The Home of the Japanese Baseball Hall of Fame, and the Yomiuri Giants
42,000 seats
The Big Egg
The Motherfucking Dome.
The best day of the Puroresu year has passed us by. The most hardcore of fans watched it live, while the rest of us couldn't or decided not to use a vacation day and watched it on Thursday night. While you can't deny that the show was good, this may be the first Wrestle Kingdom I've seen where the whole is greater than the sum of it's parts. Not to spoil my review going forward, but no match sticks out as a match of the year, or even as the definite best match on the card. That's not necessarily a bad attribute in the case of the latter, though. Each match on the show was unique, appealing in different ways, but all entertaining. It was for sure, however, a can't miss show from top to bottom.
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles [1st Title Defense]
Roppongi 3K (SHO & YOH) (W/Rocky Romero) (CHAOS) (c) vs. Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson) (Bullet Club)
It's only the first match, but I need to start with an aside. In 1994, Rick Rude's career effectively ended when he injured his back, on a dive to the outside of the ring, at a dome (specifically the dome in Fukuoka). When the crux of this match is that one member of each team has fucked up their back with falls, on a Dome show with a notoriously raised platform, I was on edge for the rest of the show.
That being said, Matt Jackson's selling was on point.
SHO and YOH needed to impress here, getting a hat-trick of victories to cement themselves as the next big things of the Junior Division. The Bucks, meanwhile, were coming off a string of well fought matches over the Junior Titles and ROH Tag Titles last year. They continued that trend here, working over YOH's back after one of the aforementioned falls. For the majority of his time in the ring, the defending champ was taking a lion's share of abuse to his back. SHO would try his best to get his team going after being tagged in, and for a while it seemed as if the young men would upset their challengers, but the injury was something that couldn't be overcome. A Meltzer Driver and a Sharpshooter made The Young Bucks a record-cementing seven time champions. A great way to start the night with a fast paced, hard hitting contest
****
NEVER Openweight Six Man Tag Team Title Gauntlet [1st Title Defense]
Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa (Bullet Club) (c) vs. Beretta, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano (CHAOS) vs. Juice Robinson, Ryusuke Taguchi & Togi Makabe (Taguchi Japan) vs. Taichi, Takashi Iizuka & Zack Sabre Jr. (Suzuki-Gun vs. War Machine (Hanson & Raymond Rowe) & Michael Elgin
For the uninitiated, welcome to the standard fare for these belts. This has been the usual for big show 6-man defenses for a year, and it was only slightly better here than it was last year. We started with Suzuki-Gun and the War Machine/Elgin combination, and Ray Rowe wanted nothing to do with this match. This didn't stop him and Suzuki-Gun's Sabre J.r from having a wonderful exchange. I need a twenty minute match of Rowe hitting Zack as hard as he can immediately. Sabre proved to be a submission great again here, using a Triangle to choke his bearded foe out to send the Trio packing. CHAOS came out next ,and they brought the Steam Roller with them. Yano pinned Taichi, then ended the match for Taguchi Japan in short order following the Coach himself missing a flying hip attack. When the Bullet Club champs came out, they took momentum for a while, until Beretta made a comeback to pin Tama Tonga with a Dudebuster. It was breakneck speed, and nothing besides the above mentioned Sabre reacting to being killed sticking out. The titles changed back to the Bullet Club trio the next night, so who could really care?
**3/4
Cody (w/Brandi Rhodes) (Bullet Club) vs. Kota Ibushi
This match ended up turning out better than I thought it would be. Cody gets a lot of shit, especially in New Japan, but I honestly think that's more a dislike of his style as opposed to any doubt whether he's good. A sheer experience level disqualifies him for being any kind of bad in my opinion, but some have a problem that he doesn't immediately fit the mold they are looking for in New Japan performers. Regardless, he and Kota worked very well against each other in this match. Speaking of working well, here we saw the rise of Brandi Rhode's activity, coming along as a very good mix of the traditional valet and heel manager roles. She gave Cody an edge and helped set up a series of great moments, and if this continues we may see Cody elevate higher on the cards. Kota still managed to work around all the interference and cheap tactics. He really is one of the best independent wrestlers in Japan right now, and if he were to sign somewhere he could be a real asset to that company. A really good, Western style match ended with Cody eating knee and a Phoenix Splash. This would be the best show on any given indy show, but here it may even sit right in the middle.
