New Japan gives us…well it’s the last first round match up day. Yes yes, I know, YOSHI-HASHI, Chase Owens, Toa Henare…this doesn’t scream worth watching. But was it?

In my assessment today is just a means to an end, and one big test for Henare. I expect this show to make me comatose, but I also expect Jay to do right by Henare and make him look good.

So let’s all play a game to see who can stay awake the longest! Oh…and see if Jay makes Henare look good in an expected easy win.

Ratings:

• Bullet Club (EVIL, KENTA, Bad Luck Fale & Dick Togo) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, Yuya Uemura, Juice Robinson & Toru Yano: EVIL wins via Scorpion Deathlock @9:47 – **
• United Empire (Great O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Will Ospreay) vs Yuji Nagata, Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma: Cobb wins via Tour of the Islands @9:10 – ** ¼
• LIJ (Shingo Takagi, SANADA, Tetsuya Naito & BUSHI) vs CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto, SHO & Kazuchika Okada): BUSHI wins via La Magistral @10:04 – ** ½
• NJC: David Finlay vs Chase Owens: Finlay wins via Hurricanrana @11:20 – ** ¾
• NJC: YOSHI-HASHI vs Yujiro Takahashi: YOSHI-HASHI wins via Karma @15:50 – *** ¼
• NJC: Jay White vs Toa Henare: Jay White wins via Blade Runner @24:46 – *** ¾

Results:

Bullet Club (EVIL, KENTA, Bad Luck Fale & Dick Togo) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, Yuya Uemura, Juice Robinson & Toru Yano

This starts off with an attempted rematch from the Fale/Yano match, but Yano ducks around and tags in Juice. From here it’s really just paint by numbers. A few shenanigans, lots of Dragon Screws from Tanahashi, Tana and KENTA have a small moment together…but it ends with EVIL submitting the Young Lion to no one’s surprise.

United Empire (Great O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Will Ospreay) vs Yuji Nagata, Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma

This checks the normal tournament boxes, Ospreay and Nagata have the potential to face off if they both advance beyond round 2, Kojima has his United Empire issues and Honma is around to eat a pin. I’m growing tired of the obvious layouts though. I tend to like it more when both have a fall guy, or it’s the main competitor and two young lions; but since UE are heels, the Lions won’t side with bad guys. So that books us into corners like this.

The match was serviceable, Kojima got to Machine Gun chop everyone, Nagata had a few moments to show Ospreay it’s not going to be a layup if they face off and Honma was…Honma. He put up a solid fight, got to land a Kokeshi to everyone’s enjoyment and then took a Tour of the Islands.

Paint by numbers is really painful when these are long tournaments during weekdays when a 9-5 job cuts down free time to enjoy the hobby, and we get 90 minutes of mediocrity before I’m expected to care.

LIJ (Shingo Takagi, SANADA, Tetsuya Naito & BUSHI) vs CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, Hirooki Goto, SHO & Kazuchika Okada)

LIJ tries to be coy early on, Okada wants to face Naito to start, they talk it over, and all go to the apron. Then Okada tries to get the crowd to clap and rally, the referee tells someone to come in, so they all come in. Eventually Naito complies with Okada’s request, but the Hokey Pokey beginning was amusing.

Decent match where we saw a lot of similar threads from the previous undercard matches between the two factions, most notably the finish. At the anniversary show, SHO beat BUSHI with the Shock Arrow, and Goto helped clear the ring yesterday for his victory. So this went along similar threads, Goto helped SHO clear, SHO went for Shock Arrow, but BUSHI countered and won the match with a La Magistral roll.

The story telling was alright, but is purely a building block for the tournament and probably to start something with SHO and BUSHI to present a challenger to Desperado for the Junior title.

NJC: David Finlay vs Chase Owens

This was decent work from both, with Chase focusing on back breaker variations and a few heel tactics. Finlay countered a lot of Chase’s knee strikes with Cradles or just clever avoidance, but he never hit a ton of offense. Finlay was on the back foot early, and basically just struggled to find space and not quit.

Chase cracks Finlay with the Texas Championship for a near fall since Juice inadvertently had the referee’s attention too long. Chase was searching for a few ways to hit the Package Pildriver, but when he went for it, Finlay hits the Hurricanrana and holds it for the 3 count! Not a great offensive outing for Finlay, but he had enough to show heart, and with Juice’s loss already, you had to expect Finlay was going to get this win. FinJuice has been given a bit of a push the last year or so; so a first round complete exit would be a little silly.

NJC: YOSHI-HASHI vs Yujiro Takahashi

This match is tough to care about. It took YOSHI-HASHI 12 years to get the worst belt in the company, and he’s been underperforming all year. Yujiro hasn’t been a decent wrestler since right around his No Limit days, so the malaise of this match up was palpable with the lack of real response from the crowd. There was occasional polite clapping, but I’m pretty sure this put everyone into a coma.

They tried to start off hot with HASHI taking things to the outside, driving Yujiro into the barricades and then Yujiro introduced the pimp cane early; but it really never sparked. Both men pulled out off most of their signature moves. Yujiro’s Pimp Juice was never hit, so that stays protected, but this match was the equivalent to filler episode. Was it awful, I suppose not, but was it necessary or did anyone care? No…both these guys are worth less than a ha’penny.

NJC: Jay White vs Toa Henare

Well this is the 16 seed against the number 1 seed kind of match. Henare has been looking for something to sink his teeth into to move up the card, but a combination of his own inexperience and quarantine ruined whatever momentum he was going to have.

Jay toyed with him, and his personality drove this match well. Great counter wrestling, and playful jabs made for a rather bland day to be punctuated with a measure of entertainment. Similar to the Zack Sabre match, some of Jay’s toying bit him, and Henare showed a lot of heart. He fought through a lot of moves, kicked out often and had a few almost surprising moments with great headbutts and elbow strikes.

This was nice, because even if predictable, Henare did show up. He played underdog well, Jay sold for him believably and Jay ran his mouth at the end, but started with a look of surprised exhaustion before his ego kicked in.

Overall Score: 5/10

Well holy lackluster boredom Batman. Nothing was terrible, but who really cared about today? It was cool that Jay helped Henare out, and Henare had probably the best match in his career, but really, who cares?

Undercard tags did what they always do, this was the worst day for the Cup since we got to that bottom right corner that really felt like it was Tanahashi or Jay’s quadrant to win. Either way, we’re done with this, we’re done with the first round, and maybe we can get more consistency! Things started off hot, then we got to WWE Main Event (the show not the final match) level of players…so naps were at a premium.

Tomorrow we get to see which heel wins between EVIL and Jeff Cobb, and, if Yano can keep the Roll-Up train rolling against O-Khan!