BRM Reviews NJPW Best of the Super Juniors XXVI: Day 10 (OSPREAY VS. EAGLES!)

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW Best of the Super Juniors XXVI: Day 10 (5/26/2019)- Chiba, Japan


TAKA Michinoku is injured tonight and therefore must forfeit his match to Dragon Lee.

BLOCK B MATCH: Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Ren Narita- 5.5/10
It’s Taguchi against a Young Lion: There were ankle locks, Narita sold well, and the outcome was never close to being in doubt.

BLOCK A MATCH: Jonathan Gresham vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru- 5.75/10
Good wrestling, though the ref bump towards the end was pretty pointless.

BLOCK B MATCH: Rocky Romero vs. DOUKI- 5.75/10
The heel jumps the bell on the babyface, they immediately spill to the outside where the referee doesn’t count them out until some point when he randomly decides to start doing so. I’m so f*cking tired of this stupid formula.
DOUKI worked over Rocky’s legs but Rocky mostly stopped selling his knee by the end. Rocky won via submission, so that’s now two in a row for Rocky after a dismal 1-4 start.

BLOCK A MATCH: Titan vs. Marty Scurll (w/Brody King)- 7/10
And exciting match that was quite good for the time it got.

BLOCK B MATCH: Bandido vs. BUSHI- 6/10
This was a lot shorter than I was hoping (it didn’t even go nine minutes). BUSHI won.

BLOCK A MATCH: Tiger Mask IV vs. Shingo Takagi- 6.75/10
Tiger Mask IV tried to win with his usual stuff while Shingo was on the “beat the sh*t out of your opponent” plan. There was some decent drama by the end when Tiger Mask got those arm submissions locked in and kept kicking out of the Pumping Bomber, but this was miles and miles away from being anything out of the ordinary.

BLOCK B MATCH: Yoh vs. El Phantasmo- 3/10
The heel jumps the bell on the babyface, they immediately spill to the outside where the referee doesn’t count them out. The heel hit the babyface with foreign objects right in front of the referee but was not disqualified. The heel gets back in the ring and then the referee finally starts to do some semblance of his job and count someone out. This time, though, the heel decided to go back out and do more damage to the babyface. Instead of just restarting his count from one like he is supposed to, the referee just stopped counting altogether. THIS IS SOOOOOO DUMB! The point of the count-out is to get the wrestlers back into the ring via the threat of a count-out loss! Now that the heel has gone back to the outside and thus the number of wrestlers ignoring the referee’s orders has increased, the referee starts to do less to get them to follow the rules?
El Phantasmo whipped Yoh into a bunch of chairs and then got back into the ring. Even once El Phantasmo was back in the ring, Red Shoes still took forever to start counting because he sucks at his job. Cue Count-Out Tease That No One Ever Buys™ and viola: You’ve killed off almost three minutes out of your twelve. Good for you. Next time just give me three minutes of armlocks because at least that creates a story for your match and doesn’t treat the rules like a joke.
Stuff happened. It was meh. Then we got a weak ref bump, followed by El Phantasmo going to get his RPW Undisputed British Cruiserweight Title belt to try to hit Yoh with but Red Shoes was up before he could use it. Red Shoes grabbed it from him and instead of just giving it up El Phantasmo was a moron and decided to have a tug of war over it. He then got rolled up by Yoh and Red Shoes counted the pin even though he couldn’t possibly have seen both of El Phantasmo’s shoulders, because Red Shoes sucks at his job. Stupid overbooking is bad enough, but overbooking that doesn’t even lead anywhere like we get in New Japan (and especially during these tournaments) is even worse. I will bet that we probably get more interference and other assorted bullsh*t on the average New Japan show than on the average WWE show (and probably every other major or even medium-sized wrestling company in the world, too).

BLOCK B MATCH: Will Ospreay vs. Robbie Eagles- 9.25/10
Ospreay’s selling was a little inconsistent, but other than that this match was OUTSTANDING! They had a great dual story of Eagles working the knee and Ospreay losing respect for Eagles as Eagles first disrespected him and, by the end, accepted the interference of El Phantasmo to help win the match. Ospreay was fantastic, as usual, and Eagles has me quite convinced that Gedo has picked the wrong new gaijin Bullet Club junior heavyweight to push.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- meh
Eagles is unhappy with El Phantasmo for interfering against his buddy Will Ospreay. Sorry, pal, but if you didn’t want his help you shouldn’t have taken advantage of it. You should have told Red Shows to eject him from ringside and waited for Ospreay to recover. And if that winds up meaning you take the draw instead of the win because Ospreay isn’t recovered by the time limit then so be it. If you want to be a babyface, you have to put morality above victory.
And while we’re on the subject of not being happy with said interference, let’s talk about Juice Robinson. You saw El Phantasmo try to interfere the first time and you sat on your ass and did nothing! You don’t get to complain about the match being ruined because you had a chance to stop it but you didn’t!

TIME’S UP VIDEO- Juice thinks he has figured out who is behind these videos. He tells that person “I’m not the same guy anymore” and dares that person to show up in Ryogoku for the BOSJ finals.

BLOCK A MATCH: Taiji Ishimori vs. Sho- 8/10
The last few minutes were very exciting. Ishimori got the win to keep his pace one win behind Shingo. Unfortunately, Gedo has kept up with this a little too much, as everyone else is already out of contention in this block, and there is one show left for them before their final show. So basically, whatever result the first one of them gets on Wednesday, the second one will get the same thing (I guess technically we could have Ishimori win and Shingo go to a draw with Gresham, but I don't see that happening). Gedo actually made this same mistake last year with Omega and Ibushi as well, which lead to... f*cking Toru Yano pinning the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, which never led to anything. Yes, I remember that the Firing Squad had beaten Omega up before the match. That never led to anything, either.


A good show from New Japan, although the Ospreay vs. Eagles match really elevates it. Without this match, calling this mediocre might have even been a little generous. Will Ospreay is really f*cking great. On Wednesday we go back to the half block matches, half waste of time undercard tag matches format.