BRM Reviews NJPW Road to the Tokyo Dome 2018: Day 2

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW Road to the Tokyo Dome 2018: Day 2 (12/15/2018)- Tokyo, Japan


AYATO YOSHIDA & SHOTA UMINO vs. TERUAKI KANEMITSU & REN NARITA- 7/10
An excellent young-boy draw. The kids are good, and they’re only going to get better.

CHAOS (Roppongi 3K & Rocky Romero) vs. TIGER MASK IV, TOA HENARE, & JUSHIN “THUNDER” LIGER- 6.5/10

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto & Tomohiro Ishii) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka)- DUD!
This was the usual Suzuki-Gun stupidity where the first few minutes of the match consist of the heels breaking every rule in the book right in front of the referee’s face and the referee doesn’t call for a DQ because that’s not the predetermined ending of the fake wrestling match, and then they want me to be upset that the fake bad guys are fake cheating to fake hurt the fake good guy in the fake wrestling match. If you’re going to spend the beginning of the match rubbing the fact that it’s not real in my face, then how do you expect me to care about it?

CHASE OWENS & YUJIRO TAKAHASHI vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Sanada & EVIL)- 5/10
But Sanada’s beard is -2/10. That thing has to go.

LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, & BUSHI) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Yoshinobu Kanemaru, El Desperado, & Taichi)- DUD!
Suzuki-Gun jumped the bell on their opponents. This was the same bullsh*t as the other Suzuki-Gun match. I swear these guys could bring a sword to the ring and stab the babyface right in front of the referee, and the referee would respond to this by counting “ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!” and as long as the heel pulled the sword back out by five there wouldn’t be a DQ (hell, there probably wouldn’t be if they left it in, too).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Jericho comes out in a disguise and sneak-attacks Naito. I was pretty much expecting this on this show. It honestly feels a little tired at this point.

TOGI MAKABE, TOMOAKI HONMA, KUSHIDA, & CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada & Toru Yano) vs. BULLET CLUB (Jay White, Bad Luck Fale, Taiji Ishimori, & the Guerrillas of Destiny) (w/Jado & Gedo)- 6.25/10
Okada jumped the bell on Jay White, after lulling him into a false sense of security with his overly-celebratory entrance. Yano, being a cheater, used a chair Bad Luck Fale. Why is Yano a babyface? (Yes, jumping the bell on someone is not exactly clean-cut, either, but it is not only a much lower level of cheating, but it is understandable in a heated rivalry. Yano and Fale have no beef with each other at all.
I did appreciate that most of the rule-breaking in this match was done behind the referee’s back, but is there some reason we can’t just have a normal ten-man tag? I don’t need to see a third match on this show (and a second match in a row, and a third match in four) where three minutes in we’ve got everyone brawling in the crowd and around ringside with some of the heels choking the babyfaces with weapons. Is it really too much to ask to not do the same exact thing in every f*cking match?
This eventually turned into something resembling a real tag team match and got pretty darn decent towards the end. Unfortunately, the finish both felt like it came a little too soon, and the camera angle they used exposed the fact that Honma’s head came nowhere near hitting the mat (not that Honma should be taking any risks at all with his history, but that doesn’t mean that the camera catching this at the wrong angle didn’t hurt my suspension of disbelief).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- bad
The heels stand around the apparently unconscious Honma for a bit, with White even holding a crutch against Honma’s weak neck. I kept waiting for them to do something dastardly to him but nothing happened and they let him leave. Then, as the heels were celebrating, Okada ran back to the ring to try to attack White from behind, and immediately got his ass kicked by all of the heels.
ONE person came out to help Okada. Was it a member of his own CHAOS stable, of whom we know Toru Yano is right at ringside, and we know that Sho, Yoh, Rocky Romero, Hirooki Goto, and Tomishiro Ishii are all in the building (we’ll cut Will Ospreay as well as Okada’s new pal and frequent Jay White enemy Hiroshi Tanahashi some slack because their match is up next)? Of course not. It’s KUSHIDA, who is not in CHAOS. But KUSHIDA did just fight a valiant but losing effort alongside Okada, so that does make some sense, right? No. If you’re going to use that argument then certainly Okada’s own stablemate Yano as well as Togi Makabe should have ran in to make the save, too (we’ll assume Honma is too injured to help). But the only one who ran in was KUSHIDA. Why? Because is the only one of these people with a big featured match coming up against one of the heels in the ring is KUSHIDA, and therefore only KUSHIDA ran in because KUSHIDA was the only one whose getting laid would (theoretically) build to Wrestle Kingdom.
Segments like this bother me because of the flaw in the philosophy of the booking on display. Good storytelling is not just “doing what you need to do in order to build up to the big show.” Good storytelling is “doing what you need to do in order to build up to the big show while ensuring that all of your characters are behaving in a logical and consistent manner.” That’s an extremely important distinction, and it is one that seems to be lost on a lot of bookers these days (Gedo and Delirious in particular).

HIROSHI TANAHASHI & WILL OSPREAY vs. GOLDEN LOVERS (Kenny Omega & Kota Ibushi)- 9/10
Did anyone else notice that Ospreay has now teamed up with Ishii to face the Golden Lovers and teamed up with Tanahashi to face the Golden Lovers, but hasn’t ever teamed up with Okada to face the Golden Lovers? How the hell did that match escape us during the build to Dominion both this year and last year?
Anyway, this was the really awesome match that everyone expected- especially the last few minutes. Everyone worked very hard and there was a lot of emotion (though they sometimes crossed over the line into melodrama- especially Omega) and there were a lot of cool spots that were thought-out very well (though hopefully Omega is okay after the most complicated of their spots resulted in him bouncing off of Ibushi’s back and landing right on his head).
That being said, it was not MOTY-level and really only served to make me with that we were getting Omega vs. Ospreay at the Tokyo Dome, which we’re not. And oh my G-d which moron booked this finish?! Half of the purpose of this match was to get me excited for Ibushi vs. Ospreay, so why the f*ck would you have Ospreay- the challenger- get pinned? Because he’s the only one in this match who you don’t feel the need to protect because he’s not one of your tippy-top guys? Well if that’s your attitude about it then he’ll never be one, which is ridiculous because he’s one of the most talented wrestlers in the world.
Yes, I know he was pinned after a double-team move. I don’t care. GO TO A DRAW. And no, the fact that both guys were on top of him when he was pinned doesn’t help either because 1) that is still no excuse to not go to a draw, and 2) in that case the referee shouldn’t have been counting the pin at all, should he? If you have too many skaters on the ice when your team scores a goal, that goal is disallowed. There was no reason for both guys to be on top of Ospreay for the pin (not only does it cause this problem, but the way they fell to “fluidly” wind up in that position looked completely forced and controlled, even though they were clearly trying to make it look like they naturally collapsed this way from exhaustion. It’s like Ziggler and WrestleMania XII “superkick then collapse on top of the opponent” pin).


This was a complete and total one-match show from New Japan. On the one hand, we kind of knew it would be these, but I was not expecting the undercard to suck so hard. Despite the awesome main event, I really have to judge this show a failure, as 95% of the stuff they did to try to get me excited for Wrestle Kingdom XIII only served to get me annoyed, and the only match I came out of this show really wanting so see is one that is not happening (Ospreay vs. Omega).