Pantoja’s NJPW New Japan Cup 2022 Night 13 Review

NJPW New Japan Cup 2022 Night 13

March 21st, 2022 | Ao-re Nagaoka in Nagaoka, Niigata | Attendance: 1,450

One semi-final match is set and it’s pretty dull on paper. Okada/Naito will likely be good, as usual, but it’s beyond tired at this point. There’s potential on this side of the bracket too.

New Japan Cup Quarterfinals: Hiromu Takahashi vs. Shingo Takagi

GIMME MORE OF THIS NEW JAPAN. How much better would this company be if we got stuff like this matchup more often? Although they’re stable buddies, you knew they wouldn’t take it easy on each other. They brought fire to every strike as if they hated each other. In some ways, this was even more physical and violent than Hiromu/EVIL. The idea behind this was simple as Shingo had the clear power advantage and Hiromu willing himself to remain alive. He’d weather the storm and then fire off his own high octane attack that caught Shingo by surprise. Of course, it would take so much more to keep Shingo down but Hiromu is a madman, as proven by his match against Suzuki. He traded blows with Shingo even late but got destroyed by a Pumping Bomber. Shockingly, he survived Made in Japan and this continued. Hiromu fought back with some of his best shots but again, Shingo wouldn’t stay down. Near the end, Shingo hit a GTR that looked 100 times better than Goto’s. In the end, Shingo just proved to be too much for Hiromu, winning with Last of the Dragon after 23:43. Just a spectacular match between two of the best wrestlers on the planet. [****¼]

New Japan Cup Quarterfinals: Will Ospreay vs. Zack Sabre Jr.

I said the other day that their matches peaked in 2016 though they have had really good to great matches since. This was on the great side and it pains me to say it because of my everlasting disdain for one of these wrestlers as a person. Anyway, these two have great chemistry so the things they did came off pretty seamlessly in the early stages. Their styles also mesh as Willy likes the high impact stuff, while Sabre Jr. wants to keep things grounded, which is usually a combo that works. They played up the fact that both of their characters are assholes, taunting and teasing one another throughout. The main difference between this and their other matches was that Ospreay is much bigger now, so he could have a dominant few minutes where Sabre Jr. would have to stop him by frantically grabbing at a submission or something like that. ZSJ mostly focused on the leg, which led him to success in the end, scoring a surprise tap out with Selected Technical Works Vol.2 in 23:04. I liked that ZSJ was so shocked at the finish because even he didn’t think that Ospreay would submit. A hell of a match that still didn’t reach their 2016 level but was far better than the 2020 outing. [****¼]

9.0

The final score: review Amazing

The 411

Obviously this would score high as both matches ruled. I like three of the guys involved and those three usually deliver, so I expected greatness and I got it. Okada/Naito is tired as hell but I’m all in on Shingo/ZSJ.