NJPW Best Of The Super Junior XXVII & World Tag League 2020 Finals

Robbie Eagles, SHO & Toru Yano vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens & Taiji Ishimori) - 4.5/10

Ok match, it was really short. SHO was great and arguably the best thing of the match, but the whole thing was to advance Yano vs Fale, as the former is still trying to slam Fale. Chase pinned Eagles after a Fale Grenade.

Post-match - Fale destroyed Yano's KOPW trophy and challenged him to a match for it.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada & Toa Henare vs. The Empire (w/Bea Priestley) - 7/10

This was mostly a repeat of the World Tag League match between these two team, but Ospreay and Okada were there to antagonize each other and give us a small preview. The rest was GOK and Cobb working over Tanahashi and beating up Henare, who got pinned with a Tour of the Islands.

The match mainly built Tanahashi vs Great-O-Khan, Okada vs Ospreay, and give Cobb a win for his own chase.

BULLET CLUB (EVIL & Yujiro Takahashi) (w/Dick Togo) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (SANADA & Shingo Takagi) - 6.5/10

SANADA was all intensity and fire going after EVIL. The match was so chaotic that it almost felt like an angle, but there was a match somewhere in there. Shingo pinned Yujiro with the Last of the Dragons, but it really felt like a formality in this SANADA vs EVIL build up.

Post-match - Cobb came out and challenged Shingo to a NEVER Openweight title match. Backstage, SANADA and EVIL kept going at it, with SANADA chasing EVIL around. Two matches for Wrestle Kingdom right there.

Kota Ibushi & Master Wato (w/Hiroyoshi Tenzan) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI & Tetsuya Naito) - 7/10

This was all good action. While they are building Ibushi and Naito, I have to admit that I enjoyed BUSHI vs Ibushi and Wato vs Naito's stuff. Beyond that, there wasn't much to this, I just enjoyed all the LIJ teasing of Tenzan outside.

World Tag League 2020 Final Match
Guerrillas Of Destiny (w/Jado) vs. FinJuice - 8.5/10

Really good match, but I just wasn't all that invested in either team coming in. Finlay was the babyface in peril and once they were done with that, the rest of the match was a ton of great near falls from all sides, they really made you wonder who would win the whole thing. It was until the end, after FinJuice had countered the GOD big powerbomb, that KENTA showed up, smacked Juice with the briefcase, setting him up for another super powerbomb for the BC win.

Best Of The Super Junior XXVII Final Match
El Desperado vs. Hiromu Takahashi - 9.5/10

This was fucking awesome, and let's go straight to the controversy. Hiromu ripped half of Desperado's mask in a kayfabe fit of rage and Desperado, already showing half of his face, decided to remove the rest and complete the match without a mask. I thought this was fucking awesome, it's the second time that I've seen Desperado do this and I loved it the same, it adds so much drama and intensity to the end of the match. A lot of people, mostly lucha fans will complain that it goes against the masked tradition and shit, but let's be realistic, everyone has always know who Desperado (or BUSHI or Liger) were under their masks, there are no masked Young Lions for a reason. There's no identity to hide and to me, that is the uncrossable line for masked wrestlers. I have zero issues if a masked wrestler, with a known identity takes off their mask in the heat of the moment, and I find it more disrespectful to pretend that we don't know who is who.

Now, for the match, it was a great game of limb work by Desperado, he went after Hiromu's leg from the start and everything he did was done towards hurting the leg, every counter he did, was towards trying to lock in the Numero Dos. Hiromu sold his leg beautifully, always selling after hitting superkicks and all. There was a great spot where Despy had Numero Dos locked, with both of Hiromu's hands incapacitated, and somehow, Despy lifted Hiromu up in that position, and Hiromu flipped into a destroyer, it was great. At the end, after being unmasked, they went for a couple of near falls, Despy even kicked out of Time Bomb, but at the end, he hit Time Bomb II for the win. This went about 30 minutes, but went by fast.

Post-match - Hiromu said that him and Despy should do it again. He was going to challenge Ishimori, but instead, he challenged to whoever wins the Super-J Cup, to a battle of the tournament winners, and only the winner of such battle should challenge for the title. Sounds right.

He then closed a show with a nice heartfelt promo about COVID struggles and how the fans and the wrestlers feed from each other to keep going.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Good show, this being the last big show before Wrestle Kingdom, it was productive in a way to set up a lot of matches for Jan 4 and 5, but beyond that, it was for the most part a 1-2 match show.