Kevin’s NJPW Best of the Super Juniors 26 Night Four Review

NJPW Best of the Super Juniors 26 Night Four
May 16th, 2019 | Aomori Industrial Exhibition Concourse in Aomori City, Japan | Attendance: 1,403

We’re three for three in good BOSJ shows so far. However, this looks to be a tricky show on paper. There is potential in a few matches, but that main event sounds like it could be rough. Let’s get into it.

B Block: Ren Narita [0] vs. Robbie Eagles [2]
Ren Narita is the hometown boy. The fans were way hot for him and brought a bunch of signs to support him. Narita took Eagles by surprise at the start, but a chop block turned the tide. I love how Eagles has his plan and uses it effectively. While it is one plan, he’s found ways to do things slightly differently in both matches so far. His springboard dropkick directly to the knee was great here. I liked Narita busting out his roll into the Sharpshooter. The fans completely bought that as the possible finish. They were as loud as they’d be all night. Eagles made it to the ropes, slipped free of a suplex, and pulled out the win with the Turbo Backpack in 9:18. A very good way to start things. Solid wrestling in front of a hot crowd between two guys working hard to impress. [***¼]

B Block: Bandido [0] vs. IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champion YOH [0]
Here’s a match I think has a lot of potential. Commentary noted how Bandido was the wrestler in this block most similar to YOH’s partner SHO, so it would be like watching Roppongi 3K against each other. I wouldn’t go that far, but I liked how Bandido blended in speed and power based offense throughout. This match did have a truly horrible spot. I’m not against spots involving all sorts of flips and such. I gave the first Ricochet/Ospreay match ****+ after all. My problem is when it looks contrived. Here, YOH got set up on the ropes and held himself in place, dangling for a long time while Bandido set up a 450 splash. It took me right out of the match. The rest of the match saw strong exchanges, but I just couldn’t get into it as much as I wanted. YOH won with a series of Dragon Suplexes in 13:06. [***]

B Block: BUSHI [0] vs. El Phantasmo [2]
Fair warning. I’m rushing through the rest of this review as I have plans to go see Avengers: Endgame for the final time in theaters and have a bunch of other stuff to get done. I liked this enough as a battle of two guys who don’t mind using underhanded tactics. For every bit of cheap stuff BUSHI did, Phantasmo could dish it back. He did it with a bit more flair, but that’s his thing. Honestly, a lot of what he brings is similar to Flip Gordon, except that he’s better. A few of the spots came off a bit awkwardly, but nothing stood out as being too much of a botch. Phantasmo used a low blow and CR2 to move to 2-0 after 10:13. They kept it short and worked a good match. [***]

B Block: Rocky Romero [0] vs. Will Ospreay [2]
CHAOS COLLIDES! I’ve seen a lot of praise for this one. I can kind of see why. They told the kind of story that almost always works. Rocky was the veteran who showed that he could still more than hang with the young guy. He felt like the true star of this one, guiding the match along and being the more competent storyteller. He made the crowd buy into his near falls and he showed a lot of fire fighting from behind against heavy favorite Ospreay. The thing holding this back from truly working was the length. I’ll say it time and time again, NJPW doesn’t understand that less can be more. Some matches going 25+ work for me. I loved both SHO matches in this tournament for example. Here, this had no business being stretched to 25:45. Ospreay is at his best in sub-20 minute matches. My favorite matches of his (both Hiromu ones last year, KUSHIDA at Invasion Attack ’16, vs. Sabre in EVOLVE) all hover between 15 and 20 minutes. This dragged on for too long but was still good stuff. Will won via Storm Breaker. [***¼]

B Block: DOUKI [2] vs. Ryusuke Taguchi [2]
I know this was supposed to be El Desperado or Flip Gordon or whatever, but you call an audible on the main event when it’s DOUKI. Not that Gordon was much better. Anyway, this was the worst of the Suzuki-Gun style matches. DOUKI held back his night one match, but Taguchi couldn’t save him here. That’s because this was given a ridiculous 21:22 and was riddled with interference, ref bumps, and shenanigans. It’s like Gedo got into one of his Attitude Era binge watches and wanted to recreate that kind of overbooked mess. It was a travesty before all the second half nonsense and that just made it worse. Taguchi won with the Ankle Lock but at what cost? This was the worst NJPW match since Fale/Elgin in the G1 last year. [DUD]

A BLOCK	POINTS	B BLOCK	POINTS
Taiji Ishimori	4 (2-0)	Ryusuke Taguchi	4 (2-0)
Shingo Takagi	4 (2-0)	Will Ospreay	4 (2-0)
Tiger Mask IV	4 (2-0)	El Phantasmo	4 (2-0)
Dragon Lee	2 (1-1)	Robbie Eagles	4 (2-0)
Titan	2 (1-1)	DOUKI	2 (1-1)
Marty Scurll	2 (1-1)	YOH	2 (1-1)
Jonathan Gresham	2 (1-1)	BUSHI	0 (0-2)
SHO	0 (0-2)	Bandido	0 (0-2)
Yoshinobu Kanemaru	0 (0-2)	Rocky Romero	0 (0-2)
TAKA Michinoku	0 (0-2)	Ren Narita	0 (0-2)

5.0

The final score: review Not So Good

The 411

The first stumble of the BOSJ and I figured it would come from the A Block. To be fair, the first four matches are all good. None of them are “go out of your way to watch” levels, but they’re all strong enough. If we got a main event at that level, this would’ve scored around a 6.5 or so. But that main event is atrocious and drags things down.