Hawke’s NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 2018 Review

My live of Five-Star matches.

My most popular reviews:
Ricochet, Matt Sydal, Will Ospreay vs. Bullet Club
Katsuyori Shibata vs. Kazuchika Okada
Bull Dempsey vs. Adam Cole
Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada

 

January 4, 2018
Tokyo, Japan

 

Roppongi 3K (SHO & YOH)(c) vs. The Young Bucks (Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson)
This was for R3K’s IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.

This was one of those matches that had some glaring issues but did enough stuff well to make up for that. In fact, it was probably the most satisfying junior tag match at Wrestle Kingdom in recent history (although I suppose that is not saying much).

The key to the match’s success was the reliance on character work, the commitment to the in-ring storytelling, and the Bucks leaving behind the cliches that thy have grown to dependent upon.

YOH and SHO had the advantage early on as they are the faster team. They are also less experienced though which led to YOH injuring himself on an unnecessary high risk. That gave the Bucks an opening.

The Bucks then worked over YOH and his back for a long time. Too long of a time in fact. It was threatening to become tedious, and it would have all been for naught if the Bucks did their typical thing of going a billion miles an hour down the stretch and ignoring the heat segment.

They messed with our expectations though and relied on character work instead. The Bucks’ ego got the better of them. Matt went for an unnecessary ring ramp powerbomb (like they did to Rocky Romero earlier in the match), and YOH avoided it. That not only gave R3K an opening to make the match competitive but also injured Matt’s back.

They then concluded the match with a back-and-forth sequence that was more restrained than usual and did not forget about the work done to YOH’s back. (Matt even kept selling his back!)

It seemed like R3K would pull off the submission victory, but Nick managed to make a wild comeback that allowed the Bucks to finish YOH with a Meltzer Driver/sharpshooter combo.

Can’t agree with the decision on who won, but this was clearly a very successful opener that was far more interesting than could have been reasonably expected. (***1/2)

 

BULLET CLUB(c) (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) vs. CHAOS (Beretta, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano) vs. Juice Robinson, Ryusuke Taguchi & Togi Makabe vs. Suzuki-gun (Taichi, Takashi Iizuka & Zack Sabre Jr.) vs. War Machine (Hanson & Raymond Rowe) & Michael Elgin

This was a gauntlet match for the Bullet Club’s NEVER Openweight Trios Championship.

Creating main show matches that are solely designed to get more people on the show is a very frustrating idea for me. This is what pre-show battle royals are for. Either create an actual program for two of these guys to have a non-title singles match or just toss them all into the RAMBO.  This should have been Ishii vs. Zack or something.

Anyway, it was a rushed gauntlet match (with of course an overlong final segment). They let Trent? win the whole thing though and treated that as significant for him. Yano also scoring two pinfall victories during the course of the match made me happy, and happiness is always nice. Things could have been worse. (**1/2)

 

Kota Ibushi vs. Cody Rhodes

Everything about Cody Rhodes here felt like someone dressing up and pretending to be a pro wrestler. Beyond the fluke great feud that was the Rhodes Brothers vs. The Shield, he has never proven to be anything more than a nepotism hire who keeps throwing shit at the wall hoping one of his characters would stick.

He is great at marketing himself in the modern wrestling climate of course. He’s got Meltzer and the TMZ dork on his side. He has married off his onscreen career to The Young Bucks and the Bullet Club. He presents himself on Twitter in a way that a large percentage of fans (apparently) want. He usually manages to strike the perfect balance between using his name to his advantage without ever coming across like it’s his crutch. He also just in general treats himself and gets treated like a star.

At the end of the day though, he’s just not good or interesting in the ring. He takes shortcut after shortcut (as he did here). He’s incapable of working with any subtlety. There is little to no substance to his work. There has just never been much there.

And he was never going to be the type of opponent to properly shine a line on the greatness that is Kota Ibushi. This was so nothing. At least Kota won cleanly. (**)

 

Killer Elite Squad(c) (Davey Boy Smith Jr. & Lance Archer) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (EVIL & SANADA)

This was for the Spirit Squad’s IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.

These guys came up with a good structure for the match, but they needed to adjust the pacing. Smith and Archer dominated 90% of the match. EVIL and Sanada had to make a furious comeback just to give themselves a chance. It was all too methodical though.

Smith and Archer should have been working to KILL early and often. Sanada and EVIL should have been flailing around wildly just to stay alive. Instead, this all felt way too calm and under control. Where was the passion and fire?

It was still fine though overall, and LIJ winning was so the right call. (**3/4)

 

Minoru Suzuki(c) vs. Hirooki Goto

This was a hair vs. hair death match for MiSu’s NEVER Openweight Championship.

This was fantastic. They combined great physical action and a methodical pace to create a spectacle where it seemed like every shot matter.

Suzuki controlled the majority of the match. He got the advantage after he hung Goto with a sleeper from the top turnbuckle (they botched getting a great camera angle of it sadly – a theme of the night). Suzuki then proceeded to pick Goto apart with heavy shot after heavy shot (all of which were VERY deserved).