***1/2
IWGP Tag Team Title [2nd Defense]
Davey Boy Smith Jr. & Lance Archer (Suzuki-Gun) (c) vs. EVIL & SANADA (Los Ingobernables de Japon)
It's very coincidental that I started reading Chris Charlton's book Lion's Pride at the start of the New Year, because this match is very reminiscent of what Japanese Pro Wrestling started as. Withing the opening minutes of this match, Killer Elite Squadron managed to destroy their challengers right out of the gate with a Killer Bomb and a Chokeslam onto a pile of Young Lions. This immediately established EVIL and SANADA as the pair in peril, and put the crowd firmly behind them. It all worked great , especially with how good The Suzuki-Gun team is at their job. Davey Boy and Lance are fantastic artists of the beat down, and drew the crowd in more with each passing minute. EVIL has been one of my favorites since I started watching in 2015, and SANADA I have a preset affection for from his TNA days. Both of them managed to look great here, showing Rock and Roll levels of fire coming back up, and the crowd was getting into it easy. It was not about the moves in this match as much as it was about the story and the emotion, and as SANADA payed tribute to his trainer and mentor Keiji Muto by nailing a beautiful Moonsault for the pin, you got a feeling that this may be the new standard team in the Heavyweight Division for New Japan. Although, some of us remember Meiyu Tag...
***1/2
NEVER Openweight Title [5th Defense]
Hair vs. Hair DeathMatch
Minoru Suzuki (Suzuki-Gun) (c) vs. Hirooki Goto (CHAOS)
In the opening minutes of this match, Hirooki Goto may have been legitimately choked out by Minoru Suzuki. That immediately set the mood of the match as what it was billed to be, a Deathmatch. The appeal in this match for me was not in the action, even though that was excellent as well and as a standalone match this was still very good. What I liked most about this match was the feeling and the pacing of what proved to be an important, culminating match. A culminating match that ended a year long story surrounding Goto and his limbo in the company that started at last year's Wrestle Kingdom against Shibata. The NEVER Openweight title became this revitalizing prize for Goto, and he had a series of good matches against people leading up to his loss to Suzuki in the middle of 2017. Suzuki then proceeds to kill Goto again and his friends liberally, all the time denying Goto any more shots at the NEVER title. To win his prize back, to win his honor and respect back, Goto must be willing to sacrifice it all, and he does that symbolically by offering his hair. And it payed off. This match did more to elevate Hirooki Goto than anything else in years. Not beating Nakamura twice, not making it to the G1 finals in 2016, nothing. You can watch this match on it's own, but if you're not a fan of New Japan and just getting into it you need to get onto World and watch all of the NEVER matches from 2017 to just get in the right mindset for this one.
****1/4
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title [1st Title Defense]
Marty Scurll (c) (Bullet Club) vs. Hiromu Takahashi (Los Ingobernables de Japon) vs. KUSHIDA vs. Will Ospreay (CHAOS)
And now, for something completely different. Flippy shit was aplenty here, and at 150% speed. I was afraid that this match was going to be a cringe worthy series of spotfests, and I was half right. It was a festival of sorts, but it wasn't as bad as I thought it could or would be. Every beat of the action played into the one next to it, while coming out of the one before. It managed this without feeling entirely planned. Three men or four lesser men would not be able to pull off this match as well, but we are dealing with possibly the four best wrestlers under 100 kilograms in the world. It doesn't hurt that there was years of interwoven feuding in this match, so everyone was very confident in working with each other here. On a second watching, it was clear that Ospreay was the star in this match, and was center stage in 75% of the bout. He very definitely and solidly pinned Marty Scurll when all was said and done, regaining his championship and breaking the trend of losing to The Villain in one stroke. If you don't like Move-A-Second matches, your mind's not going to be changed here. But those who enjoy the style of match can find one of the finest examples of such to have taken place on this night.
