Andrew’s Summer Struggle in Sapporo Ratings & Results: 7.11.2021

After a disappointing first night in Sapporo, do we see NJPW rebound at all? With the IWGP Heavyweight tag titles on the line in the main event; who walks out champion?

SANADA and Naito had fun messing with the Dangerous Tekkers the entire road to this match. Maybe it got in their heads, maybe it gave them a fire to destroy the LIJ duo, only one way to find out.

Aside from that, we get to see if Tanahashi and KENTA are going anywhere feud wise. Okada still has to deal with the United Empire, and it looks like Master Wato will be filling in for Ibushi’s absence again.

How does this show resonate compared to the first one?

Ratings:

• Yuya Uemura & SHO vs El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru: Kanemaru wins via Deep Impact @12:03 – ** ¾
• Bullet Club (EVIL, Taiji Ishimori & ELP) vs Rocky Romero, Ryusuke Taguchi & Tomohiro Ishii: Romero wins via Hurricanrana @13:10 – *** ¼
• Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yota Tsuji vs Bullet Club (KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi): Yujiro wins via Pimp Juice @10:40 – *** ¼
• United Empire (Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb) vs CHOAS (Kazuchika Okada & YOH): Cobb wins via Tour of the Islands @12:46 – ***
• Master Wato vs Shingo Takagi: Takagi wins via Last of the Dragon @14:50 – *** ½
• IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Titles: SANADA & Tetsuya Naito vs Dangerous Tekkers (ZSJ & Taichi) (c): Naito wins via Destino @36:57 – **** ½ – TITLE CHANGE!!!

Results:

The announcer states that Kota is still off the card since he’s recovering after the vaccination shot. Sooo, Hiromu runs out, this time not thinking he’s in a different place, but he doesn’t get the time right. Still though, Hiromu is rambling, it’s energetic and amusing, so hard to be angry.

Yuya Uemura & SHO vs El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru

Well this falls in the same category as any match with a Young Lion. You go into things expecting the Young Lion team to lose, and 98% of the time, they do. Uemura got singled out for a good portion of time, so that played into the little bit of history between Uemura and the Suzuki-Gun members, and also helped to show his heart.

Desperado has tape all over his left shoulder, so that made some moments more believable than others, but you can never take a Young Lion team seriously. Uemura had a lot of resilience, it was entertaining and Uemura shows a lot of good elements that he can hone when he goes on excursion; but for now, he’s a Young Lion…so he eats the pifnall.

Bullet Club (EVIL, Taiji Ishimori & ELP) vs Rocky Romero, Ryusuke Taguchi & Tomohiro Ishii

In typical Stone Pitbull fashion, Ishii attacks EVIL as soon as they hit the ring, so the Coaches have to quickly adjust. Rocky tries to get Ishii’s attention for a play, Ishii plays along for one attack and then chases EVIL to the outside.

So the early comedic aspects of Ishii not listening helped to cement his anger towards EVIL after yesterday’s post-match beat down. The coaches had decent back and forths with the Junior tag champions. Combinations of Taguchi’s butt attacks and Rocky’s actual really solid wrestling ability seemed to take Taiji and ELP by surprise at times.

ELP tried for Sudden Death as Rocky was doing the Forever Lariats, Rocky put on the brakes, ELP went for a quick Jacknife Cradle but Rocky kicked out. ELP lands the loaded boot kick on Rocky’s wrist to counter a lariat. ELP senses the end is near, goes for CR2, but Rocky counters with a traditional Hurricanrana and gets the flash pinfall!

Mega Coaches declare themselves as the next challengers for the Junior Tag titles even though ELP and Taiji tell them to Fuck Off.

Hiroshi Tanahashi & Yota Tsuji vs Bullet Club (KENTA & Yujiro Takahashi)

So unlike the last Young Lion match, this was more of a KENTA vs Tanahashi match, with the tag partners as window dressing. Tsuji did however show a good amount of agility for the fact that he’s been more of a brawler/power guy in his Young Lion career so far.

KENTA cheap shotted Tanahashi a few times, Tana fought back, they had a lot of great aggression and strike exchanges. A few open hand strikes, get answered by kicks and the Kobashi style spinning backfist as both men are laid out. The tag partners come in, we get a lot of close calls in favor of Tsuji, even getting a double submission spot, but Yujiro grabbed the rope. After a mighty struggle, Yujiro found a way to hit Pimp Juice and put the Young Lion away.

