Csonka’s ROH/NJPW War of the Worlds (Night One) Review

ROH/NJPW War of the Worlds (Night One) Review 5.12.15

OFFICIAL RESULTS
– Gedo defeated Delirious via pin @ 6:50 [**]
– Roderick Strong defeated KUSHIDA via pin @ 16:40 [****½]
– ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal defeated Wanatabe via pin @ 11:42 [***]
– IWGP Junior Tag Team Champions Young Bucks defeated ROH Tag Team Champions The Addiction and IWGP Tag Team Champions The Kingdom via pin @ 15:40 [***¾]
– Tetsuya Naito defeated Michael Elgin via pin @ 12:11 [***]
– ReDragon defeated Jushin Thunder Liger and Tanahashi via pin @ 12:16 [***]
– IWGP Champion AJ Styles defeated Adam Cole via pin @ 17:20 [****¼]
– Shinsuke Nakamura and Kazuchika Okada defeated The Briscoes via pin @ 19:40 [***¾]

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Gedo defeated Delirious: Not a great opener, but it was fn for what it was. The whole thing was basically a wink to the fans, because if you follow the companies you know that these men are the bookers of their respective companies. With the joint shows, it’s a fun little insider thing to kick off the tour. What they did overall was fine, Delirious was wacky, Gedo still works well and this was solid, but unspectacular. But I appreciated the reasoning behind it.

Roderick Strong defeated KUSHIDA: Well holy shit, this was excellent. Roderick Strong is having such a great year in the ring, and continues to be the most consistent guy on the independent scene. Having just re-watched the KUSHIDA vs. Ricochet match from last year’s BOTSJ tournament, I can tell you that this match and performance from him was almost as good, falling just a bit short in my opinion. Strong once again proved that he is a guy that doesn’t get the credit he deserves, putting out one of his best performances of the year and he’s already had a lot of them. These guys worked so well together, KUSHIDA working his speed advantage and ground game, while Strong tried to work him to the mat and work his back. There are times when a match feels effortless as your watching it, and this was that match. Everything clicked, the crowd was great and they gave a big “follow that” to the rest of the matches to come on the tour, I loved everything about this match. I wouldn’t be surprised to see Strong get a shot with New Japan following this performance, and credit to KUSHIDA who continues to evolve as an overall performer.

ROH TV Champion Jay Lethal defeated Wanatabe: Jay Lethal is another guy who has been doing some great work and is having a great run with the TV Title. With that being said, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to this match. Wanatabe is a “just there” guy for me, he never really offends but at the same time has never done anything to really impress me. Wanatabe worked really hard here, and looked as if he was finally looking to impress people. Lethal also kept his quality high instead of working down to his opponents (something people have said about him in the past) and they delivered a good match here. They also did a good job of keeping the crowd invested following the previous match, which was excellent. Lethal retains the TV Title with the Lethal Injection.

IWGP Junior Tag Team Champions Young Bucks defeated ROH Tag Team Champions The Addiction and IWGP Tag Team Champions The Kingdom: I really enjoyed this match. They worked a pretty basic beginning between the Addiction and The Kingdom, which was perfectly fine but nothing special. And then the Bucks got in, things picked up and the homestretch was pretty spectacular. There were some great segments between the various teams, the crowd got into the match big time and then lost it when the Bucks hit the Meltzer Driver for the win. This ended up better than I had expected, and developed into a really fun match. This is a damn fine show thus far.

Tetsuya Naito defeated Michael Elgin: This was another good match on a show filled with them so far. It was a bit of a downgrade from the previous match, but was also a completely different style and still held my attention well. I am not the biggest fan of Elgin, but the worked the power vs. speed angle well and Elgin was a nice base for Naito. The crowd was a bit rough because they saw a ton of sizzle in the previous match, and this was more of a basic outing, but I felt they did well and worked a nice clean match that was easy to get into. Naito reversed the Elgin bomb into a victory roll to pick up the victory here. Overall this was a case of both men doing what they do very well and it meshing into a nice match.

reDRagon defeated Jushin Thunder Liger and Hiroshi Tanahashi: The show continues to be very enjoyable, and very consistent. They clocked in at just under 12-minutes, which I felt was the perfect amount of time. It allowed reDRagon to work their stuff, keep the pacing high and also let Liger and Tanahashi keep up with them and not worry about getting too tired. They all worked together very well, and put together a match that delivered for their position on the card. Fish picks up the pin, which makes the most sense as he has a title match the next night. Booking wise there isn’t a ton to these show outside of stuff like that, but they took what appeared to be a really basic tag match and made it fun.

IWGP Champion AJ Styles defeated Adam Cole: While this wasn’t the main event, they worked it just like it was a main event match and it delivered big time. Quality wise it was just a clip below Strong vs. KUSHIDA. There were a lot of questions about Cole here, he was coming off of a shoulder injury that had him on the shelf for a while and to come back and work a major match with Styles out of the gate is a lot to ask. But then you remember that AJ Styles is very good and Adam Cole is very good, and about halfway through all of my fears were gone. They worked in Cole’s shoulder injury down the stretch, we had some great near falls (including Cole with the clash on AJ) and this just clicked so well together. I know that people were worried about Cole coming back and losing here, but having an excellent match with one of the top guys in the business and losing will not hurt Cole at all. I also came out of this wanting to see a rematch, because while this was really good, I think once Cole gets fully back into his groove that they can do even better. Cole came back and was still a complete asshole of a character, and he is excellent at it in all of the best ways. Seriously, they need to have another big singles match later this year.

Shinsuke Nakamura and Kazuchika Okada defeated The Briscoes: Nakamura and Okada were over insanely huge here, so much so that the ROH faithful went against the Briscoes here. Word was from all the shows that Nakamura and Okada were over huge, and that was not an exaggeration. This was a very well worked tag team match, it didn’t feature a lot of wild shit like in the multi-man tag with the Bucks, but the Briscoes still do tag team wrestling well and Nakamura and Okada can work with anyone. I understand why they made this match the main event, but I personally would have preferred the previous match closing out the show. But that’s a very minor gripe. But the bottom line here is that they worked a very good tag formula here, I love good tag team wrestling, this had a great crowd and a damn nice finish as the end saw Mark get destroyed by the dropkick, Boma ye, RAIN MAKA combination from Nakamura and Okada.

* End scene.

* Thanks for reading.

“Byyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyye Felicia!”

8.9

The final score: review Very Good

The 411

This was an excellent show, with nothing bad at all on the card. This was a fantastic three hours, and when all was said and done ROH and New Japan came together to deliver one of the best shows (top three for me) of the year. This one is definitely worth your time.