wrestling / TV Reports
Pantoja’s NJPW Road To The New Beginning 2.4.24 & 2.5.24 Review
Image Credit: NJPW
Loading...NJPW Road to the New Beginning Mashup
I’m back with another look at two Road to New Beginning shows. This one is more lopsided as I’m covering four matches from one night and only one from another.
February 4th, 2024 | Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan | Attendance: 1,433
Alex Coughlin vs. The Great-O-Khan
We’ve got some singles matches to hype the Bullet Club/United Empire cage match that’s on the horizon. This was a strange clash of styles that yielded mixed results. Some of what they did missed the mark but I liked other bits a lot. For example, the spot where Coughlin worked a submission while kind of flipping over O-Khan and using his core strength was really cool. I liked when they were going back and forth and they were so battered that O-Khan just fell out because it was too difficult to stand after a while. Outside of that spot though, this never really felt like it had the fire this feud has called for. These factions kind of hate each other and that has been the case in the undercard tags but this didn’t have that and it needed it. O-Khan won with a bad looking Chokeslam in 12:05. Solid enough but missing something. [**¾]
Gabe Kidd vs. HENARE
What that last match lacked in intensity, this one more than made up for it. On sight, HENARE and Kidd were ready to throw bombs. They opened with a forearm exchange and kept up the hard hitting aggression from bell to bell with almost no slow down. Everything had extra snap to it, even something as simple as shoving HENARE into the guardrail. The battle went into the crowd like a lot of classic Korakuen wars. Kidd stopping to shout and talk trash helped here like it did for Roman’s pandemic era matches. I also dug how HENARE just ate some of the most vicious chops thrown and responded with a brutal kick of his own. Kidd does a lot of cool things, like the spot where he hit the ropes sternum first and bounced off. It was as if the force of HENARE’s whip was too much for him to turn and hit it with his back like usual and that’s such a small but cool thing. The closing minutes with the lariat kickouts at one and some of the violence they brought felt reminiscent of Ishii vs. Shibata, which is about as high praise as I can give a match. My favorite bit was probably the finish as they traded headbutts and just when it looked like HENARE was going down, he hit a leaping headbutt to send them both to the mat. Neither could answer the 10 count, giving us a draw in 20:27. An excellent use of that result as they just battled until neither could stand anymore. An outstanding match and way better than you usually get on a “Road to” show. [****¼]
Callum Newman vs. David Finlay
Although Finlay is meant to be this big star in a company deprived of them, this felt like a cool down after that last match. This match was actually kind of Finlay in a nutshell. It was largely fine, inoffensive, and his heel stuff still isn’t totally clicking. He can try as he might to be the “aggressive” Bullet Club leader but guys like Kidd showcase that attitude and style way more than he does and they do so in convincing fashion. What worked here is that Newman is significantly lower on the card than Finlay so he was able to bully him and it came off better than it does against someone like Will Ospreay or Tama Tonga. Callum showed some good babyface fire and played a strong underdog who rallied against Finlay, mostly due to Finlay taking him too lightly. I appreciated that this only went 10:27 because anything longer would’ve felt like it dragged for no reason. This isa bout the max that guys on their positions on the card should go. Finlay won with a pretty sweet looking suplex into a pump knee. That was good but unspectacular. [***]
IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: Catch-22 [c] vs. Clark Connors and Drilla Moloney
Their match at Wrestle Kingdom was fine and nothing more (**¾). We don’t have the storyline of TJP’s spooky gimmick debut here though so I had higher hopes. However, it’s still part of the match and it’s still something that is a work in progress. There were parts of this where he’d do something within the character that kind of killed the crowd. They were pretty hot for Catch-22 at the start but these moments took them out of it. The action itself was still largely fine here and fast paced outside of the spooky stuff. I liked this most when it was a traditional tag worked at a fun pace but when things broke down into something more frantic, it didn’t click quite as well which isn’t normally the case for jr. tag bouts. Akira, who has impressed me the most of anyone in these matches, looked good until he got scared of the fork Moloney brought into play. That led to him eating the No Chaser piledriver and two Spears, including one off Bret’s Rope, to give us new champions in 18:33. A solid match like you’d expect, though there are diminishing returns for the most part on this series. [***]
February 5th, 2024 | Korakuen Hall in Tokyo, Japan | Attendance: 1,015
There’s only one match I’m watching on this night but it’s a doozy.
Gauntlet Match: BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, Shingo Takagi, Tetsuya Naito & Yota Tsuji vs. DOUKI, SANADA, Taichi, TAKA Michinoku & Yuya Uemura
I like this idea because it’s not one this company does often. They typically do the Elimination matches but a long gauntlet stands out. That said, this wasn’t a normal gauntlet. Each “match” had a 10:00 time limit so if no falls come in that time, both guys are out and new people replace them. If you win your “match,” you move on. We started with SANADA against Naito and since that’s a WK rematch and an upcoming title match, you knew they’d go to the time limit. I liked this section because of the time limit as it prevented padding things out to go long for the sake of it. There was urgency for the duration. With both men out, next in were Shingo and TAKA. That was one-sided as it should be, with Shingo besting him rather easily in about seven minutes. Taichi joined next and had a hard hitting 10:00 with Shingo before that time limit expired. Then we got DOUKI against BUSHI, with DOUKI rolling him up to beat him in 1:27. That tells you where BUSHI sits on the jr. division totem pole and how DOUKI has moved up. Speaking of his standing now, DOUKI managed to make it to the 10:00 mark against Hiromu. They had one of the better exchanges of the match, bringing the kind of fast paced action you’d want from those two. We were now down to Tsuji against Uemura and since they were the final two, the time limit was gone. They would go until there was a winner. This worked a lot like their Tokyo Dome match in that you can sense both guys are a key part of the future. Tsuji impressed again as his presence is fantastic and the crowd ate up everything he did. I thought they’d have Yota take another big loss but he squeaked out a win with a Spear in 19:03. The whole thing went 57:35 and was really enjoyable throughout even if not every mini-match was great. I like this idea especially with two factions that are good. [***¾]