Predictable? Yes. But this actually progressed the KENTA and Tanahashi storyline instead of just having people go through the motions. This is more of what we used to appreciate when NJPW was going strong a few years ago.

United Empire (Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb) vs CHOAS (Kazuchika Okada & YOH)

This is the same issue as yesterday’s match. United Empire’s duo is at least somewhat established, and pairing Okada with Juniors telegraphs the finish. This match was slightly better because it focused more on Okada trying to carry the match and beat both men.

O-Khan and Cobb did well proving their teamwork, and the highlight spot was when Okada came in to try and Double Team O-Khan, he jumps in the air for his Dropkick; but Cobb catches him like a baby and Suplexes him out of the ring. Then O-Khan feeds YOH into Cobb, Tour of the Islands and the UE win!

Okada is left wondering after the match as the UE verbally berate him.

Master Wato vs Shingo Takagi

Well again Wato gets to pick up the slack for Ibushi’s absence, but this is a genius match adjustment. Master Wato’s biggest problem when he first came back to New Japan, was getting butterflies and choking in big matches. So a special singles match against the new World champion, is a great litmus test.

Wato showed great shades of his Lucha style, which Shingo is used to wrestling against since Dragon Gate is a heavy lucha influenced promotion, and he was there for 15 years. After a few early strikes, a Tornillo to the outside and just generally looking to be a great a underdog, Wato was putting in great work.

He hits Recitamente on Shingo, missed the RPP, but he hits the TTD (Tenzan Tombstone Driver) since Tenzan has been trying to help the youngster adjust to the main card, Crucifix Powerbombs, and even a near fall with the Hurricanrana (that we just saw win a match). So it was really well placed, solid near falls and nowhere did Wato really choke. He bumped well, gave back some offense, made Shingo’s new submission look great, and played his part wonderfully.

If the suspension of disbelief wasn’t so hard to swallow, this was a really good match for being under 1 minutes. Good on Wato for finally showing some real growth!

IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Titles: SANADA & Tetsuya Naito vs Dangerous Tekkers (ZSJ & Taichi) (c)

There’s a lot of singles threads between all of these men. SANADA and ZSJ tend to have technical wrestling classics, Taichi and Naito have had a good deal of history themselves. But this could be a big shift in the factions and the tag teams. Minoru Suzuki being rumored to have moved to the UK with Meiko Satomura, Shingo Takagi being the world champion, leaves both factions with needs.

This match had great personality. Naito and Taichi messed with each other, while SANADA and ZSJ worked on technical and mat work. When the rivals were mixed, we saw interesting wrinkles. ZSJ tried to stretch Naito and assert his dominance in Cobra Twist variations and just working over Naito’s injured limbs. SANADA and Taichi have an oddly mirrored mentality. It takes something for both of them to turn up aggression, but Taichi did do a lot of solid Kawada-esque work. Great spots picked for strikes and signature spots.

About two-thirds of the way through the match, we had a fun signature run where everyone got in some offense, then we had a dual submission moment with Taichi hitting the Stretch Plum on SANADA and ZSJ twisting Naito up, but Naito got to the ropes. This did slowly start looking like the Suzuki-Gun duo would pull off the win, but SANADA and Naito started working together and hitting some combination spots. SANADA kept Taichi at bay, Naito hits the full version of Destino, and the Tekkers fall!

Overall Score: 7.5/10

Well LIJ has cemented themselves as the dominant faction at the moment. Assuming Shingo doesn’t drop the belt to Ibushi on the 25^th, we could be seeing a nice run of Los Ingobernables being in the position the fans have wanted them in for years.

This night was much better since KENTA and Tanahashi seemed like a story that was picking up great steam, Wato got himself a nice spotlight match that he performed well in; and the main event was a great match. Part of the fun was their backstage interactions where ZSJ and Taichi demand a rematch, Naito joking offers them a Zima due to their last complaint, but Taichi appeals to Naito’s sense. Taichi talks about they were gonna defend at the Tokyo Dome if they still had the titles, so he feels that Naito should agree to a rematch in 2 weeks. Naito lets SANADA make the decision, SANADA asks Taichi and Zack if they like the LIJ team. It’s a funny play on his crowd assessment taunt, but Taichi and ZSJ play in SANADA’s play space and SANADA agrees to the rematch.

So do we see LIJ reign at the top for only 2 weeks, or does the LIJ era continue?