One of these years New Japan Pro Wrestling's Wrestle Kingdom show will not carry the hype and anticipation that it has garnered these past few years. The company's annual trip to the Tokyo Dome has become a focal point for hardcore fans ever since the event became available for live streaming (which coincided with the company's renaissance).
There was speculation last year around this time that this renaissance may be coming to an end. Top stars Shinsuke Nakamura and AJ Styles were WWE bound (what ever happened to those guys?) and so was the top tag team in the company, Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows. Doom and gloom was in the air. But stalwarts Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi, the latter of whom battled through injuries all year, continued to carry the load at the top of the card. Tetsuya Naito solidified himself as a top star. Kenny Omega stepped up out of nowhere to go from underwhelming Junior Heavyweight Champion to the top foreign star in the company and one of the marquee names of the non-WWE wrestling world.
Expectations are once again high. The card looks stacked. I've got my snacks all set to watch this one live. Let's see how it all shook out.
New Japan Rumble
This is sort of like New Japan's version of the Royal Rumble only in addition to over the top rope eliminations there are also pinfalls, submissions, and DQs. It's sort of like how you could change the Royal Rumble parameters for No Mercy on N64. Doing the English Language commentary for this so I know who everyone is when they appear.
First entrant is Michael Elgin, back from an orbital bone injury. Second out is "Mr. Ass" himself, Billy Gunn! Billy Gunn looks like a gigantic monster, even next to Elgin. What follows is a nice little 14-man rumble match that is mostly played for laughs. Highlights include Kuniaki Kobayashi renewing his 80's junior heavyweight rivalry with Jushin Liger, Scott Norton unleashing the first disgusting spot of the night by powerbombing Ryusuke Taguchi onto his head, and Elgin throwing Cheeseburger around like he weighs nothing at all (which makes sense given that Cheeseburger appears to weigh almost nothing at all). Elgin wins in his return from injury.
Tiger Mask W vs. Tiger the Dark
Supposedly this is Kota Ibushi vs. ACH. Ibushi could probably be one of the top stars in New Japan (or NXT for that matter) but instead he's following his dreams of being a total weirdo who wrestles when and where he feels like it. There's something admirable about that. Anyway, here he plays an animated character come to life wrestling another animated character come to life. Believe it or not, there is a rich tradition of this in Japanese wrestling.
Match itself was a little slow and a little sloppy, but they did enough cool stuff to get the crowd involved. Not a bad way to open the show but certainly not a match I'll be shouting for other wrestling fans to watch.
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles
Young Bucks (Matt & Nick Jackson) (c) vs. Roppongi Vice (Rocky Romero & Trent Baretta)
The Young Bucks enter carrying four belts each (IWGP Junior Titles, ROH & PWG tag titles, and the "Super Kick Party" Titles) and talk trash to the Hardy Boys on their way down the ramp.
This match was flat out great. So much fun. So inventive. Featured four great wrestlers taking big risks. The Young Bucks are always excellent (special mention should go to the perfectly executed "threaten to leave the match, superkick their opponents on the ramp, run back into the ring, and tease a countout victory" spot) but their opponents deserve a ton of credit. Rocky Romero is one of the guys who built the junior tag division and set the tone for the style. His hot tag in this match was about as fun as they come. And Trent Baretta went all out. His flip dive over the top rope TO THE FLOOR AND NOTHING ELSE was one of the more insane things I've ever seen a human being willingly do for my entertainment.
RPG Vice get the upset and I am very happy to be awake at 3:40am.
NEVER Openweight Trios Titles Gauntlet Match
Satoshi Kojima & Ricochet & David Finlay (c) vs. CHAOS (Yoshi-Hashi & Will Ospreay & Jado) vs. Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale & Yujiro Takahashi & Hangman Page) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Seiya Sanada & EVIL & Bushi)
First combination sees the Bullet Club facing off with the CHAOS team. Will Ospreay is easily the highlight here. Ospreay doesn't so much fly around the ring as effortlessly float. Despite how entertaining Ospreay is, the Bullet Club team wins the first pairing.
LIJ out next. Short little section with LIJ dominating and getting the win.
So out come the champions. Ricochet's first two minutes in the match make me think, "What was the name of that British Guy from earlier? The one who did all the cool stuff I liked?" David Finlay looks like the "Never talk to me or my son ever again" version of Chris Hero. Kojima is there to throw some chops, do the thing where he swears in unison with the crowd in Japanese, and eat the pin. LIJ are the new champs. Decent midcard bout. I now want to see a Ricochet/Sanada singles match.
Cody the American Nightmare vs. Juice Robinson
Yes, this is the former Cody Rhodes making his New Japan debut. For those who don't know, Juice Robinson competed in NXT as CJ Parker and is perhaps best known for breaking Kevin Owens's nose with a palm strike in Owens's debut match. This match now arguably replaces that match as his most high profile spot.
This kinda felt like a Smackdown match. So better than a Raw match but not quite a PPV match and certainly not a big NJPW show match. If you're curious about what a New Japan Cody Rhodes match looks like...this isn't really it.
Ring of Honor World Title
Kyle O'Reilly (c) vs. Adam Cole
I saw these guys have an incredible match live several years ago that left Adam Cole bleeding out of his mouth so much it looked like he was starring in the feature length remake of the cornfield scene in Casino. O'Reilly recently beat Cole for the ROH title. O'Reilly has been a New Japan regular for a few years now and Cole started with the company only in the past year or so. Both are rumored to be heading to WWE in the near future.
This is objectively better than the previous match but the crowd doesn't seem to be feeling it. That especially hurts in a big dome environment such as this. Cole wins the title back. Skip this and watch that other match between these two that I mentioned in the previous paragraph.
