NJPW King of Pro Wrestling 2015
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NJPW King of Pro Wrestling 2015 (10/12/2015)- Tokyo, Japan
JUSHIN â€"THUNDER†LIGER, TIGER MASK IV, KUSHIDA, RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, & MASCARA DORADA vs. DAVID FINLAY JR., SHO TANAKA, JUICE ROBINSON, JAY WHITE, & YOHEI KOMATSU- 4.75/10
The team of four young boys and the guy lost. Who could have seen that coming?
TOMOAKI HONMA vs. YOSHI-HASHI- 6/10
HIROOKI GOTO, KATSUYORI SHIBATA, KOTA IBUSHI, & CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN vs. MANABU NAKANISHI, YUJI NAGATA, HIROYOSHI TENZAN, & SATOSHI KOJIMA- 6/10
A fun undercard tag team match, but it’s rather sad that Goto, who just lost the IC Title, and Kota, who had two AMAZING matches for the top two titles over the first few months of the year, are in this match, completely directionless.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: reDRagon(c) vs. Forever Hooligans- 6.5/10
I just wasn’t into this one as I normally am into the junior heavyweight tag matches. The totally botched finish (all the referee’s fault) didn’t help.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kenny Omega(c) (w/Cody Hall) vs. Matt Sydal- 8/10
I demand more of this!
CHAOS (Toru Yano, Shinsuke Nakmura, & Kazushi Sakuraba) vs. BULLET CLUB (Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson, & Bad Luck Fale) (w/Tama Tonga)- 2/10
A very short match. The heat on Nakamura was good, but then they ruined everything by having YANO pin FALE. It obviously wasn’t clean, but still. The point of this is to build up Anderson for his title shot at Nakamura at Power Struggle, so why wouldn’t you have Anderson pin Yano?
NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Togi Makabe(c) vs. Tomohiro Ishii- 6.75/10
Ishii chops Makabe in the throat, so the referee tells him not to do that. Then he goes and does it again, and the referee tells him not do. Then he does it a third time, clearly on purpose this time. Why even have the referees if they’re not going to do their jobs and call for a DQ when someone violates the rules?
Other than that and some of the usual annoying Ishii spots (which they admittedly kept to an extreme minimum), they had a very good match. Ishii picked up the win, which really frustrated me- and that has nothing to do with my dislike of Ishii. Ishii has either had this title or been up there in the title picture for this belt since the beginning of 2014. He loses it for a few months then he gets it back, over and over. We’ve seen the same thing with Nakamura and IC Title for about three or four years now. The Heavyweight Tag Titles mean almost nothing at the moment because of the complete and total stagnation of that division for the past few years (and the division is only getting smaller now with K.E.S. being sent over to NOAH). The Junior Heavyweight Tag Titles are the same way. They’ve added the Bucks and reDRagon, but those two teams quickly got old in the division because the title match on most PPVs is just a giant three or four way match with no reason behind it at all. The product feels completely stagnant.
When they have had the chance to do something interesting in a division- to give us a major shake-up, they just keep things the same instead. At the beginning of this year, Alex Koslov retired, while Mascara Dorada signed with New Japan. Instead of trying to filter these guys into the (slightly less stagnant) singles picture, they gave Dorada one title shot and then relegated him to jobber status, while for Romero they just found another partner and now he’s doing the same damn spots but with Trent as his partner instead of Koslov.
They brought childhood friends Shibata and Goto together and had them end the Bullet Club’s year-long reign as heavyweight tag team champions, winning the titles on the biggest show of the year… and then they promptly dropped the belts back to Bullet Club at the next PPV and they never even got a rematch (while the Bullet Club went on to do the only new thing New Japan tried this year: a feud with The Kingdom based around comedy, which was universally reviled).
Goto, who has earned reputation of being the guy who could never win the big one, finally got to win the big one and beat Nakamura for the IC Title. He even beat Nakamura in a rematch. Then he promptly lost to Nakamura in the G1 and lost the title back right after the G1, and now he’s been wrestling pre-lim matches since then (both on this show and at the next PPV)… even though HE PINNED THE IGWP WORLD HEAVYWEGITH CHAMPION CLEAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RING DURING THE G1, which seems to have been all but forgotten. Similarly forgotten losses in the G1 include Nakamura pinning IWGP Heavyweight Champion Okada, Tanahashi beating then-NEVER champion Makabe, AJ Styles beating Makabe, Shibata beating Makabe, Bad Luck Fale beating Makabe, and Kota Ibushi beating Makabe.
And then we come to the other change they’ve made this year, which is that the IWGP Heavyweight Title is being defended a lot less often. Since the Tokyo Dome, Tanahashi defended it once, in which he lost it to AJ (never got a rematch, either). AJ successfully defended the title against Ibushi in April, then didn’t defend it again until July, when he lost it to Okada. Okada defended it on this show against AJ, and will not defend the title again until the Tokyo Dome. That’s just five title defenses in one year (while having three different champions!)… and with the increased number of PPVs, they’ve just been sticking the champion in meaningless tags on these PPVs, and between the champion feeling like he is just doing nothing for months on end and the stagnation of the rest of the card, it makes the promotion feel like it is going absolutely nowhere.
