin’ twisting skytwister press!

On March 23, Naito absolutely destroys Ibushi with an illegal Destino more powerful than ninety percent of Destinos, then mocks and trash talks him outside the ring, and Ibushi does the same with a Last Ride on March 24. At this point everyone, including Naito, is like, “JUST TELL US WHEN YOU’RE FIGHTING” and I specifically am like “DO IT IN AMERICA; BLESS MY COUNTRY WITH THIS MATCH, PLEASE.” Thankfully, backstage, Ibushi very politely asks for just that and Naito immediately makes fun of him for such a normie pick but decides it is fine with him.

The other, unexpected Darkness Blessing from March 24 is that Evil and Ishii decide to hoss fight each other and get into it the point of a pull-apart brawl. They slap each other in the face! Evil is left too moody to fist bump the rest of his team for a while! This new feud makes you want to see a match signed IMMEDIATELY, but it’s probably for Dontaku! At least we have that backstage fight to tide us over.

I mentioned earlier that after his star quality run in the New Beginning tour, I thought Evil’s next big singles competitor moment would happen in the New Japan Cup, but this very much works too! He and Ishii haven’t wrestled one-on-one since 2016 when Ishii beat Evil twice in quick succession, first in the New Japan Cup and then to retain the ROH TV title on the Road to Invasion Attack. It doesn’t seem impossible that going over the Stone Pitbull now, three years later, could be an important moment for our beloved goth hoss.

Best: The Semifinal Countdown

Ishii’s other, even better moment on these shows is his semifinal match against Kazuchika Okada. The crowd is extremely here for this before the bell even rings and it delivers on every level. Okada provokes Ishii to the point where the Stone Pitbull is only made stronger by elbows to the neck, making that powerslam on the floor is even more awesome. In the ring, Ishii pushes his Chaos bro’s toughness and fighting spirit to the limit. Along with making Okada really earn his spot in the finals, Ishii looks great himself with moments like that headbutt counter to the Rainmaker and the counter of another into an armbar that makes the crowd lose its collective mind.

The aftermath of the ending of yet another great tournament run by Ishii and what feels like Okada’s first really hard-fought match of the tour is the second-to-last great babyface vs. babyface moment in a tour with several. Okada bows to Ishii after the match in a rare moment of respect for a veteran wrestler and Ishii asks for a hand up that turns into an exhausted hug in a rare moment of emotion from him. These types of moments between friends/teammates/mutual good guys are a big point in the plus column for sports-like stakes in wrestling and also friendship in wrestling.

The other semifinal match also features an older wrestler bringing out the best in a younger competitor when very-close-to-his-hometown boy Sanada defeats Hiroshi Tanahashi. This is another match in which Sanada’s strong wrestling skills shine, with the Cold Skull going straight after Tanahashi’s legs because he’s smarter and/or less cocky than ZSJ. Another highlight of this match is the appearance of Heel Tanahashi, the mean version of the Ace with a chip on his shoulder that comes out when the audience doesn’t support him enough that we last saw against Kento Miyahara at the Baba Memorial Show. This highlights out how strategically Tanahashi wrestles because he does these “plotting” faces, which I think is fun to see.

But the key moment that determines the outcome of the match is also a strategic mistake by the Ace, his block of a moonsault with his terrible knees, the knees he’d been so careful to protect for the entire tournament, which had already been weakened on by Sanada earlier in the match. He still holds his own through an exciting series of nearfalls and counters but taps out to Skull End. Sanada could not have earned his place in the finals more and the crowd couldn’t be happier.

His “romantic” moment with the crowd in which he gets everyone to turn on their phone lights like a slow song at a concert and/or a Bray Wyatt entrance (Where is that guy???) to tell them “just between us… [insert running gag]” hammers home that this dude is a RESOURCE. I know it’s a joke at this point that every year could be the Year of Sanada, but after this tournament run, I really hope something else big happens for him in 2019.

Worst: POCKET SAND

The last tag match before the IWGP U.S. Championship match between Juice Robinson and Chase Owens features the continued element of Juice getting really mad about Chase cheating, and the return of our terrible IWGP Heavyweight Champion Jay White, whose support of his teammate helps make Owens exponentially more obnoxious. On March 24, the crowd gets very into the sequence that hints Hirooki Goto might pin the champ – only to get pinned by White instead and vow revenge backstage. Unfortunately for the performers, this moment is way more over with the crowd than most of the U.S. title match.