Goto of course did not go down easily. He finally threatened to build some momentum so Suzuki went for the sleeper. Goto was ready for it though and reversed it into a backdrop driver in a great moment.

Sensing a danger of losing for the first time in this one, Suzuki continuously went for the sleeper after that point. Goto was constantly fending it off,  but an awesome series of strikes from Suzuki led to him finally getting a good sleeper.

It seemed like Suzuki had it won there, but Goto hung in there and managed to reverse a super Gotch Piledriver attempt into an avalanche Ushigoroshi before winning with GTR.

After the match, Suzuki eventually returned to the ring and shaved his own head defiantly.

This was a beautifully blend of in-ring storytelling and physical action. It’s great to have an annual Minoru Suzuki match at Wrestle Kingdom again. The dude knows when people are watching. (****)

 

Hiromu Takahashi vs. KUSHIDA vs. Will Ospreay vs. Marty Scurll

This was for Scurll’s IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.

The first 90% of this match felt like a Marty Scurll and Will Ospreay style match, and it was really bland, boring, and repetitive as a result. Then Hiromu came alive for the final 10%, and the match became this insane, cocaine driven, violent high-flying battle that has historically always resulted in the best juniors matches.

Enough of the bland flippers. If you’re not willing to break your neck on a diving powerbomb through a mountain of drugs, you should not be allowed to compete in IWGP Junior Championship matches going forward. The cocaine portion of this one saved it. [Ospreay won after hitting Scurll with the Springboard Cutter.] (***)

 

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White

This was for Tanahashi’s IWGP Intercontinental Championship.

NJPW is sometimes willing to surprise you by putting a fresh face in a big match. It’s one of the company’s better qualities.

Sometimes those decisions pay off handsomely (Kenny Omega in last year’s Wrestle Kingdom main event for instance). Sometimes those decisions lead to rather flat matches initially but work out in the long term (AJ Styles winning the belt in his first match back in 2014).

We’re going to have to hope that Jay White is a case of the latter because this definitely was not a case of the former.

That is not to say this was an aggressively bad or even boring match. It just was kind of there. Jay White worked over Tana’s leg. Tana came back in a similar fashion. There were several High Fly Flows. There just was not much of a spark or sense of urgency to anything happening between the ropes.

In a few years, history can hopefully see this as a great investment in a young performer at the expense of an immediately memorable match. Only time will be able to tell. [Tanahashi won cleanly after back-to-back High Fly Flows.] (**1/2)

 

Chris Jericho vs. Kenny Omega

This was a no disqualification match for Omega’s IWGP United States Championship match.

Given the physical state of Chris Jericho (let’s call it limber but slow) in 2018, this was probably the best it could have been (which is to say not all that much to write home about).

Jericho is the aging, pudgy rockstar. Kenny Omega is the new hotness. They *mostly* told that story. Jericho was somewhat cagey in his actions in order to get and keep the advantage. Omega mostly relied on bigger stuff to keep it competitive.

It really though just felt like a super dragged out, if unique, plunder brawl. It was not executed poorly. It just never had that anger or violence necessary to overcome the limitations of Jericho and the length/style of the match.

Bringing in Jericho was a worthy idea. It made the show feel bigger, and the fans responded well to him and the match. He did good business, worked hard, and gave Omega a high-profile win on one of the biggest wrestling events of the year. There have been worse ideas on previous Wrestle Kingdoms for outsider matches. [Omega won after a One-Winged Angel onto achair.] (**1/2)

 

 

 

Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito

^ it’s a metaphor

This was for Okada’s IWGP Heavyweight Championship.

This was very much your cliche modern NJPW main event. They solved the equation of their main events long ago, and they just keep plugging in the same numbers month after month it seems.

They go a long time. They start off just BASKING in the moment. They work methodically. There is no fire. There is no passion. There is no soul. There is no sense that a fight is taking place. It all builds to a stretch run that gets a great reaction from their fans. They tease finishers. They connect on their trademarked offense. They trade forearms. They throw in a handful of fresher moments or sequences with it being Wrestle Kingdom and all. It gets a great reaction live. It gets loads of praise in all the important media places.

Who could possibly still enjoy this kind of match though?

I just do not understand why this continues to be enough for wrestling fans. It’s not that this style of a main event would *never* be acceptable. If they had a run of short-ist, overly violent matches, this would be a great change of pace.

But I hadn’t watched a NJPW main event in eight months, and it legitimately felt like nothing at all had changed.*

*Correction: Okada is now wearing pants which is presumably a heavy shot being lobbed at Randy Orton.

And then there was the result.

Of course.

For months, I was saying Okada was going to win, and I did eventually get talked out of that prediction. But it should not be a surprise. It took forever for NJPW to pull the trigger on an Okada 1/4 main event/title win. There should have been no reason to expect that anything would have been different now for Naito. I can’t wait for him to lose all of his luster and edge by the time he finally wins in this spot, too.

This was a total and utter failure. This was bad pro wrestling. It’s not even worth getting worked up breaking it all down. It’s all been said before. It’s just bad. Bad. (DUD)