TOKYO DOME #1 CONTENDERSHIP CONTRACT MATCH: Hiroshi Tanahashi(c) (w/Captain New Japan) vs. Tetsuya Naito (w/a friend dressed in the same dumb costume as Naito)- 7.5/10
Naito took f*cking forever to take his dumb costume off, annoying the fans, the referee, Tanahashi, and me.
After a lot of stalling, Naito destroys Tanahashi to start off the match, focusing on his back. Then he just shoves the referee across the ring for no reason. This was not a DQ. They wrestled for a while longer before we got another ref bump. Naito’s partner interfered and revealed himself to be… Takaaki Watanabe, so I guess he’s done with his excursion. Tanahashi got double-teamed and you’d think that Captain New Japan would try to stop this but he just stood there doing nothing. Goto and Shibata came out to make the save instead. They wrestled for a few more minutes, which included Naito slapping the ref in the face, which also wasn’t a DQ. Tanahashi eventually won with the High Fly Flow. If the mystery man had been someone more important I would have found this to be a waste of the reveal and the interference, but with it just being Watanabe it worked fine for what it needed to do, which was establish that he is now back and that he is pals with Naito.
IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kazuchika Okada(c) (w/Gedo) vs. AJ Styles (w/Bullet Club)- 9.25/10
An AMAZING match! Okada could have sold his knee a bit better and the finish looked a little weird, but definitely one of the top ten matches of the year so far (maybe even top five).
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Tokyo Dome main event will be… exactly what we thought it would be. Hooray!
While the wrestling on this show was mostly great, that big rant I went on while talking the NEVER Openweight Title match really sums up my feelings about the company at the moment. I have no interest whatsoever to see the next PPV because nothing feels like it’s moving anywhere.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
I didn’t even have the commentary on for most of the show because I knew Matt Striker would constantly say things that would infuriate me. I turned it on for the Ishii-Makabe match out of a genuine curiosity to see if maybe someone else explaining to me the supposed psychology of these Ishii matches might help me appreciate them more. Instead, I was greeted with gems like the following:
1. Ishii hauls Makabe up and Striker wonders if he is going for an Ishii Driver (Brainbuster), but instead he just hits a regular vertical suplex instead. Matt Striker said that this â€"shows the respect†between these two wrestler. So according to Matt Striker, it is a sign of respect to not try to hit a move that is more likely to win you the match.
I can only imagine how bad the rest of the show was.
JUSHIN â€"THUNDER†LIGER, TIGER MASK IV, KUSHIDA, RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, & MASCARA DORADA vs. DAVID FINLAY JR., SHO TANAKA, JUICE ROBINSON, JAY WHITE, & YOHEI KOMATSU- 4.75/10
The team of four young boys and the guy lost. Who could have seen that coming?
TOMOAKI HONMA vs. YOSHI-HASHI- 6/10
HIROOKI GOTO, KATSUYORI SHIBATA, KOTA IBUSHI, & CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN vs. MANABU NAKANISHI, YUJI NAGATA, HIROYOSHI TENZAN, & SATOSHI KOJIMA- 6/10
A fun undercard tag team match, but it’s rather sad that Goto, who just lost the IC Title, and Kota, who had two AMAZING matches for the top two titles over the first few months of the year, are in this match, completely directionless.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: reDRagon(c) vs. Forever Hooligans- 6.5/10
I just wasn’t into this one as I normally am into the junior heavyweight tag matches. The totally botched finish (all the referee’s fault) didn’t help.
IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kenny Omega(c) (w/Cody Hall) vs. Matt Sydal- 8/10
I demand more of this!
CHAOS (Toru Yano, Shinsuke Nakmura, & Kazushi Sakuraba) vs. BULLET CLUB (Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson, & Bad Luck Fale) (w/Tama Tonga)- 2/10
A very short match. The heat on Nakamura was good, but then they ruined everything by having YANO pin FALE. It obviously wasn’t clean, but still. The point of this is to build up Anderson for his title shot at Nakamura at Power Struggle, so why wouldn’t you have Anderson pin Yano?
NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Togi Makabe(c) vs. Tomohiro Ishii- 6.75/10
Ishii chops Makabe in the throat, so the referee tells him not to do that. Then he goes and does it again, and the referee tells him not do. Then he does it a third time, clearly on purpose this time. Why even have the referees if they’re not going to do their jobs and call for a DQ when someone violates the rules?
Other than that and some of the usual annoying Ishii spots (which they admittedly kept to an extreme minimum), they had a very good match. Ishii picked up the win, which really frustrated me- and that has nothing to do with my dislike of Ishii. Ishii has either had this title or been up there in the title picture for this belt since the beginning of 2014. He loses it for a few months then he gets it back, over and over. We’ve seen the same thing with Nakamura and IC Title for about three or four years now. The Heavyweight Tag Titles mean almost nothing at the moment because of the complete and total stagnation of that division for the past few years (and the division is only getting smaller now with K.E.S. being sent over to NOAH). The Junior Heavyweight Tag Titles are the same way. They’ve added the Bucks and reDRagon, but those two teams quickly got old in the division because the title match on most PPVs is just a giant three or four way match with no reason behind it at all. The product feels completely stagnant.
