wrestling / TV Reports
Pantoja’s NJPW Road to Wrestling Dontaku 4.27.23 Review
Image Credit: NJPW
Loading...NJPW Road to Wrestling Dontaku
April 27th, 2023 | Hiroshima Sun Plaza in Hiroshima, Japan
The big STARDOM show got me back into the swing of things in terms of reviews and it’s time for a New Japan “Road to” event that actually has some noteworthy matches lined up.
I wanted to start by pointing out some of my favorite matches to ever take place on a Road to Wrestling Dontaku event for old time’s sake.
- Jushin Thunder Liger & Yuji Nagata vs. Katsuyori Shibata & KUSHIDA – 4/23/16 – ***¾
- Kenny Omega vs. Michael Elgin 4/27/16 – ****
- Toa Henare vs. Tomohiro Ishii – 4/24/18 – ***¾
- Hirooki Goto vs. Juice Robinson – 4/27/18 – ****
- BUSHI, EVIL & Tetsuya Naito vs. Kota Ibushi, Tomohiro Ishii & YOH 4/24/19 – ***¾
- Kazuchika Okada & SHO vs. SANADA & Shingo Takagi 4/24/19 – ***¾
- Roppongi 3K vs. BUSHI & Shingo Takagi – 4/26/19 – ****
The show opened with a rare in-ring segment as Catch-22 and the Kevin Knight/KUSHIDA teams came out for a weird ass press conference. They then did the same for Hiromi vs. Kanemaru. Why did these things happen? Do them on the build-up to these matches, not the night of.
Aaron Henare and The Great-O-Khan vs. Boltin Oleg and Oskar Leube
I remember not being sold on O-Khan but now the combination of his fun social media stuff in the US and his over the top goofiness has brought me around. This was exactly what you’d expect/what it should be. The established stars getting some work in and mostly dominating while the Young Lions brought the effort. The high point was seeing big ass Oleg duke it out with fellow big boys on the opposite side. Leube also more than held his own in terms of striking with Henare, which was a nice little surprise. Henare beat Leube with the Full Nelson in a tidy 5:54 and you know what? I quite enjoyed that hard hitting sprint. [***]
Bishamon, Toru Yano and YOH vs. Dick Togo, EVIL, SHO and Yujiro Takahashi
Guess what? The House of Torture jumped the babyface team during introductions. GO FIGURE. Honestly, that was kind of all you needed to know about this. It was classic House of Torture shenanigans mixed in with Toru Yano and his turnbuckle pad antics. I’m not going to recap it because if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Togo fell to Bishamon’s finisher combo in 4:45. Props to them for keeping it short. [**]
David Finlay, KENTA and Taiji Ishimori vs. Hikuleo, Master Wato and Tama Tonga
Current Bullet Club vs. old Bullet Club members. Also, Master Wato. The heels did the jump thing but at least had the decency to wait for most of the introductions to be done. House of Torture are just so rude, they don’t even let their opponents get some shine. The faces turned things around quickly but when Wato got the tag, it was time for the heat segment. Finlay is still working on making the heel stuff seem natural. It comes off as try-hard at times. The heat segment was short was Tama got the hot tag but when Wato came back in, it was downhill. He got left alone with Finlay and ate a Stun Gun, Spear, and Brainbuster on the Knee to lose in 6:50. That was perfectly acceptable and nothing more. [**¼]
Aussie Open and Jeff Cobb vs. TMDK and Zack Sabre Jr.
Here we are previewing the Aussie Open/TMDK title match. Again, I get the idea of splitting shows to make more money but one card with all of the title matches is much better than breaking things up (though I know Hiromu’s would have to be split). Anyway, there was pretty much no chance this wouldn’t be good. TMDK is a very solid tag team, Aussie Open rules, and Cobb/ZSJ are both really good. It combined for something highly entertaining that previewed the upcoming match without giving too much away. Watching this really made me want Fletcher and Davis to get TV Title shots. Their matches with ZSJ would be 15 minute bangers. Aussie Open had TMDK in serious trouble late but their finisher was countered and then they got going. Things broke down in the end and Cobb was trapped in a submission as TMDK beat Fletcher with a diving DDT combo in 8:06. The step up in quality you want at this point and this did exactly what it needed to. [***¼]
El Desperado, Minoru Suzuki, Ren Narita and Shota Umino vs. Great Bash Heel, Kazuchika Okada and Tomohiro Ishii
I feel like WWE is going to have the Okada problem with Roman Reigns when he loses the title. If Okada isn’t the top champion or chasing it, he looks totally lost out there. He just dicks around for a few months in random tags and singles matches until he’s back in the top picture. I still want him to make a bid for the US, NEVER, or Tag Titles to try and elevate them. The match itself here was as good as you’d expect given who was involved. The Six-Man Champs and Ishii were their great selves, Umino put in effort, and even though Okada was mostly chilling, he was fine. Great Bash Heel dragged this down a bit as neither guy is really going to give you much today. Ishii vs. the champs were the high points of the match for sure. Honma was clearly there to eat a pin, which he did when Umino hit him with Death Rider at the 11:29 mark. There wasn’t enough GBH to really hurt this too much so it ended up being good. Desperado and Ishii had words after the match, while Narita and Okada did as well. [***]
We got another Coming Soon video package without much else information.
