Andrew’s NJPW Together Project Special 6.15.20

It feels like a lot more than 3 months since our last New Japan, but, that is the reality of it. NJPW was the only, of the larger Japanese promotions, that refused to run empty arena shows during the quarantine.

So with all that now behind us, the largest non-North American promotion brings us a special show! With the New Japan Cup starting on the 16^th, we get a double secret probation card!

Well let’s see what we get, shall we?

Ratings:

• Yota Tsuji vs Gabriel Kidd: Tsuji wins via Boston Crab @8:45 – ** ¾
• El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs Tomohiro Ishii & Yuya Uemura: Desperado wins via Numero Dos @12:55 – ***
• Gedo, Jado, Taiji Ishimori & Yujiro Takahashi vs YOSHI-HASHI, Hirooki Goto, Tomoaki Honma & Toru Yano: Yujiro wins via Pimp Juice @13:20 – *** ¼
• EVIL, BUSHI & SANADA vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Ryusuke Taguchi & Satoshi Kojima: Taguchi wins via Ankle Hold @13:35 – *** ¼
• DOUKI, Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr vs Togi Makabe, Yuji Nagata, Kota Ibushi & Hiroshi Tanahashi: Makabe wins via King Kong Knee Drop @13:05 – ** ¾
• Hiromu Takahashi, Tetsuya Naito & Shingo Takagi vs Kazuchika Okada, SHO & YOH: Naito wins via Destino @14:15 – *** ½

Results:

Yota Tsuji vs Gabriel Kidd

Everything kicking off with a Young Lion match is a familiar format. These two do the typical Young Lion thing of going 100 MPH out the gate and not really slowly down until they crash into each other. Gabriel Kidd looked much better than he did around the beginning of the year, but Tsuji still showed his senior status.

A big Spear from Tsuji lead to the Boston Crab and some momentum for his New Japan Cup match against Togi Makabe.

El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs Tomohiro Ishii & Yuya Uemura

This was entertaining purely from the angle of how Despy and Ishii would interact. A good portion of this match involved Despy and Kanemaru isolating Uemura. Whenever Ishii tried to insert himself, Desperado met him head on. Once Despy realized that was dumb, he took a few short cuts.

Uemura showed a lot of heart, but much like his story was playing during the Young Lion Cup…he doesn’t know how to finish regardless of how impressive he is. Solid match, solid action, and I wonder if Uemura will get an upset over Kanemaru because of this match.

Gedo, Jado, Taiji Ishimori & Yujiro Takahashi vs YOSHI-HASHI, Hirooki Goto, Tomoaki Honma & Toru Yano

On paper this was 4 Heavyweights versus 4 Juniors, so it seems to be unbalanced. But remember, 3 of the 4 Heavyweights are Honma, Yano and YOSHI-HASHI…so on second thought…this is pretty even.

Part of the fun here is that Gedo faces Okada, Jado faces Yano and Goto has Yujiro in the Cup. So there’s a lot of moving pieces, and surprisingly, YOSHI-HASHI gets a decent spot where he starts taking on all four of the Bullet Club members. Taiji looks decent but a little rusty, Gedo takes a lot of short cuts in a beautiful way; but this match was to make Yujiro look pretty good.

The match ends up with Yujiro and Honma, Yujiro hits his Fisherman’s Brainbuster, but Goto breaks it up. Yujiro manages to get the better of Goto and dump him out, to hit Pimp Juice and win the match for Bullet Club.

Goto will probably win in the New Japan Cup, but this did a solid job of establishing that Yujiro can still be a threat.

EVIL, BUSHI & SANADA vs Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Ryusuke Taguchi & Satoshi Kojima

As we’ve gathered so far, most of these matches are setting the stage for the first round of the New Japan Cup, and this is no different. Here we have Kojima and EVIL, as well as, SANADA and Taguchi. Both pairs spend a decent amount of time together to show the upcoming tournament matches might be closer than expected.

Kojima got the best of EVIL a few times, even hitting the Tandem Assisted Koji-Cutter with Tenzan’s help. Taguchi managed to pick up the submission victory by tapping out BUSHI. But he and SANADA came to blows many times, with Taguchi tricking him and attempting the Paradise Lock. This was probably the most fun match so far, and showcased a few of the matches that are a little closer on paper.

DOUKI, Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr vs Togi Makabe, Yuji Nagata, Kota Ibushi & Hiroshi Tanahashi

So this was an odd match. Some of the bigger names have tournament matches, but because of how Suzuki-Gun matches go; this wasn’t as entertaining the previous tags. We got a decent amount of early grandpa action with Nagata and Suzuki starting and just brawling at different points. But the match was never overly coherent.

Ibushi had a brief stint with Sabre, Tanahashi and Taichi had a moment, but they were all fleeting. Could this have been done purposefully to give Makabe some shine and leave fans wanting more on the bigger names? Yes, that’s probably it. But that also means we have to wait for the Cup for the pay off, and on its own merits, this was a little lackluster. Still decent, but comparatively lackluster.

Hiromu Takahashi, Tetsuya Naito & Shingo Takagi vs Kazuchika Okada, SHO & YOH

This match wasn’t disappointing, but the 3 months of rust was a bit obvious. Most of the work was between SHO and Shingo, which plays well into their Junior rivalry from last year and the fact they are facing one another in the first round of the Cup.

Even though Okada and Naito started the match, Hiromu went after Okada more. This was a fun wrinkle since Hiromu is on the same side, but wouldn’t possibly face Okada until the Semi-Finals. While fun, Hiromu and Okada did have a sloppy transition at one point, then when YOH and Naito came towards the end is when rust and excitement got the best of both of them. YOH nearly beefed it when it jumped to the top rope, BUT Naito did pull out a new move. He flipped over YOH’s shoulder and hit a cutter. The match ended with a Destino, but that new cutter could be a fun addition to the arsenal.

Overall Score: 6.5/10

This was a giant show to set up New Japan Cup matches, so yes, it was a giant undercard tag match show. But let’s look at the bigger picture here. NEW JAPAN IS BACK! Was this show mostly useless? Yes. But it wasn’t awful, just nothing that needs to be watched.

We did get a video package during Intermission about the Way of the Grand Master. Early hype is that it might be the O-Kharn back from excursion. Fans for the last couple years would know him as the former Young Lion Oka. I guess we’ll figure out if the guesses are correct, or if it’s someone totally different.