When they have had the chance to do something interesting in a division- to give us a major shake-up, they just keep things the same instead. At the beginning of this year, Alex Koslov retired, while Mascara Dorada signed with New Japan. Instead of trying to filter these guys into the (slightly less stagnant) singles picture, they gave Dorada one title shot and then relegated him to jobber status, while for Romero they just found another partner and now he’s doing the same damn spots but with Trent as his partner instead of Koslov.
They brought childhood friends Shibata and Goto together and had them end the Bullet Club’s year-long reign as heavyweight tag team champions, winning the titles on the biggest show of the year… and then they promptly dropped the belts back to Bullet Club at the next PPV and they never even got a rematch (while the Bullet Club went on to do the only new thing New Japan tried this year: a feud with The Kingdom based around comedy, which was universally reviled).
Goto, who has earned reputation of being the guy who could never win the big one, finally got to win the big one and beat Nakamura for the IC Title. He even beat Nakamura in a rematch. Then he promptly lost to Nakamura in the G1 and lost the title back right after the G1, and now he’s been wrestling pre-lim matches since then (both on this show and at the next PPV)… even though HE PINNED THE IGWP WORLD HEAVYWEGITH CHAMPION CLEAN IN THE MIDDLE OF THE RING DURING THE G1, which seems to have been all but forgotten. Similarly forgotten losses in the G1 include Nakamura pinning IWGP Heavyweight Champion Okada, Tanahashi beating then-NEVER champion Makabe, AJ Styles beating Makabe, Shibata beating Makabe, Bad Luck Fale beating Makabe, and Kota Ibushi beating Makabe.
And then we come to the other change they’ve made this year, which is that the IWGP Heavyweight Title is being defended a lot less often. Since the Tokyo Dome, Tanahashi defended it once, in which he lost it to AJ (never got a rematch, either). AJ successfully defended the title against Ibushi in April, then didn’t defend it again until July, when he lost it to Okada. Okada defended it on this show against AJ, and will not defend the title again until the Tokyo Dome. That’s just five title defenses in one year (while having three different champions!)… and with the increased number of PPVs, they’ve just been sticking the champion in meaningless tags on these PPVs, and between the champion feeling like he is just doing nothing for months on end and the stagnation of the rest of the card, it makes the promotion feel like it is going absolutely nowhere.
TOKYO DOME #1 CONTENDERSHIP CONTRACT MATCH: Hiroshi Tanahashi(c) (w/Captain New Japan) vs. Tetsuya Naito (w/a friend dressed in the same dumb costume as Naito)- 7.5/10
Naito took f*cking forever to take his dumb costume off, annoying the fans, the referee, Tanahashi, and me.
After a lot of stalling, Naito destroys Tanahashi to start off the match, focusing on his back. Then he just shoves the referee across the ring for no reason. This was not a DQ. They wrestled for a while longer before we got another ref bump. Naito’s partner interfered and revealed himself to be… Takaaki Watanabe, so I guess he’s done with his excursion. Tanahashi got double-teamed and you’d think that Captain New Japan would try to stop this but he just stood there doing nothing. Goto and Shibata came out to make the save instead. They wrestled for a few more minutes, which included Naito slapping the ref in the face, which also wasn’t a DQ. Tanahashi eventually won with the High Fly Flow. If the mystery man had been someone more important I would have found this to be a waste of the reveal and the interference, but with it just being Watanabe it worked fine for what it needed to do, which was establish that he is now back and that he is pals with Naito.
IWGP HEAVYWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Kazuchika Okada(c) (w/Gedo) vs. AJ Styles (w/Bullet Club)- 9.25/10
An AMAZING match! Okada could have sold his knee a bit better and the finish looked a little weird, but definitely one of the top ten matches of the year so far (maybe even top five).
POST-MATCH SEGMENT- The Tokyo Dome main event will be… exactly what we thought it would be. Hooray!
While the wrestling on this show was mostly great, that big rant I went on while talking the NEVER Openweight Title match really sums up my feelings about the company at the moment. I have no interest whatsoever to see the next PPV because nothing feels like it’s moving anywhere.
STUPID ANNOUNCER QUOTES:
I didn’t even have the commentary on for most of the show because I knew Matt Striker would constantly say things that would infuriate me. I turned it on for the Ishii-Makabe match out of a genuine curiosity to see if maybe someone else explaining to me the supposed psychology of these Ishii matches might help me appreciate them more. Instead, I was greeted with gems like the following:
1. Ishii hauls Makabe up and Striker wonders if he is going for an Ishii Driver (Brainbuster), but instead he just hits a regular vertical suplex instead. Matt Striker said that this â€"shows the respect†between these two wrestler. So according to Matt Striker, it is a sign of respect to not try to hit a move that is more likely to win you the match.
I can only imagine how bad the rest of the show was.