Andrew’s NJPW Strong Ep 18 Results & Match Ratings: 12.5.2020

The holiday last week caused the lapse in coverage from me, but I can’t say I’m upset. NJPW Strong has been as inconsistent as Jose Altuve without cheating.

At least this show has promise. Even though I loath any match with The DKC, it’s obviously the opener, and maybe the other Riegel twin can pull a passable match out of him. Zayne and Christian are both studs, so that should be fun and the main event could actually have storyline implications. So there’s some fun to be had.

Let’s see if I hate this!

Ratings:

• Sterling Riegel w/Logan Riegel vs The DKC w/Clark Connors: Sterling wins via Submission Counter Cradle @8:42 – * ¼
• Alex Zayne vs Blake Christian: Zayne wins via Taco Driver @8:43 – *** ¾
• 10 Man Elimination Tag: Bullet Club (Jay White, KENTA, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Hikuleo) vs David Finlay, Juice Robinson, Karl Fredericks, Brody King & ACH: Brody King wins via Over the shoulder backbreaker lift into Piledriver @13:51 – *** ½

Results:

Sterling Riegel w/Logan Riegel vs The DKC w/Clark Connors

I think I’ve made it known before, but in case anyone forgot; I can’t stand DKC. He’s erratic, jarring and spastic with his motions, nothing about him is likable, he doesn’t have a good look, he just tries to be “intense” but comes off more like the Angry Video Game Nerd trying to do karate. With that established, this match was pretty bad.

It starts with an attempt at mat wrestling and jockying for position, which was fine, but neither man adds any real fire to the match, and DKC’s spastic energy does nothing for the flow of things. Moves seem slow, an attempted Flying Armbar was sloppy at best from DKC and the struggle from Sterling looked more like DKC guiding him on positioning.

A botched timing on a knee lift or judo hip toss or something was weird…I just hate this match. No crowd made the whole thing seem flat, DKC’s inability to do anything in a manner that looks like a wrestling match and not reenacting scenes from Kickass, immediately disconnects me. Sterling could be something, he just needs better opponents and probably a crowd since his facials are lacking so again, the match fell flat for many reasons.

Alex Zayne vs Blake Christian

Now the funny thing is, this was about as long as the first match, but never felt like it took the foot off the gas. We get a long of quick strikes and athletic moves that each countered, from tosses, to strikes to standing Shooting Stars and just fast action. When it does slow down, it’s just to fire into another sequence. Blake shoots Zayne out, then hits a Tope con Dragonrana.

When Blake tries to come off the top rope to continue momentum, Zayne stifles it with an overhead kick and they regroup before going balls to the wall again. This match was a ton of fun, moves were all fairly well executed and their familiarity with one another was expressed in the match and over commentary.

Blake kicking out of the Crunchwrap Supreme isn’t something we saw often on Strong, but Zayne finishing things off with a Taco Driver, was a nice punctuation. Just crazy fun match.

10 Man Elimination Tag: Bullet Club (Jay White, KENTA, Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Hikuleo) vs David Finlay, Juice Robinson, Karl Fredericks, Brody King & ACH

This match was really fun even though the premise wasn’t exactly riveting. Hikuleo and Brody King face off first, Bullet Club tries to do a sneak attack and eliminate Brody, but the Hontai team recovers, clears out Bullet Club and then eliminates the big man immediately. Brody tags out while BC is trying to figure out who they’re making legal, so Jay White tries to take a quick advantage against Finlay, but it mostly backfires.

Jay bumped a lot in this match, even gave ACH a great near fall off of a Fisherman Suplex Hold. Things finally got moving when Karl and KENTA had a nice exchange, but as the referee was distracted, KENTA and Jay worked together to eliminate Karl. Since the referee couldn’t argue foul play, he calls Karl eliminated. Then goes Juice, Tama, ACH, Jay, Finlay in that order, each getting eliminated by the person eliminated directly afterwards.

Loa and KENTA try to use the numbers game, but Brody is just too big and nasty. Both get dropped, Loa gets thrown over the top rope and KENTA tries to fight back, but just pisses off Brody. KENTA tries 2 Running Boots, a Rolling Elbow, but Brody catches him and drops him with what commentary is calling a Ganso Bomb…but it’s distinctly not. An interesting over the shoulder piledriver thing, but not a Ganso Bomb.

Still a fun match.

Overall Score: 6/10

Well this show started off with one of the worst things possible, and then recovered nicely. Sadly for Strong we know they won’t really be able to explore much with Zayne since he recently reported to the WWE Performance Center (who knows how far in advance this was taped though). I’m looking forward to what WWE does with Hot Sauce since he was definitely one of the bright spots to NJPW Strong.

KENTA eating his first visible pin on Strong sets up for a briefcase match most likely. Not sure if it’ll be on the official Detonation card or this is how we drag out the IWGP US belt situation. Also the elimination helped to add a little heat back on the Finlay/Jay rivalry. So it achieved a lot of good little things.

As much as Strong really disappoints me to the point of questioning watching anymore, it’s episodes like this that build just a shred of hope. Most likely dashed away in a week or two, but I suppose I’m destined to be a masochistic amnesiac.