IWGP Tag Team Titles
Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tanga Roa) (c) vs. G.B.H. (Togi Makabe & Tomoaki Honma) vs. CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano)
There was a lot going on in his match. Constant action punctuated by Yano's signature comedy spots. I know that not all NJPW fans agree with me on this but I love Yano. I want to hang out with Yano in real life. I want to play trash can wars and eat things wrapped in pizza with him. So I was glad to see he and Ishii win.
Pretty good match. Never lagged and the crowd is officially back on-board with this show.
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title
Kushida (c) vs. Hiromu Takahashi
Takahashi spent a couple highly regarded years on excursion in Mexico wrestling as Kamaitachi. He now returns to Japan to take on the ace of the junior heavyweight divsion, Kushida. Kushida has set the goal for himself to be a Liger-style ace in that he can have a great match with anyone in any style. He's had great, but very different, matches with Kyle O'Reilly and Ricochet in the recent past that speak to this.
Well Takahashi is a different style altogether. The great thing about him is that everything he does feels like it's reckless and out of control - a welcome change from the rehearsed feel of other high-flyers. It's one of the reasons that his feud with Dragon Lee stood out so much in the world of Lucha Libre. However, that can also backfire as he'll occasionally just blow a spot outright (as he does here when going for a top rope rana or his sunset flip powerbomb to the outside gone awry). It's up to Kushida to rein him in. He's mostly successful. This starts out fast and continues to build in intensity. Takahashi does crazy stuff and Kushida tries to fit it into the "Kushida match" template with a few twists along the way.
By the time Takahashi pinned Kushida I was hoping that these two would feud all year. This is a great match that left me feeling like these two may have even better matches in the future.
NEVER Openweight Title
Katsuyori Shibata (c) vs. Hirooki Goto
Goto is the biggest choke artist in wrestling. He's the Scott Norwood of wrestling. The Greg Norman of wrestling. The Nick Anderson of wrestling. The Tony Romo of wrestling. Every big Goto match is him doing an impression of John Starks in Game 7 of the 1994 NBA Finals. Shibata is his best friend from high school who enjoys nothing better than kicking Goto's loser ass into dust.
The match got off to a relatively slow start but good lord do they amp it up once Shibata starts teasing Goto by tapping him in the face with Kawada kicks. This becomes so violent that even Alex and his droogs would wince. The finish sees Goto destroy Shibata with about a dozen headbutts followed by two rounds of finishers.
This is one goddamn hell of a match. Check it out if you like violence or are fascinated by violence or if Hacksaw Ridge wasn't violent enough for you.
IWGP Intercontinental Title
Tetsuya Naito (c) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi
All you really need to know about this match is that Naito used to be a low rent Tanahashi and now he is in his rebelious teen phase which has made him much more popular with pretty much everyone but Tanahashi.
Tanahashi wrestles the first section of this match like Bret Hart in 1997 - old, out of touch, inadvertantly the heel because this modern world has passed him by. It's the right way to go given how popular Naito has been in his current role. However, the first section of the match doesn't feel right. These two actually don't seem to have all that much natural chemistry.
But chemistry be damned. This is a pair of the best main eventers in the world and they are going to will themselves to a great match. Naito bumps like a maniac. Tanahashi pretends that he has about half the mileage on his body that he actually does. By the time they start trading finishers the crowd is at a fever pitch. Just as a dead crowd in a dome can sink a match, a passionate crowd can push a match to the next level.
Naito ends up winning after a breathless, outstanding finishing stretch. Stick with this match. It's well worth waiting for it to heat up.
IWGP Heavyweight Title
Kasuchika Okada (c) vs. Kenny Omega
Omega won the G1 in order to earn this shot. He has been doing interviews all over the world saying how he's the guy who can take New Japan global. That sounds great to me! However, Okada is my favorite wrestler and I want him to win every match ever. Last year Okada had perhaps the best match I've ever seen on the main event of this very show. Can he do the same this year?
In contrast to the earlier Tanahashi/Naito match, these two do have great chemistry together. There is a buzz in the early going. Everything they do just clicks. The headlock spots. The teasing signature moves that don't quite work yet. The brawling on the outside.
The larger story of the match is that Kenny Omega is the arrogant challenger who has already won the match in his mind. There is no respect shown to the champion or his previous accomplishments. In the mind of Kenny Omega this is a coronation rather than a contest. It's actually somewhat similar to the dynmic of the early matches in the legendary Tanahashi/Okada feud. The middle portion of the match works in this context. Omega is in disbelief that Okada would have the audacity to kick out of his mid-tier moves. This section is capped off by Omega hurtling himself to the outside with a giant moonsault onto Okada.
I didn't take notes on the final third of the match so much as scrawl down moves in between the drops of sweat that now stained my notebook. Kenny Omega gets sent ass over heels out of the ring through a table in a ballsy display that could have gone wrong in so many ways. Okada hits a top rope shotgun dropkick. Omega gives Okada a devastating top rope dragon suplex directling onto his head and neck. It's taking everything I have not to type this whole paragraph in ALL CAPS~! Okada hits a perfectly timed, perfectly executed dropkick and I'm punching the air around me. Both guys are throwing bombs. Knee strikes and Rainmakers and tombstones all over the place. FINALLY Okada manages to get the win.
That is the most emotionally draining experience I've ever had watching a wrestling match. Go out of your way to see this. It's as great a match as you'll ever see. We'll be talking about this one for a long, long time.
Thanks for reading everyone. Gonna go try, and fail, to sleep.
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