A major problem with everything surrounding this match quickly becomes apparent. There are few boos for chicanery by Chase Owens that would get boos if pulled by guys like current Jay White or pre-heavyweight Taichi. Jado gets a billion times more heat anytime he gets involved in the match. Almost nobody cares about what Chase Owens does and almost nobody believes he could actually win this title. They care about Juice Robinson’s heroic comeback/revenge, but they just don’t get into the peril beforehand. Despite all the pins after package piledrivers in tag matches, the villain never became as credible as the hero.

So we’re left with this match for this title that just seems to exist to test if up-and-coming non-Japanese guys can carry a singles feud picture – with the most obvious, recent examples Hangman Page and David Finlay, as well as the fact that Face Of American Expansion (haha) Kenny Omega was the inaugural champ – that’s full of nonsense and little actual wrestling. That’s an especially weird choice because the whole reason some people argue Owens is underrated in the first place is because of his wrestling skill. The nonsense barely even gets the responses that would make it somewhat worth it and the match drags.

On the next tour, the reign of Juice Robinson will continue with a challenge from a more established villain, Bad Luck Fale, who will also wrestle Mikey Nicholls at some point, probably. It does not look like the U.S. title picture is going to get any more engaging on the Road to Dontaku, but maybe we’ll all be surprised.

Best: I Bless The Rains Down In Niigata

The match after this, the New Japan Cup final, also had a predictable result but is so extremely good that by the end it doesn’t matter. But it’s still worth noting that Okada seemed like a shoo-in, especially since this match was also for the other half of the MSG main event. A final match against Tanahashi or maybe Ibushi would have been less obvious, but NJPW already put Ibushi in a banger feud for a single title match that could easily steal that whole show. And even though we all knew he was doomed from the start, Sanada’s performance in this match and the way Okada put him over repeatedly afterward made this feel like an important moment for him and an investment in a future star by the company.

However, the cons of this specific final matchup show themselves in the match’s opening stretch. I think when you think you know the match’s outcome, it’s easier to get cynically smarky about “Okay, they’re doing the slow, methodical opening to a Big Okada Match; I guess this is going to go long.” The bout does turn out to be a Big Okada Match, but fortunately, those tend to be pretty great!

There have been a few moments that have promised the Rainmaker was back since his Dominion fall from grace and psychological wellness, but this, structurally and emotionally and in terms of the crowd response, was undoubtedly Okada’s real return to glory. Over the course of about half an hour, my perception of Okada went from “very good” to “THE GREATEST GODDAMN WRESTLER IN THE WORLD” and whether or not that’s objectively true, part of Okada and NJPW’s power is that they can make you believe it.

A key, classic Rainmaker moment for me in this match was his desperate grabbing of Sanada’s legs to stop him going for the moonsault because this guy isn’t a pure fighting spirit warrior but a character who endures and claws his way to victory. That’s part of why those MAINTAINING WRIST CONTROL moments, of which we get a very good one in this match, are so effectively dramatic – in addition to this being clear setup to him trying to short-arm lariat a guy to death, we know that Okada’s opponent will have to basically rip his arm and possibly also his own arm off to get him to let go when victory is in sight.

I already wrote about the post-main event part of this show in a news article this weekend, but I think there are a few things worth noting here. First, even with Sanada getting that extra hometown support during the match, the extremely hot crowd is completely on Okada’s side after his win, far beyond the polite applause for big match winners whether the audience supports them or not. This results in even more heel heat for Jay White that even turns borderline xenophobic due to a heckler:

The New Japan audience usually sits through long promos in English and attempts to respond appropriately, but making a long speech that the live audience doesn’t understand has also been used for heel heat – see Kenny Omega joining Bullet Club and refusing to speak Japanese for a while. I’ve been critical of performers cutting promos in English that seem to be mostly for people watching on the internet, with Cody’s “Kairi Sane” bit when he challenged Juice for the U.S. title the worst offender I can remember, because I think it can hurt the quality of the live show to basically ignore the audience who’s physically there, but this was a little different.

White’s lengthy promos have been the subject of a running joke at press conferences, his Japanese opponents getting a little “Jim from The Office” as they have to wait for a translation of this jerk insulting them for minutes at a time. Turned into a heckle, this isn’t that funny anymore. But also because this was due to a heckle it seems unlikely that White is going to become a more overtly “foreign heel” character.

That’s a weird note on which to end this review, so I’ll leave you with some wrap-up bullet points:

• Kazuchika Okada owns
• Sanada doesn’t own yet but is very good at wrestling and showed all of his potential on these shows
• It suddenly looks like the G1 Supercard might also own, and I’ll see you back here with a Best/Worst of that show the morning before WrestleMania!