wrestling / TV Reports
Pantoja’s NJPW New Year’s Golden Series Review 2.13.21
Image Credit: NJPW
Loading...NJPW New Year’s Golden Series
February 13th, 2022 | Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium in Osaka, Japan
I’m actually reviewing some New Japan. I forget they even exist sometimes. I don’t know what night of the tour this is but the card has a few important matches. I did see some notable recent matches.
SHO vs. YOH – ***½
El Desperado vs. Mater Wato – ***¼
Kosei Fujita, Tomoaki Honma and Yuji Nagata vs. Ryohei Oiwa and TenKoji
IT’S YOUR MOUNTAIN DEW KICKOFF MATCH! Commentary hyped this as a real shot for a Young Lion to pull out a win. I’m always down for Nagata and Kojima to start any match. After some fighting from the Dads, we got the usual case of Young Lions coming in with fire and bringing energy only for the veterans to put them down from time to time. Man, Tenzan could barely move in 2015 so at this point, he’s in really rough shape. There was a nice close call late where Oiwa might’ve had it with the Young Lion Crab as his partners held off the opposition but it was not to bed. Tenzan then used a Boston Crab to make Fujita submit in 11:07. Longer than I expected and the Dads looked a bit rough. Still entertaining though. [**½]
Dick Togo, SHO and Yujiro Takahashi vs. Hirooki Goto, YOH and YOSHI-HASHI
I really like SHO and thought he was on the verge of being the company’s next top junior heavyweight. So of course, leave it to Gedo to completely ruin him and put him with the atrocious House of Torture. Whenever I have trouble sleeping, I should just put on a House of Torture match. It was really difficult to stay interested in this as it is like the opposite of a hot opener. Things started with a brawl before the heels used their usual shenanigans to gain control. The babyfaces made the expected comeback and YOH pinned Togo with a bridging pin in 9:49. They seemed to have flubbed the finish as Togo rolled through the pin and YOH had to do it again. [*½]
The Great-O-Khan vs. Togi Makabe
I may not care much about Makabe against O-Khan but I do appreciate a singles match on the undercard. They’re too rare in NJPW. Okay, so you know what the point of this match was. Makabe is a legend but doesn’t do anything these days while O-Khan is getting a push. That meant a basic match that was designed to put O-Khan over. That’s exactly what it needed to be. Makabe played the hits and O-Khan got in his signature stuff before winning with the Eliminator in 7:15. Well booked but uninteresting. [**]
BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi and Shingo Takagi vs. DOUKI, Taichi and Yoshinobu Kanemaru
Now we’re getting somewhere. LIJ are typically a highlight in these multi-man tags. Man, I know it has only been like a month but it already feels like Shingo is never sniffing the top title again. Without any championships or bitter feuds at stake, this match felt unimportant. However, the focus seemed to be on some issues between Shingo and Taichi, which I’m guessing will lead to a singles match at some point. Everyone involved here is at least decent which made the match pretty strong as a whole. Hiromu had some fun exchanges with DOUKI before Shingo got to really feel like the star of the match. He won by hitting DOUKI with the Pumping Bomber after 10:18. Good stuff on a middling show at best to this point. [***]
El Desperado, Minoru Suzuki and TAKA Michinoku vs. Master Wato, Ryusuke Taguchi and Toru Yano
This was here to handle some of the fallout of Desperado beating Master Wato the other day and to further the Suzuki/Yano feud. That rivalry was tired back when it was happening in the 2010s, so you can only imagine that it’s not working now. Yano looked to lock Suzuki in a dog cage and yes, it’s as dumb as it sounds. That was their main point of this bout while the other guys had the more traditional stuff going on. Yano got beat up but countered a piledriver and tagged in Wato for a hot run. Suzuki eventually got Yano into the dog cage soon before a tandem Facebuster won it for Taguchi over TAKA in 9:17. Post-match, Suzuki handcuffed some Young Lions for helping Yano escape. [**]
El Phantasmo vs. Tiger Mask IV
There’s a Jr. Tag Title match on the horizon and we’ve got two singles match to preview it, starting here. I still don’t get the ELP hype. Commentary was all over ELP for getting caught with the metal stuff in his boot last month. This match mostly worked because it was pretty focused and did the job of selling the upcoming title match. You got the sense that Tiger Mask IV really wanted to get his hands on ELP and the heel was doing whatever he could to avoid it and get in cheap shots. It was a simple, yet effective story to tell that played to their strengths. Tiger Mask had to fight from beneath and did so with a Tiger Drive and Tombstone but he missed a diving headbutt. The closing stretch saw ELP in serious trouble to the point where Ishimori hit the ring and attacked for a DQ in 10:46. [**¾]
Robbie Eagles vs. Taiji Ishimori
Of course, the DQ and attack set up Eagles evening the score and leading right into this match. Funny how that works, right? Again, this was a case of the heel using underhanded tactics to get in control and it actually took Eagles a bit of time to get going. Once he did, he put a target on Ishimori’s leg to set up his finisher. Ishimori did a good job of selling, having to stop some of his offensive attempts because he had trouble running. Down the stretch, they went back and forth and having Tiger Mask IV at ringside meant ELP couldn’t get involved and mess this up. Eagles hit the 450 splash onto the leg and applied the Ron Miller Special. ELP attempted to get involved but Tiger Mask stopped him and Ishimori had to submit at the 11:10 mark. A good match that was the best thing on the show so far. [***¼]
Post-match, Taguchi and Wato came out to declare for a title shot, while Desperado and Kanemaru followed suit. Eagles said they already beat two teams at once so now they want to beat three at once and agree to a four way.
NEVER Openweight Championship Lumberjack Match: EVIL [c] vs. Tomohiro Ishii
I didn’t review WK 16 but this match was ass (*). In the past, I’ve given most EVIL/Ishii matches somewhere between ***½ and ****¼ but EVIL has quickly become one of the worst things about NJPW and he managed to somehow have a bad match with Ishii in the Tokyo Dome. So the main idea was that the ring was surrounded by both House of Torture and CHAOS guys. That led to not as much cheap interference as usual but this was still super overbooked. There were just so many people running in and out of this from YOH and SHO continuing their issues to Dick Togo being awful to Goto existing. We even got the big move barrage late with the guys just hitting a bunch of shit in a row. I even forgot EVIL and Ishii were the main people involved. When it was just them in there, this ruled because they can have good hard hitting matches. It was just surrounded by so much other nonsense for the sake of it. In the end, EVIL countered a Brainbuster and retained with Everything is EVIL after 20:35. It had its issues but was mostly entertaining. [***]
Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada vs. SANADA and Tetsuya Naito
Even with everything Gedo has done to totally wreck him, Tetsuya Naito still exudes a special coolness. Also, Tanahashi da God. There are two other guys in this match too. You could tell this was going to get time as the early stages felt like guys feeling each other out. It made sense here because they all know each other so well that nobody wanted to make the first mistake. Tanahashi against both opponents was great, while Naito and Okada had good exchanges too. The issue for me continues to be Okada against SANADA as they just don’t really work for me. However, this was better than usual since it wasn’t 25-40 minutes of them. There’s not much to say about the match itself other than that it was really good. They didn’t do anything to really wow me nor did they do anything we hadn’t seen from them before but Tanahashi/SANADA and Okada/Naito are proven pairings so they make it work and are always entertaining together. This passed the 30-minute mark and saw some good close calls down the stretch. In the end, Naito hit Destino on Okada before adding one on Tanahashi to secure the victory in 33:28. Like I said, really good stuff in this main event. [***¾]
