BRM Reviews NJPW Kizuna Road 2014: Day 3

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW Kizuna Road 2014: Day 3 (7/4/2014)- Tokyo, Japan

JUSHIN “THUNDER” LIGER, MASCARA DORADA, & TIGER MASK IV vs. BUSHI, FUEGO, & SHO TANAKA- 4/10

HIROYOSHI TENZAN, SATOSHI KOJIMA, MANABU NAKANISHI, & YUJI NAGATA vs. TOMOAKI HONMA, RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN, & TOGI MAKABE- 4/10

KAZUSHI SAKURABA, YOSHI-HASHI & TORU YANO vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki, Takashi Iizuka, & TAKA Michinoku)- 4/10
The less Iizuka and Yano are involved, the better the match will be? Who could have seen that coming (aside from everyone, I mean)?

DESPERADO vs. ALEX SHELLEY- 7.5/10
Desperado played the heel here, working over Shelley’s injured shoulder by using the ropes for illegal holds, so I guess last night’s finish was not an accident. They had a good match with a lot of Lucha influence.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Desperado disagreed with the call and threatened the referee. Shelley stepped in to protect the ref, but got attacked from behind by TAKA Michinoku. TAKA and Desperado beat Shelley down, then left together, so I guess this Desperado heel turn is a real thing now.
The problem is that TAKA and Desperado spent all of Best of the Super Juniors (New Japan’s most recent series of shows) getting tons of heat on Desperado!

CHAOS (Shinskuke Nakamura, Kazuchika Okada, Tomohiro Ishii, Alex Koslov, & Rocky Romero) vs. THE BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, Doc Gallows, Tama Tonga, Yujiro Takahashi, & Karl “Machine Gun” Anderson)- 7.75/10
I think it was a nice vote of confidence in Ishii that he was the guy who got the big momentum changing hot tag, even though he was teaming with two of the promotion’s three aces. The three of them also did some semi-wacky Dragon Gate style triple-team moves, which I popped huge for. After that point things picked up and we went into the finishing sequence, with was fun. Great match.

HIROSHI TANAHASHI & TETSUYA NAITO vs. HIROOKI GOTO & KATSUYORI SHIBATA-7.5/10
Great match. Shibata and Goto accidentally hitting each other when Naito got out of the way felt like a HUGE moment (especially with the way Shibata sold it, looking down and hiding his face the whole time, so you didn’t know if he was going to go after Goto or not… and we STILL don’t know because the finish came soon after and they were both separately helped to the back by young boys).

IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kota Ibushi(c) vs. KUSHIDA (w/Alex Shelley)- 6.75/10
Kota got his bell rung early on (and from the look on KUSHIDA’s face, you could tell that Kota rally got hit HARD) you could tell he really wasn’t as there as he needed to be from that point on. His balance was off at times (he slipped doing his flip over the turnbuckle), and the fact that he managed to do anything from the top rope at all was flat-out amazing. They still made the absolute best they could out of the situation, though.
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- Desperado and TAKA Michinoku jumped Shelley and KUSHIDA, but Rysuke Taguchi came out to make the save. Minoru Suzuki came out to stand with his guys and Desperado was presented with a Suzuki-Gun t-shirt, so he is with them now.

A good show from New Japan, with some significant news coming out of it. I was expecting a lot less from what is essentially a random tour of shows before the largest G1 in history.