Andrew’s New Japan Cup Results &Match Ratings: 3.9.2021

Well it’s not as many matches as the G1, but the whole New Japan Cup tour definitely makes for a busy week. With a lower hype card on the way, do we get anything surprising?

Yuji Nagata is testing the big match potential of a New Japan Dojo Young Lion. Yota is one of the more senior Lions at the moment, so he’s close to going on excursion and we get to see where he’s at.

Then we’ve got Tomohiro Ishii being the gatekeeping guard dog that he is; SANADA has had a lot of success recently; so now we get to see if SANADA is having an off year or not.

Ratings:

• Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & EVIL) w/ Dick Togo vs Toru Yano, YOSHI –HASHI & Yuya Uemura: EVIL wins via Scorpion Deathlock @8:58 – **
• United Empire (Will Ospreay, Great O-Khan & Jeff Cobb) vs Satoshi Kojima, Gabriel Kidd & Tomoaki Honma: Jeff Cobb wins via Tour of the Island @8:36 – **
• Bullet Club (Jay White, Chase Owens, Gedo & KENTA) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, David Finlay, Juice Robinson & Toa Henare: Henare wins via Death Valley Driver @11:34 – ** ¼
• LIJ (Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI & Shingo Takagi) vs CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Kazuchika Okada & SHO): Goto wins via GTR @13:31 – ***
• NJC: Yuji Nagata vs Yota Tsuji: Nagata wins via Backdrop Hold @13:42 – *** ¼
• NJC: SANADA vs Tomohiro Ishii: SANADA wins via Moonsault @25:18 – ****

Results:

Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & EVIL) w/ Dick Togo vs Toru Yano, YOSHI –HASHI & Yuya Uemura

Oh good, we get an opening tag with a Young Lion, so Yuya is 98% likely to eat the pin, let’s just see if it goes to Fale or Yujiro since they probably need the visible strength moreso than EVIL – and like that the Bullet Club attacks right after introductions are done.

Nothing special here really. Yano and Fale started, Yano got beat up a little, Yuya got beat up a lot, HASHI existed, and oh look EVIL picked up the submission victory even though he didn’t necessarily need to look strong kicking off the show. But it is, what it is.

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

Oh maybe they read my article yesterday and we’ve only got Kojima as the TenCozy constant against the United Empire. Honma starting against O-Khan is interesting since Honma has had an underdog renaissance as of late. So he may not win, but him putting up a good fight against a bunch of rising stars is a great position for Honma.

As for the match, again, just…meh. Kojima did a good job evening things out a bit, but being on a team with a Young Lion and an Underdog, there wasn’t a ton of hope. This did help to validate EVIL winning the first match a bit since Cobb got the visible pinfall here. So it’s setting things up nicely toward parity.

Still rather bland and predictable matches on their own, but in context they work with the flow of the show.

Bullet Club (Jay White, Chase Owens, Gedo & KENTA) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, David Finlay, Juice Robinson & Toa Henare

This was cute for the progression in the story. In all the undercard matches Jay has had a little more difficulty with Henare and his team. So Henare finally picking up a visible pinfall while look strong and frustrating Jay is good for Henare.

It was still color by numbers since Gedo was the obvious fall guy, but as for building toward tournament matches; this has done a decent job. The chaos of Hontai versus Bullet Club always helps, and the undercurrent of Jay and Tanahashi in the second round helps to drive some of these.

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

Well it’s always weird to see Okada walk out to someone elses music. CHAOS coming out to Goto’s theme makes sense, due to him still being in the tournament, but always odd not to hear the coins drop.

This was a lot of fun, and build further on Shingo and Goto’s second round matchup. The setting here made it obvious one of the Juniors was eating the fall, but which one was part of the fun. Naito and Okada had a decent amount of back and forth, but Shingo and Goto don’t back down from one another. Watching the two bulls crash into each other was great fun, and Goto got the better of things here.

Goto was able to stifle a few tandem attacks from Shingo and BUSHI, he dropped Shingo, and countered BUSHI’s Swinging Neckbreaker and hits Ushigoroshi and then GTR for the win. A nice stare down after shows Shingo is extremely annoyed with himself.

NJC: Yuji Nagata vs Yota Tsuji

Yota Tsuji gets himself an interesting challenge. Nagata is known as one of the guys over 50, that haven’t lost too much. He comes out on fire, like a veteran teacher should, and it takes Tsuji a while to land a Jumping Kick to buy some time.

Tsuji survives through a lot, even countering the Nagata Lock 3, into a near pinfall. We saw him pull out the Lucha Libre Cradle he won the Young Lion match with, the Spear he’s been using for a while and had a close submission attempt with the Boston Crab. After Nagata made it to the ropes, it felt a little more back and forth, but Nagata was easily winning the strike exchange at the end. Every one of Nagata’s peppered Elbows rocked Tsuji much more than he could return.

A dazed Tsuji was a sitting duck for Nagata to grab him and hit the Backdrop Suplex Hold for the win. Tsuji showed a lot of heart, but I think Gabe outshined him so far.

NJC: SANADA vs Tomohiro Ishii

SANADA did what SANADA normally does. He tries to wrestle his opponent’s style of match, until his techniques can garner him an advantage. Early strike exchanges favored Ishii, but Ishii is a stubborn pitbull and wants a good fight. So after treating SANADA’s head like a speed bag, Ishii tries to goad him into giving more, trying harder and showing some heart.

Eventually, SANADA’s spine stiffens and he starts absorbing elbows and returning the favor. This then becomes a great dance of familiarity and who has the best counters. SANADA pulled out the Skull End and Japanese Leg Clutch, but Ishii was able to get out. Ishii threw everything short of the Vertical Drop Brainbuster and Ishii Spike. We see a great exchange where Ishii blocks SANADA coming to the corner, SANADA ducks a lariat, escalera into the backflip Dragon Sleeper, Ishii Snapmares him out, SANADA ducks the Sliding lariat, and then simultaneous strikes lay both out for a moment.  The finish is off another great exchange, where Ishii gets caught charging, SANADA hits the Pop-Up Cutter and immediately goes into the Moonsault for the win.

Great match, just an underwhelming show that made this feel like more of a chore than it should have.

Overall Score: 6/10

Though the show made sense in the grand scheme, it was a chore to get through. With the main event being the only real attraction, this felt like 2 hours of filler and a pretty good main event. I feel it could’ve been hotter in the card helped more than it actually did, but it was definitely a solid main event.

SANADA moving forward continues his growth and success in being a major player in the current NJPW landscape. Having Nagata as a second round opponent will be a good generational clash and a test for SANADA and his beloved “style” that he likes to stay true to.

Like I said at the end of the main, the show was a little underwhelming, but not insulting. Just raises a touch above average because the main event was so good.