The first day of an event, where I hope it goes back to being one day moving forward. 2020 was an awkward year for New Japan, and since Wrestle Kingdom is the culmination of the previous year’s stories; it makes complete sense that it looks awkward itself.

A roster and card that is exposed from quarantine limitations really should take a step back and reassess how they do their biggest event next year. But with all that said, there are some things to look forward to.

Ospreay and Okada have a lot of history and a known ability to put on quality matches, so that should be entertaining from an in-ring perspective. Ibushi and Naito might kill each other, so that has its own entertainment value. Satoshi Kojima gets one more chance at a decent sized match and the tag title match will either be a mess or pretty damn entertaining with all the heel shenanigans.

Is it a blockbuster card? No. Does it set your imagination ablaze? Not even close. But it has potential to still be entertaining.

Let’s check it out!

Ratings:

• KOPW 2021 New Japan Ranbo: BUSHI, Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens & Toru Yano move on to the four way tomorrow!  @34:40 – ***
• #1 Contender for IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: El Phantasmo (Super J Cup Winner) vs Hiromu Takahashi (BOSJ winner): Hiromu wins via Huricanrana @17:46 – *** ¼
• IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Dangerous Tekkers (ZSJ & Taichi) (c) vs Guerillas of Destiny w/Jado: Loa wins via Ape Shit @19:18 – *** ½ – TITLE CHANGE!!!
• IWGP US Title Briefcase Rights Match:  KENTA (c) vs Satoshi Kojima: KENTA retains via Go 2 Sleep @14:12 – ** ¾
• Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Great O-Khan: Tanahashi wins via High Fly Flow @17:13 – *** ¼
• Kazuchika Okada vs Will Ospreay w/Bea Priestley: Okada wins via RAINMAKER @35:41 – **** ½
• IWGP Heavyweight & Intercontinental Championship: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs Kota Ibushi: Ibushi wins via Kamigoye @31:18 – **** ¼ – TITLE CHANGE!!!!

Results:

KOPW 2021 New Japan Ranbo

Chase Owens was giddy to be number one, until he saw number 2 was Tomohiro Ishii. Owens is actually holding his own against Ishii and then Minoru Suzuki’s music plays for number 3. Suzuki’s entrance takes so long, that it feels like he barely starts and then we get some Blue Justice music! Coming in at six is…Toa Henare. Okay, this is the first name that doesn’t really match up to what we already have.

Speaking of wrestlers most likely not going to win, here comes Hirooki Goto at 7! Suzuki and Nagata tunnel vision super hard on their personal rivalry nearly eliminate themselves, but Toa Henare comes in with Double Lariats to knock off the two legends and pick up the first 2 eliminations! Yujiro Takahashi, the best thing about him without Pieter is his entrance music, so…he peaked. Henare tries to reignite his attempted feud with Ishii, but after a quick combination, Ishii catches him and dumps him out onto the floor. The YOSHI-HASHI is 9.

Togi Makabe enters to try and break up this weird teammate heavy lineup in the ring. Makabe comes in angry, clears out Goto and YOSHI-HASHI together, as Ishii and Makabe go full 2016 on each other! Oh one of the few times you hear Tomoaki Honma’s music for 11^th! Makabe gets his GBH partner. Honma saves Makabe two different times, and then they start trading strikes as Hiroyoshi Tenzan’s music plays! Tenzan and Honma gang up a little on Makabe, dump him out and we got a little taste of allegiances of GBH past. Now it’s Rocky Romero at lucky number 13! DOUKI comes out next as not a lot is going on in the ring. Rocky cuts off DOUKI, hits a few Forever Lariats, but the pipe gets used and DOUKI is eliminated. SHO comes out while DOUKI tries to get his heat back, and SHO saves Rocky from the beatdown. 16 is BUSHI! Yujiro gets caught charging at BUSHI, so he eliminates himself in a way. You hear the classic Tiger Mask music as Tiger Mask IV comes out! Fale hits the ring, they were saying he politic’d to be last, so maybe this is the final entrant!

