Andrew’s Ratings & Analysis: NJPW The New Beginning in Sapporo 2.2.2020

The second of 3 New Beginning big events! We get the top two British wrestlers in the world, Will Ospreay & Zack Sabre Jr, and our Holy Emperor Taichi looks to stay undefeated in singles competition against Kazuchika Okada!

There’s a few undercard singles matches on this card, which is a little more unique, but nothing crazy.

We all know the big draws are the last two matches. Taichi continues to take wrestling seriously and put on great matches, while ZSJ may explode if he looses to Ospreay mixed with Brexit.

No more reason to talk, let’s just get to the show!

Ratings:

• Henare vs Yota Tsuji: Heare wins via Toa Bottom @8:15 – ** 1/2
• Manabu Nakanishi, Tiger Mask & Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs Tomoaki Honama, Yuya Uemura & Togi Makabe: Tiger Mask wins via Tiger Suplex Hold @9:50 – **
• Gabriel Kidd vs El Phantasmo: ELP wins via Splash @8:50 – * 1/2
• Robbie Eagles, Hirooki Goto & Tomohiro Ishii vs Shingo Takagi, BUSHI & EVIL: Eagles wins via Ron Miller Special @9:40 – *** 1/2
• Minoru Suzuki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, El Desperado & DOUKI vs SHO, YOH, Ryusuke Taguchi & Jon Moxley: Taguchi wins via Ankle Lock @13:00 – *** 1/4
• KENTA, Taiji Ishimori & Jay White vs Tetsuya Naito, SANADA & Hiromu Takahashi: SANADA wins via Skull End @15:35 – *** 1/2
• RevPro British Heavyweight Championship: Zack Sabre Jr (c) vs Will Ospreay: ZSJ retains via Referee Stoppage @27:05 – **** 3/4
• Taichi w/Miho Abe vs Kazuchika Okada: Okada wins via Rainmaker @30:55 – **** 1/2

Analysis:

Henare vs Yota Tsuji – Our Maori Lion Tamer starts off the show against Young Lions. He’s basically become nothing more than a Big Lion, since he gets steam rolled against more veteran wrestlers, but he’s still visibly above the Young Lions. Tsuji did have a good showing, he had multiple moments of transitioning a pinfall into the Boston Crab, and had decent power spots.  Tsuji’s Spear looked fantastic as well. But Henare ended up winning the match. I wonder if Henare has become the Lion Tamer, mostly because he was injury prone early in his career. So maybe the last year or so has been more of a proving ground. If he stays healthy, maybe he’ll get a push.

Manabu Nakanishi, Tiger Mask & Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs Tomoaki Honama, Yuya Uemura & Togi Makabe – The most interesting portion of this match is Yuya being Tiger Mask’s Young Lion. Post-match, Tiger Mask wasn’t happy with Yuya’s performance from their tag match yesterday. So Yuya had something to prove. The veterans of course did their usual thing, and Nakanishi got plenty of time to shine while making his retirement rounds. Yuya finally got time to square off with Tiger, and he came hard and fast, but it was rather uneventful. A High Kick to the head, stopped Yuya’s momentum. Avalanche Butterfly Side Suplex and Tiger Suplex Hold put Yuya away easily.

Gabriel Kidd vs El Phantasmo – One of the worst Young Lion matches in a while. ELP did his cocky heel thing by powdering and moving at the speed of smell, until he felt like doing something. But between the Young Lion moveset being limited and ELP’s desire to try also seems limited, this was rough to sit through. Not technically bad, just slow, boring and heavily unnecessary. Kidd didn’t look inept, again, more just a bad combination of styles.

Robbie Eagles, Hirooki Goto & Tomohiro Ishii vs Shingo Takagi, BUSHI & EVIL – We get our first match with a bunch of threads. Last night Eagles submitted BUSHI to win the tag match, so he’s already in BUSHI’s head. Ishii beat EVIL, but during this match, Goto seemed to get to EVIL. Takagi beat Goto last night, and he even taunted Goto, acting more like his old Dragon Gate Antias persona. But Ishii took a big fight to Shingo, that Shingo repaid and seemed to enjoy. EVIL and Shingo couldn’t save BUSHI from the submission, because they were distracted with their own personal vendettas. All of this was fun, entertaining, all with great moments. I will mention that early on Ishii seemed to get rocked, but he obviously came back alright, so nothing to be concerned with.

