Andrew’s New Japan Cup Results & Match Ratings: 3.11.2021

First day of the second round! Big oofs all around, this isn’t really a great kick off day, but maybe we’re in store for a surprise!

EVIL is going to probably do his stupid crap, but I’m hoping we continue to see this newer version of Jeff Cobb that is really a great wrestler. Yano and O-Khan, I mean, I hope it’s fun…but this feels like an easy way to get EVIL to the final four with shenanigans and then a match with Yano.

Let’s just cut to the chase and find out.

Ratings:

• CHAOS (YOSHI-HASHI & Tomohiro Ishii) vs David Finlay & Yota Tsuji: Ishii wins via Lariat @ – **
• Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & Jado) vs Tomoaki Honma, Satoshi Kojima & Yuya Uemura: Yujiro wins via Pimp Juice @ – ** ¼
• LIJ (BUSHI, Tetsuya Naito, SANADA & Shingo Takagi) vs CHAOS (SHO, Hirooki Goto & Kazuchika Okada) & Yuji Nagata: SHO wins via Shock Arrow @ – ***
• Bullet Club (KENTA, Jay White & Chase Owens) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, Juice Robsinson & Toa Henare: Tanahashi wins via Texas Cloverleaf @ – ** ½
• NJC: Great O-Khan vs Toru Yano: Yano wins via Single Legged Cradle @ – ***
• NJC: Jeff Cobb vs EVIL: EVIL wins via Everything is EVIL @ – *** ½

Results:

CHAOS (YOSHI-HASHI & Tomohiro Ishii) vs David Finlay & Yota Tsuji

HASHI and Finlay are definitely in the position they should be. Finlay has had a little better upward momentum in the last year or two, but HASHI has squandered whatever good faith he earned last year.

What? I fell asleep, look Tsuji is trying and failing, Finlay and HASHI try to make it a respectable babyface feud for the next round and Ishii gets the win with a Lariat. Wow he didn’t even use a real finish. I wonder if it’s too early in the morning to start drinking again.

Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & Jado) vs Tomoaki Honma, Satoshi Kojima & Yuya Uemura

Holy Job Squad on ice Batman! This match…I don’t think I could care less about. I’ll take Dink and Doink playing Patty Cake with Sin Cara falling during double dutch over any of this. I’m pretty sure I’m gonna hate this. HOW was this not the opener? Afraid to scare people away? Crying children is a bad look immediately? UUUGGGHH.

Let’s not forget, I love Kojima, but I understand what his current role is and the rest of the players in this match.

Beat up the Young Lion, Tongan Massage Parlor…beat up the Young Lion…hot tag to Kojima. Machine Gun Chops on the entire trio, oh wait no, Yujiro was smart…or lazy enough to not feed into the Chop spot. Then Yujiro cuts off Kojima going for his Elbow. Fale tries a Grenade, Koji Elbow smash counter, Koji Cutter, but shenanigans stops the veteran from winning with the Cozy Lariat. Yuya and Yujiro get tagged in, Young Lion gets a fire spot, some nice moves. And now we wait for Yujiro to turn it around…oh there are knee lifts, holds the rope to bait the Dropkick, Fisherman Buster…but everyone comes in to break things up.

Clear the ring, Cradle counter the Pimp Juice for the Young Lion, Backslide, and Yujiro is looking bad but a hair pull, and a lariat take the wind out of Yuya’s sails. PIMP JUICE and we’re done here.

Somehow this was a little better than the first match, but I think that’s because I set the bar so low and amused myself out of boredom. But I love Yujiro’s theme…so that’s the upside.

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

Interesting that it’s a full stable of 4 versus Yuji Nagata and three CHAOS members. We should all be anticipating a Junior eating the pinfall, but this could be interesting with the Goto/Shingo dynamic and SANADA/Nagata.