Fale eliminated Ishii while Ishii was trying to get Owens. But now Gabriel Kid comes out as Honma gets eliminated. Tenzan is next to fall after a lot of teamwork with Honma. Yuya Uemura comes out next for the 20^th name. Rocky, SHO and Tiger Mask get eliminated by Fale as they try and chop down the tree…and fail. Yota Tsuji is the 21^st entrant. All of the Young Lions try to gang up on Fale, but it’s not expected. Toru Yano comes out seemingly last! Kid, Tsuji and Uemura get eliminated fairly quickly. So Toru Yano makes it to the final four as he’s walking to the ring. BUSHI vs Chase Owens vs Bad Luck Fale vs Toru Yano for the trophy tomorrow.

For a Rumble this was fine, if not bloated. But surprisingly it was a little more serious than most Japanese Rumbles.

Riki Choshu comes out to kick off the official main card, with his little grandson in his arms! He hypes up the crowd just to kick off the show, nothing crazy announced.

#1 Contender for IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: El Phantasmo (Super J Cup Winner) vs Hiromu Takahashi (BOSJ winner)

Phantasmo continuing with his elite douchebag antics, where he walks around demanding to see Liger to put his jacket on him, to which Hiromu hits a Diving Dropkick to start off the action fast. Sadly for Hiromu, he attempts his Sunset Bomb, but ELP blocks it and manages to flip out of it. Lights up Hiromu a little and then hits him with a Sunset Bomb on the outside.

ELP starts to really dominate most of the action for a few minutes. An interesting move where he lays Hiromu on the top rope then uses Hiromu’s body as the rope for the Arabian Moonsault style of move. ELP does his rope walk, and finally Hiromu mounts some offense. Hiromu pulls off a Dynamite Plunger, ELP fights back with a Peach Sunrise style of reverse Piledriver, but the back and forth is definitely interesting. ELP uses a ton of former BC mannerisms, with the Kenny Omega rise of the Terminator, a Styles Clash, but the first big near fall is after ELP bumped the referee “accidentally”. A succession of closed fists, with a low blow followed by a Super Frankensteiner and Frog Splash, gave a bit of a hold your breath moment before Hiromu kicked out at 2.

Tons of counter moves roll throughs, a really nice sequence for the last few minutes of the match. Hiromu winning with a legitimate Huricanrana is a nice change that the finishers aren’t always needed. Immediately icing his hand though, Hiromu will be nursing a small injury tomorrow against Ishimori.

IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Dangerous Tekkers (ZSJ & Taichi) (c) vs Guerillas of Destiny w/Jado

Well this started off “interestingly” as was discussed on Outsider’s Edge. Taichi was utilizing a lot of chokes on Tama, ZSJ joined in for a few double team chokes, before Jado trips up Taichi to allow G.o.D. to cheat a bit, get in solid offense and then return the chokes in kind.

It takes this match a hot minute to get over the cheating in stereo, but once we see Tama and Loa pull off the old Faces of Fear Aided Powerbomb, the energy picks up and we get some fun. As ZSJ said during the match, “It’s the fucking Tokyo Dome”.  Some nice transitions towards attempted tandem moves, pulling off signature moves, but it of course ends in heel fashion. Taichi looks to set up for the Super Kick, Jado hits the ring, Taichi and DOUKI take out Jado, but Tama has the Iron Fingers. Tama hits the upper cut, Loa hits Ape Shit and G.o.D. are the seven time champions while Taichi sells dead so much so that DOUKI literally carries him out on his back.

Prior to the rights holder match, we get a video package. Moxley is standing in a NJPW USA/NJPW Strong ring, with the US Title and basically saying he’s coming after the winner, instead of the usual other way around.

IWGP US Title Briefcase Rights Match:  KENTA (c) vs Satoshi Kojima

This was definitely a hybrid of major puro styles. It started off like a typical Bullet Club match with a lot of stalling and misdirection from KENTA. Going after Tenzan to try and bait out Kojima and giving things an interesting pace. Once Kojima started landing some offense, that’s when we saw a little bit of the King’s Road pacing of storytelling in the ring.

Kojima’s machine gun chops definitely rang a certain way to KENTA, but he fought back pretty matter of factly. KENTA was almost screwed over by his personal desire to use the briefcase again, since Kojima knocked it out of KENTA’s hands with a lariat and threw some literal haymakers as he started head hunting.

KENTA was able to get distance with a few well place Busaiku Knees, and then eventually hit Go 2 Sleep to end the 3^rd generation wrestler’s bid at one more return to glory.

