Csonka’s NJPW New Beginning in Osaka Review

Introduction
As a reminder, this will not be another traditional recap, but instead it will be a mash up of the Rs, Instant Analysis and my usual Twitter ramblings I would do during the shows; completely uncensored and as the ideas flow unfiltered to the old keyboard. Remember, this is a review; and I am here to review the show. As always, I encourage discussion and even disagreement, just do so in a respectful manner. I will be doing the review for Raw and most PPVs and iPPVs going forward.

NJPW New Beginning in Osaka 2.11.15

OFFICIAL RESULTS
* Sho Tanaka defeated Yohei Komatsu [**¾]
* Máscara Dorada and Tiger Mask defeated Captain New Japan and Manabu Nakanishi [*½]
* Chase Owens and Rob Conway (with Bruce Tharpe) defeated Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Jushin Thunder Liger [**½]
* Kota Ibushi defeated Tomoaki Honma [****]
* The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) defeated reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly) (c) and Time Splitters (Alex Shelley and Kushida) to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship [***¾]
* Kenny Omega (c) defeated Ryusuke Taguchi to retain the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship [*½]
* Kazuchika Okada, Kazushi Sakuraba and Toru Yano defeated Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga and Yujiro Takahashi) [**½]
* Satoshi Kojima, Tetsuya Naito and Yuji Nagata defeated Chaos (Shinsuke Nakamura, Tomohiro Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi) [**½]
* Bullet Club (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson) defeated Meiyu Tag (Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata) (c) to win the IWGP Tag Team Championship [***¾]
* A.J. Styles defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship [***½]

---

Sho Tanaka defeated Yohei Komatsu: These guys have wrestled a lot over the past two years, and thanks to that they have developed a good chemistry. The match was short, but was good overall. The work was good, the crowd was into things and this was a fine way to kick off the show. Tanaka won with a Boston Crab, no complaints here.

Máscara Dorada and Tiger Mask defeated Captain New Japan and Manabu Nakanishi: This was one of those “it’s a match” matches. It simply existed, I didn’t hate it but also could have done without it. Dorado scored the win over Captain New Japan with a cradle, the best part of this was the way that he sold shock at his own victory. That was well done and also was some foreshadowing for later, which is the only really positive thing from this.

Chase Owens and Rob Conway (with Bruce Tharpe) defeated Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Jushin Thunder Liger: This match was to set up the NWA World and NWA Jr title matches on the next New Beginning show. The match was nothing special, but overall served its purpose of building to the title matches. Conway took out Tenzan, and then Liger with the Ego Trip. Owens pinned Liger with the package piledriver, followed by Bruce Tharpe putting the NWA flag over Liger. The work was solid, they built to the title matches and while nothing great, I have no complaints.

Kota Ibushi defeated Tomoaki Honma: Ah yes, this is more like it. This was really good stuff. The one thing I liked was the role reversal for Ibushi; he’s usually a guy working from the bottom, always taking the heat. But working Honma he got to dish out the heat and control. Honma excels at working from underneath, although I do worry that by the time that they want to do something with him that no one will care, but as far as the matches go he does his job well. I felt that Ibushi looked awesome overall and winning as decisively as he did was exactly what needed to happen. Many times you hear people say that a match was “exactly what it should have been.” This is a great example of that. This was easily the best thing on the show so far by a large margin.

The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson) defeated reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O’Reilly) (c) and Time Splitters (Alex Shelley and Kushida) to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: They worked a slower and more deliberate pacing at the beginning, which I appreciated. Instead of rushing into all of the trademark stuff, they tried to work into it more naturally, and I felt that was a good thing. All three teams work very well together, and this ended up as one of the better matches on the whole show. The crowd was a bit in and out at times, which is a shame, but I understand. The juniors divisions are simply variations on the same guys and have been for a while, which is something that needs addressed ASAP.