The threads pulled well through the match. Okada and Naito seem to be working through their similar paths of being the leaders of the factions but banged up and out of the tournament. Goto got the better of Shingo today, especially punctuated with the finish and how Shingo was held at bay and neutralized. SANADA showed the speed and athleticism over Nagata, but Nagata’s technical prowess left SANADA limping a bit after the match.

As for the finish, it came down to the Juniors, SHO got the win back from yesterday, and that’s good for their mini rivalry. So it was nice to see everyone have a dance partner that made sense, and SHO getting built up nicely in the absence of YOH and Roppongi 3k.

Bullet Club (KENTA, Jay White & Chase Owens) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, Juice Robsinson & Toa Henare

Apparently Bullet Club’s new gimmick is to body shame Tanahashi, but he takes it in stride well. Be it Ishimori, or now Jay White protruding his stomach to go “This is you, fat boy” and then sucks it in to show his 6 pack in the “this is me”.

Honestly Jay’s chiding of Tanahashi was the amusing thing in this match, since it’s mostly filler. Henare looked okay, and being paired with people higher on the card will do a lot for his perception. But this match was all about Jay trying to get in the Ace’s head before their second round match.

NJC: Great O-Khan vs Toru Yano

The match starts off like a carnival act. O-Khan is barking at Yano, Yano says he’s scared, so O-Khan tells him to tape his hands together, allows him to remove a turnbuckle pad and come at him. When Yano misses with the pad, O-Khan breaks out of the tape and Yano runs for the hills. They have a spot where O-Khan sits and waits in the ring, so Yano sits and waits on the ramp. O-Khan is starting to get impatient, so he asks the Young Lion to grab the KOPW trophy, and holds Yano’s baby hostage til the Master Thief gets back in the ring.

Things pick up and get interesting with an actual wrestling match. In normal Yano fashion we see some great amateur takedowns, a slingshot Belly to Belly, but a lot of antics laced between. Around the end, Yano ties O-Khan’s ponytail in the guardrail, but O-Khan was smart enough to have scissors on him. When he realized Yano made him cut his hair, O-Khan snapped. He chased Yano and tried to stab him with the scissors.

Yano took advantage of his irate opponent, hit a low blow, speared him in the kidneys and then did a nice single leg takedown into a cradle for the pinfall victory.

After the match, O-Khan followed to the back, still mad, still with scissors. Yano gonna die.

NJC: Jeff Cobb vs EVIL

This was an interesting match, because when it came down to Cobb leading the in-ring action, Cobb did a very good job. EVIL however did his usual, half-assed wrestling and had people interfere.

There was a great strike exchange at times, but much like the Okada match; it felt like every time EVIL almost crossed over to trying to wrestle, Togo or Yujiro got involved. It was really a damn shame since Cobb did some really solid work. Dropkicks, Samoan Drops, Spin Cycle, just a lot of his usual move set but he did it all well. So most of this rating is because of the effort that Cobb put in, and really nothing helped out by EVIL.

EVIL’s heel turn has been…so cliché that it’s god awful.

Overall Score: 4/10

I mean, I suppose this rating is more just a culmination of things. EVIL’s whole heel gimmick is terrible and it’s stripped him of the intensity that people enjoyed. It’s just one over booked cluster after the other; win lose or draw, he’ll take a shortcut and have a few helpers. Plus this means we’re going to get Yano versus EVIL, which honestly I anticipated, but I wanted to be wrong.

This show was somehow more worthless than yesterday. I think we’ve hit that point where they need to have less people in the Cup again. When things were popping, it was cool to expand to get some veterans, Juniors and gaijin stars…but we don’t have that this year. We’ve got Young Lions, veterans, Block C level players and EVIL who forgot how to wrestle like he’s Japanese and just overbooks things to a degree to make WCW 2000 blush.

*sighs*

Well hey, at least I think we’ve finally spiraled to bottom. The next few days should be better and I can stomach Yano versus EVIL assuming it’s not a main event. That couldn’t main event a McDonald’s Play Place. So let’s just…get that one over with.