Minoru Suzuki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, El Desperado & DOUKI vs SHO, YOH, Ryusuke Taguchi & Jon Moxley – Looking at this match, you may wonder to yourself if Moxley will get along with his teammates. Well the rub here is, he never did. Suzuki and Moxley just went at each other, so there was no real teamwork. Hell, when Taguchi was the legal man, during turmoil, he got to his feet while Suzuki and Moxley were brawling, and they both turned to kick Taguchi down, just so they can continue fighting. Yes there were 8 people involved, but only two mattered. Some solid action in general, but the Suzuki and Moxley stuff was just tremendous.

Due to the Olympics, G1 was moved to October, and it seems like they will do a short Hokkaido Tour in July. Which the crowd loves since Sapporo is the capital of Hokkaido, and the island doesn’t always get a lot of love. 

KENTA, Taiji Ishimori & Jay White vs Tetsuya Naito, SANADA & Hiromu Takahashi – Early Bullet Club attack tried to make sure we got a similar result as to yesterday’s match. Typical pair offs with storylines, but it was done in a clever way. KENTA was legal against Hiromu and in mid moment, he slides out to beat the hell out of Naito, then throw him into the barricades, afterwards coming back in and trying to play innocent. Still a very fun match with SANADA and Jay keeping their issues well knows, SANADA even played into a small problem Milano and Taiji have when he put him in the Paradise Lock. Just good fun, solid action, mixed in with heelish entertainment.

RevPro British Heavyweight Championship: Zack Sabre Jr (c) vs Will Ospreay – Now these two are known to put on great matches, so the anticipation was Rock Horror levels for this match. Early on, both men took a more calculated approach, and ZSJ took advantage of that, since it suited his style a bit more. It wasn’t until a desperation Back Handspring Flip Kick that we saw Ospreay start to comeback. Ospreay even managed to focus Zack’s knees and go for a few submissions of his own. ZSJ showed himself to be the smarter wrestler at different points, especially when Ospreay hit the Oscutter, and ZSJ rolled out of the ring.

Every time Ospreay missed a move or had a small hiccup, ZSJ was on him with an assortment of Guillotine Chokes, Triangles, Cobra Twists and other submissions. This was just a great match to watch because it fluctuated between a ZSJ match to an Ospreay match, but never felt clunky. Just a masterclass in fusing two different styles of wrestling. Ospreay losing by referee stoppage is nice since it adds to him never tapping and more the sympathy of the referee.

Taichi w/Miho Abe vs Kazuchika Okada – We saw a bit of a transformation in Taichi last year. After feeling snubbed from the G1 in 2018, he got more serious in 2019 with his matches against Ishii and Naito. After the hellish beating that Taichi gave Okada last night, Okada comes into the match heavily taped, reminiscent of the G1 match against Kenny Omega in 2017.

We saw many faces of Taichi during this match. He tried to go for the Iron Fingers early, but Okada had an answer. As Taichi took advantage of the heavily taped neck, Okada just continued to power through. Much of Okada’s early offense got him some space, but at the detriment of his neck. Most notably, no kip ups from Okada and belabored movement for his Zoom Out Pose and a few other good psychology/selling moments.

Taichi was in great form for this match though. He combined the heel aspects of his persona, along with a hard hitting and determined resolve to prove himself. Sure Kanemaru distracted the referee so Taichi could use a chair, and Taichi even grabbed the referee so he could hit a low blow, but it was all great elements to what makes Taichi, well…Taichi. Great strikes, Kawada Kicks with more effort than usual and Taichi even pulled off a damn nice Dropkick (he doesn’t do that often). Even if the heel tactics are something you dislike, it added well to the story of the match and to Taichi’s evolution the last year or so.

Notably, the crowd was even on Taichi’s side for a good portion of the match. He played to the crowd, and seems to be accepted, at least in his home town. Okada may have won, but during his speech he started the old taunt of “Taichi go home” but the crowd responded with “Let’s go Taichi”. Hopefully this means bigger things for Taichi and him staying more in the Dangerous T aspect instead of douchey heel vampire singer…whatever.

Overall Score: 8/10

Some may ask how this scored better than yesterday when the ELP match came in so low. Well, it’s because everything else delivered so well, including the final two matches. The fact we have a bunch of threads to pull at coming from the LIJ and Chaos match, and had such a nice balance of heat and shenanigans with the LIJ and Bullet Club match, just great wrestling elements.

Okada maintains his headliner status without taking much of a dip, but Taichi got elevated with such a great match. Okada did mention Antonio Inoki’s name in his closing speech and I have no clue what that means. We did see Inoki say some words during Liger’s retirement, Nakanishi is retiring soon…so maybe the bridge between Inoki and New Japan isn’t completely burned.

Great show, great final two matches and a lot to look forward to for the February 9th show.