BUSHI and Shingo Takagi vs. SANADA and Taichi
Top champion SANADA is weird. As much as I don’t think he belongs there, I’ll give props to New Japan for trying something new. I believe there’s a Shingo/Taichi match to build to here and we’ve got SANADA facing an LIJ junior ahead of his defense against Hiromu. SANADA having good chemistry with these guys makes a ton of sense as he worked well against BUSHI. Shingo and Taichi continued to basically wage war with strikes and kicks as well and that was good. Of course, you knew why BUSHI was in there and that was to take the fall. He did well enough against SANADA late, including hitting a dive outside. SANADA caught him in the Dragon Sleeper and spun him around, which I would’ve made the finish because it looked cool. Instead, BUSHI countered into a small package and then SANADA caught him again, winning with it as Taichi held Shingo in a submission. This went 8:14 and was solid throughout. [***]
Time for the Best of the Super Juniors announcements!
A Block: Hiromu Takahashi, Ryusuke Taguchi, DOUKI, Taiji Ishimori, SHO, TJP, Titán, KUSHIDA, Lio Rush, and Mike Bailey.
B Block: El Desperado, Master Wato, YOH, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, BUSHI, Clark Connors, Robbie Eagles, Francesco Akira, Kevin Knight, and Dan Moloney.
At first glance, A Block seems stronger but the B Block has some sleepers in there. The tournament should be fun.
DOUKI vs. Tetsuya Naito
We’re up to the three big matches of the show and we continues the LIJ vs. Just 5 Guys feud. DOUKI pulled a House of Torture/Bullet Club move by jumping Naito during his entrance, not even letting him get in the ring. It wasn’t long before Naito turned the tide and started to show this junior heavyweight where he sat in the pecking order. Of course, you can’t have this be totally one-sided, so DOUKI got going again and had Naito on his heels a few times. He applied the DOUKI CHOUKI (I know that’s technically not how it’s spelled but whatever) a few times and the crowd was behind Naito but you knew he’d never tap to a junior heavyweight. Naito eventually won with Destino in 15:55 and while this was good, it never really became anything more. It fittingly felt like step one for Naito ahead of likely getting a shot at the man who left his stable. [***¼]
IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: Catch 22 [c] vs. The Intergalactic Jet Setters
It’s cool to have KUSHIDA around again and I like what I’ve seen from Knight. Meanwhile, Catch 22 has had a strong run as champs. The chain wrestling to start by TJP and KUSHIDA is so my shit. Akira and Knight had solid back and forth interactions before this progressed into bigger offense like TJP assisting Akira on a somersault dive to the outside. KUSHIDA got his leg worked over and I was surprised to see him get isolated. He could get the crowd more behind his comeback than Knight but you’d expect the hot tag to go to him. Knight did get that tag and the challengers started rolling. I feel like Knight really got the chance to strut his stuff and you can tell that working alongside KUSHIDA is doing wonders for him. Down the stretch, KUSHIDA got trapped in a leglock by TJP and given the damage done to leg going into it, you believed a tap out was possible but he found a way to get free. Still, the champs came close to winning on several other occasions but there was always a teammate to make the save. The most notable moment came when Knight busted TJP open pretty roughly. The finish came as a legit shock when Knight took Akira off the top with a leaping rana and then got on KUSHIDA’s shoulders for a weird rolling move into a DDT that ended this in 19:03. That was an odd ending that came from out of nowhere but also didn’t fully work. They need a better finisher. Regardless, this was a very good match and a result I wasn’t expecting. Kudos to the Catch 22 title reign for being a rare long/good one in this division. [***¾]
IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship: Hiromu Takahashi [c] vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru
These two have met at Wrestling Hi No Kuni in 2018 (***), the 2021 BOSJ (***¼), and the 2022 BOSJ (**½). I was disappointed by the last Hiromu defense though I have low expectations coming into this one. So, this match did a lot right. I think Kanemaru starting slow worked in its favor because logically, that’s what he should do. He can’t match Hiromu in speed so instead of trying it, he worked slower and targeted the leg. That happened in Hiromu’s match against Robbie Eagles and he didn’t sell it very well. Here, he sold it better and that helped this match. The problem was the one that all New Japan main events seem to run into. This peaked and then kept going for several more minutes when it didn’t need to. It also suffered from a lack of drama because nobody could buy Kanemaru as champ at this point. I’d have booked Hiromu against someone with a legitimate chance and we’d have bought a title change given Hiromu’s upcoming match with SANADA. In the end, KUSHIDA was able to win with Time Bomb II at the 31:58 mark. Another good match but one that might’ve been great had it been capped at around 20 minutes. The leg work and selling were well done though this never fully grabbed me the way a great match does. [***½]
