Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2019 - 3.17

[cero2k]

NJPW New Japan Cup 2019 Day 8
March 17, 2019
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Yuji Nagata, Manabu Nakanishi, & Yota Tsuji vs TenCozy & Yuya Uemura - 6.5/10
Got damn it! Get all those old timers out of here and give me Tsuji vs Uemura! This was better than the match sounds. Nagata submitted Uemura with the Nagata Lock.

Bullet Club (Chase Owens, Bad Luck Fale, & Hikuleo) vs Juice Robinson, Mikey Nicholls, & Ren Narita - 5/10
Ok stuff, Owens kept going after Juice, but this time doing the sneak attack route. Narita looked good towards the end before getting pinned by Owens.

Suzuki-Gun (Killer Elite Squad & Taichi) vs Togi Makabe, Michael Elgin, & Toa Henare - 5.5/10
KES got a second win, so now i'm almost sure they're being prepared to chase the titles again, but it's weird since I have no idea if the MSG match is still GoD vs Briscoes, or if it becomes a Bullet Club vs Villain Enterprise feud. Taichi submitted Henare with his weird submission, that I now know it's called -- The Stretch Plum.

Los Ingobernables de Japon vs Roppongi 3K, Kota Ibushi, & Shota Umino - 7/10
Great match. All men have been eliminated, but they seemed to build Shingo and BUSHI vs R3K and Naito vs Ibushi for the IC title. SHO worked babyface in peril, which led to the Naito vs Ibushi pair up. Umino obviously took the pin at the hands of EVIL.

Hiroshi Tanahashi & Tomoaki Honma vs Suzuki-Gun (Zack Sabre Jr & TAKA Michinoku) - 6.5/10
Everything between Sabre and Tanahashi was great. Sabre was shown as a better technician than Tanahashi, but Tanahashi also showed off her submission work throughtout the match, even tapping out TAKA to the Cloverleaf. Gee, if only he had won a big match with it the prior night. Honma was there too.

Post-match - Sabre attacked Honma as he mocked Tanahashi.

CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, Will Ospreay, & Hirooki Goto) vs CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada & YOSHI-HASHI) & Ryusuke Taguchi - 7/10
Going in, I only wanted to see Okada take on all of the CHAOS guys on the opposite corner, but at the end, Ishii vs YH was the highlight of the match, YH finally stepped up to the occasion and delivered something good. It took a while, but now I'm interested in their match up coming up. Taguchi being the odd man out, took the pin by Goto's GTR.

"Boom Boom" Colt Cabana vs "Binwan Producer" Toru Yano - 7.5/10
Yano came out with a Taguchi Japan. I really hope that by the end of the year, a new version of CHAOS is feuding against a new version of Taguchi Japan. This was an awesome comedic performance by both men, it was more of a performance than a match, but I won't say that this isn't wrestling, because it was.

The whole story was that Cabana did as much as he could to foil all of Yano's tactics, even at one point taping up the ring pad to the turnbuckle. As much as Yano kept trying to sneak in a roll up, Cabana kept getting out, and at the end, it was one of Yano's cheats that backfired giving Cabana the chance for the Superman pin and win. This match needs to be seen as a true comedy match and not take anything away just because there are no flips or submissions or movezzz.

"Cold Skull" SANADA vs "The King" Minoru Suzuki w/TAKA Michinoku - 9.75
SANADA initially still thought that he had a chance at locking in the Paradise Lock on Suzuki which led to SANADA's leg being worked on viciously. Suzuki's leg targeting was on point and SANADA's selling was considerably more emotional than we usually see from him. Having said that, when SANADA made his comebacks, he did moves that even though he kept selling, the moves looked perfectly executed for a man that was supposed to be hurting. It was only two moves that I noticed that, so it's not exactly detrimental.

The rest of the match saw Suzuki go for strikes, the Sleeper, and the GSP, and no matter what, SANADA kept enduring the punishment and finding ways into the Skull End and most importantly, to get into a submission battle with Suzuki, hence leaving the Skull End for the moonsault approach. Suzuki wrestled a perfect submission match tonight. The finishing sequence was pretty much a 5 minute submission battle between the Skull End and Suzuki's leg lock that ended with a moonsault to finally keep Suzuki down for 3. I LOVED this match.

Post-match - SANADA said he liked NYC, but he liked Tokyo more. Korakuen Hall, See You Next Time.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
I loved the bracket matches tonight, completely different from each other and two good examples of different wrestling styles in the industry. The undercard reached a weird spot here were most men have been eliminated, so they can now start mixing up and build matches for the Cup's final show, but also, we're now building Cup matches with top guys, so it was considerably better than usual.