Kevin’s NJPW New Japan Cup 3.5.21 Review

NJPW New Japan Cup
March 5th, 2021 | Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan

I will be covering the New Japan Cup but only the tournament matches. If that means tiny reviews of two matches each, then so be it. The first two matches done at the Anniversary Event were really good but this slate of bouts feels less interesting. Also, this way allowed me to skip Willy and Bea.

New Japan Cup First Round: Bad Luck Fale vs. Toru Yano
These guys have never really had a long match, which is expected of them. Yano retained the 2020 KOPW thanks to battles with Fale. Somehow this opened with a rollup before the bell, which shouldn’t even be possible. The match itself was standard Yano fare which works with some guys but Fale isn’t exactly fun. They did several countout teases which actually set up the finish. Fale taped Yano’s hands to the ring post but he kicked him away and swiveled back inside with his hands still tied to win by countout in 5:50. It happened. Yano’s KOPW trophy was broken, which caused him to cry. Yano meets O-Khan in the next round. [*]

New Japan Cup First Round: Hirooki Goto vs. Taichi
Winner gets the winner of Okada/Shingo. Taichi has been enjoyable in recent months while Goto has meant a lot of nothing since about 2016. The start of this match was ROUGH. Taichi seemed to revert back to the guy nobody wanted to watch in the back half of the 2010s with a lot of choking and generic heel tactics. Add in how Goto isn’t a very sympathetic wrestler and that just wasn’t working for me. Plus, it felt like it was going on for too long, as if they were killing time for the sake of getting past the 20 minute mark later. It seemingly took forever but once it actually picked up, it was pretty good. They started beating each other senseless and that’s just the kind of thing I like to see. I just wish it was more of that and less of the early nonsense. A 15 minute match in the vein of something from the NEVER Openweight division would’ve worked wonderfully. The closing stretch was better than I expected and I bit on the near falls because I legitimately had no clue who would win, which is appreciated. The GTR wrapped it up for Goto in 22:43. A good match that could’ve been better without that opening stretch. [***¼]

4.5

The final score: review Poor

The 411

If a ***¼ is a 6.5/10 and a * match is a 2/10, then the match on that leads me to just about this score out of 10. You get one bad match and one that was good but not great. These scores will be a little odd since they’ll only encompass two matches usually.