****1/2
Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) vs. Jay White
In this match we see the benefit of sending your trainees out on a learning excursion. The most important thing that a man can find on a foreign tour is not a new move, or friends for the future in his career, but his confidence. Jay White showed in this match that he has a confidence that he needs to be in the upper stratosphere of the New Japan cards. I could see fleeting it in his Ring of Honor appearances, but here it showed even more. Unfortunately, that's where my glowing talk about this match has to curtail, because this was honestly an underwhelming disappointment for a title contest on January 4th. The match was technically sound, but there was a distinct lack of emotion from the crowd. Whether that was the acoustics of the Dome being poor for such a sound that is nigh explosive, or if the piecemeal build to the match was as ineffective as presented. It did pick up following Tanahashi slapping the angst out of White two thirds of the way into the encounter, followed by was a great exchange of teases and near finishes. About 4 High Fly Flows later, and Tanahashi survives another defense. Was this the right outcome? Tanahashi is hurt, but Jay holding the Intercontinental title right now, and doing it by beating Tanahashi at the Mother Fucking Dome, may not have been the way to end the reign.
***3/4
No Disqualification
Kenny Omega (Bullet Club) (c) vs. Chris Jericho
Sandwiched between two professional wrestling contests, in the Semi-Main Event, was a fight. There was nothing professional about what these two did to each other, and it was marvelous. Stripped down technically, but the emotion and the story remained and shone supreme here. The whole time, the air of a fight and disgust between Kenny and Chris never dissipated, making for a unique feel from the rest of the card. It can be argued that Jericho may be losing his athletic ability in his age (I don't, mind you), but his ability to put a match together and perform when he needs to can't be denied. This match was a great view, but was not without faults. While they did a good job separating themselves from their usual arsenal of moves, there were times when they wrestled more than fought. Never in a fight, if I could, would I bust out a Hurricanrana or Springboard from the ropes. Despite this, the Canadians worked great around each other's signatures, managing to get the 40,000+ into each near fall. Kenny won in the end, countering an attempt at a Lionsault with a chair and hitting the One Winged Angel. Both men benefited from this performance, with Kenny proving he's not just moves to the staunchest of doubters, and Jericho showing he can still perform in a high impact setting when the chips are down. A lovely thing to watch.
****1/2
Kazuchika Okada (CHAOS) (c) vs. Tetsuya Naito (Los Ingobernables de Japon)
Fuck, where do I begin with this one?
Lemme get it out of the way, because I'm going to be talking less about the match, and more ramble about Naito. So, if you want to watch without spoilers, my rating is-
****1/2
I would have bet money on Naito winning the title here, and I was 150% ready for him to finish his destiny. To go from losing your main event title match via fan vote, to a total personality makeover, to capturing the G1 trophy once again to face the man he lost to four years ago. It was all perfect. Then he lost. I spent days, as if in a drug induced fog, wandering lethargically, pondering the meaning of many things. Of whether I can trust Gedo's judgement in such things. I sat in this fog, listening to one of my favorite audio programs; Wrestling Observer's Bryan and Vinny show. On it they watch WCW and WWF Attitude Era shows, so at some point they mention Roddy Piper.
That's when I realized. That was it.
Tetsuya Naito is like Roddy Piper. In his day, Roddy never needed a world title. He never needed a major championship in a company, at least for long. He could draw a house and not have to be "the guy" to do it. Naito now, I feel, fits in this role. Los Ingobernables is white hot whether they have titles to their name or not. They are a Cult of Personality that is sweeping New Japan audiences, as well as international audiences.
Besides even that, Naito's redemption was already fulfilled by even being here. In 2014 his Tokyo Dome main event was taken, not a title. All that was needed to complete his redemption was to be on the main event, for the IWGP title, against Okada as it should have been those years before. In this, the story of Tetsuya Naito's journey back to the top of the card is complete. And he will be here for a long time. Maybe he'll be champion again, and maybe it'll be him taking it off Okada. That's not for me to say now, though.
Thanks for reading! I'm glad that I can turn my passion for wrestling into something that so many people enjoy. If you want to get regular updates on when I release more reviews, you can follow me at Twitter at @LSWayne21. And if you're still looking for your fix on wrestling, check out Enuffa.com, where I got my start in reviewing and still contribute from time to time.
All of the New Japan I watch can be found on New Japan World.See you down the (Bushi)Road.
No comments:
Post a Comment