Kenny Omega (c) defeated Ryusuke Taguchi to retain the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: Omega had attacked Taguchi on build to this show and assaulted his anus, seriously. This was done to counter the flying ass attack on Taguchi. The opening minutes of the match were anus based attacks, which completely took me out of things. I like wacky Kenny Omega, but this angle here did nothing for me. I have no problem with Omega trying to be different, but this shit is just not clicking. They worked a good closing stretch, but I had long stopped caring by then. Dorada came out post match and challenged Omega for a shot at his title.

Kazuchika Okada, Kazushi Sakuraba and Toru Yano defeated Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga and Yujiro Takahashi): Bullet Club worked over Okada most of the match. He ran wild late, and took out Fale before pinning Tonga for the win. They are still building to Fale vs. Okada, which in theory is fine but I am not sure that anyone will care by the time they get there. I appreciate slow builds, but people need to care about the potential feud and I am not sure that they do here.

Satoshi Kojima, Tetsuya Naito and Yuji Nagata defeated Chaos (Shinsuke Nakamura, Tomohiro Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi): This was a fun six-man tag, with breaking it down into one on ones (Nagata vs. Nakamura, Ishii vs. Kojima and Naito vs. Yoshi-Hashi) during the match. I really enjoyed the interaction and build for the Nagata vs. Nakamura match. Nakamura is so great, and they have done good work making me feel like Nagata matters. Team Nagata scored the win, and we got the big Nagata vs. Nakamura stare down to close out things. I liked the match and the overall build for Nagata vs. Nakamura has been really good.

Bullet Club (Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson) defeated Meiyu Tag (Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata) (c) to win the IWGP Tag Team Championship: I really liked this. They got some time, they laid out a good match filled with some fun double teams and also a really hot closing stretch. I didn’t think that the Tokyo Dome match was bad, but also felt that they had a much better match in them and they gave that to me here. A magic killer later and Bullet Club regain the tag team titles. This ended up as a really good match. In terms of quality and how much I enjoyed it, I liked it as much as the juniors tag, but obviously it was a very different style. They were given the co-main event spot and did a good job of delivering.

A.J. Styles defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi (c) to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship: A.J. Styles defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi in our main event to win the IWGP Title. They worked a slower beginning, Tanahashi eventually got sent to the floor and the entire Bullet Club was out there to lay the boots to him. Later on Tanahashi sent Styles to the floor and hit a high fly flow into the Bullet Club. Tanahashi collided heads with Matt Jackson and got busted open badly. I felt that overall they worked a good match. They had good counters, they played well off of their previous encounters and in the end Styles won clean and decisively. Overall this was a good match, but it lacked in terms of what NJPW usually brings to a major show. I was actually disappointed overall, not that it was bad, but both guys have produced such high quality matches over the last year that I was left wondering what happened to what I thought would be an excellent match.

* End scene.

* Thanks for reading.

7.5

The final score: review Good

The 411

Overall I felt that New Beginning in Osaka was a good, but unspectacular show. There was some quality wrestling for sure, but the main event not delivering and that lack of a real MOTY candidate that New Japan seems to consistently deliver hurt the card. While the final two matches were good, this card also lacked that hot closing stretch that really makes you glad you watched the show.

I had previously touched on this before, but the juniors divisions are by far the weakest part of the New Japan booking. The Bucks, Time Splitters and reDRagon are now the teams involved for the tag titles, and are the 2015 version of variations on a feud. They are awesome, they do have good matches, but they aren’t developing any other challengers. They really need to fix that and soon. The junior heavyweight division is a little better with Omega in, but he’s not caught fire like many have hoped. Part of that is the Bullet Club association and part of that is his over the top stuff (like anus attacks).

Speaking of variations on a theme, the elephant in the room is the Bullet Club domination and ruling the roost with the titles. Part of me doesn’t hate it because if you’re going to have them dominate then having the titles makes sense. Also, it’s not like they are putting on shit matches. But we did the same thing last year with these guys, and when they lost the titles it wasn’t treated like a big deal. Watching Bullet Club running wild can be fun, but they are also alienating some of the audience who is completely sick and tired of them.

Ibushi vs. Honma was the match of the night and the two tag title matches were also a lot of fun and would be my other recommendations to check out if you’re going to cherry pick matches from the show.