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs Great O-Khan

The match started off uniquely since O-Khan went to the ground and showed off a lot of his amateur ability with a lot of movements reminiscent of Antonio Inoki, even doing the Cobra Twist later on in the match.

Early on Tanahashi was trying to find a rhythm and wasn’t even able to Skin the Cat, which allowed for O-Khan to look pretty dominant for a good portion of the match. O-Khan showed a few variations of the claw hold and had his moments, but as soon as we saw Tanahashi pull off some old classics, like Skin the Cat, a Dragon Suplex and the Twist and Shout, things seemed to be heading a certain way.

Two High Fly Flows gave Tanahashi a hard fought victory, but a victory none the less.

Kazuchika Okada vs Will Ospreay w/Bea Priestley

We see an Okada we haven’t seen in a while from the start of the match. Okada pulls off a Tope con Hilo, Heavy Rain, and there’s a ton of references to previous matches. Ospreay did a great job keeping up early on and accelerating the aggression when he tried to pull up the mats to expose the wood.

Ospreay did show a more calculated attack, but so did Okada. Okada focused the back to try and take away the Stormbreaker, while Ospreay attacked different from different angles, but trying to stay ahead in the mind games. There was a beauty in what Ospreay did, since he took a few moments from the Kenny Omega saga, which seemed to spark a different Okada.

Respectably, Ospreay also wanted to beat Okada in the ring, so after a Brainbuster through ringside tables, Ospreay threw Okada back in the ring to try and win without any doubt. Oscutters, Spanish Fly, Money Clips and Tombstones, there was a lot of fun moments. We got to see Okada tap into who he used to be. The goading kicks to a downed Ospreay are a side of Okada that we haven’t seen in a long time.

Ospreay nearly pulled off a big upset when he got out of the Money Clip, hitting a Tombstone and Rainmaker of his own, but that wasn’t enough, but it did evoke something else. Almost as if Okada realized the Money Clip gimmick isn’t worth trying to continue to make work, he fought back, hit the Fire Thunder Driver that we haven’t seen in a while, and then kills Ospreay with a RRRAAIINNMMMAAAKKKERR! God I missed that move.

Odd booking that The Empire is 0-2 on January 4^th. Would’ve been big for the new stable to get a win over a standard bearer of New Japan, but I guess now is not their time.

IWGP Heavyweight & Intercontinental Championship: Tetsuya Naito (c) vs Kota Ibushi

This had all the trappings of their previous encounters, from dangerous looking spots, slightly mistimed spots, but a lot of flashy and impressive violence. Early on we saw a few spots on the outside, where Ibushi slipped, it threw off the timing of the sequence and that marked the first time Ibushi’s head skipped off of something.

Naito tried to slow things down like his G1 matches, usage of the leglock Full Nelson, the back elbows and generally just trying to weaken the neck for Destino. Ibushi pulled out a lot of attempts, the Outside In German Suplex, Apron attempts at murder and even busted out the Phoenix Splash again, but missed that one.

Rough match, hard fought, both had a lot to prove, and it was evident from the fact that it took Ibushi 3 Kamigoyes to win this match. The last one coming off an exposed V Trigger to stun Naito and open him for the last necessary shot.  A damn good match that suffered if for no other reason than it followed a 30 minute match which took risks that were executed a bit more cleanly.

Overall Score: 7/10

Well hot damn that was an odd show. The Ranbo was a bit more serious in execution but really threw in no one that most people care about beyond Yano for the 4 Way. Hiromu and ELP definitely fell a little flat as an opener, maybe if the crowd could’ve been more vocal it would’ve seemed better, but wasn’t as good as it should’ve been.

G.o.D. and Tekkers executed a fairly solid match, it’s always just weird when you have two heel teams try to out heel each other.  Kojima put on a damn good showing for having little more than a week really to prepare for the fight with KENTA. The Moxley message at least allows us to get the damn belt off of him and stop with part time champions.

The Empire has fallen flat to begin with, but it did achieve one thing; reminding Kazuchika Okada who the hell he is. Ospreay brought us The Rainmaker back, so I guess that’s an accomplishment at least. As for the show in general, it was alright. Our last two matches were very good, but the fact that they were so damn long made for some odd perspective.

My biggest question is: Does Kota Ibushi go down as a 1 day champion?