BRM Reviews NJPW Road to Wrestling Dontaku 2017: Day 1 (WATCH THIS MAIN EVENT!)

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW Road to Wrestling Dontaku 2017: Day 1 (4/22/2017)- Tokyo, Japan

HIRAI KAWATO & SHOTA UMINO- 3.5/10

YOSHI-HASHI vs. TOMOYUKI OKA- 4.5/10
Oka is coming along nicely.

CHAOS (Toru Yano & Jado) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Takashi Iizuka & TAKA Michinoku)- 4/10
The first seven or eight minutes of this were actually pretty decent. Then Yano got tagged in and it devolved into the same exact series of comedy spots that Yano and Iizuka have been doing in every single match they’ve had together for the past three years.

HIROYOSHI TENZAN, SATOSHI KOJIMA, KATSUYA KITAMURA, & DAVID FINLAY JR. vs. BULLET CLUB (Chase Owens, The Guerrillas of Destiny, & Yujiro Takahashi)- 6.25/10
Kitamura is jacked to the f*cking gills. Holy crap. He even puts the #1 contender to the WWE World Heavyweight Title Jinder Mahal to shame. All of those muscles did him no good, however, in the face of Yujiro’s mighty “Pimp Juice” DDT. Randy Orton does a DDT, right? Maybe Randy will beat Jinder with a DDT.

CHAOS (Will Ospreay, Hirooki Goto, & Roppongi Vice) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki, El Desperado, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, & Taichi)- 7/10
I didn’t like this at all in the beginning but it got pretty great by the end. I still think Suzuki should have been DQed for both not breaking and the hold and then for shoving the referee, though. I don’t understand why they keep doing these spots if they’re never going to call for a DQ.

LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON vs. HIROSHI TANAHASHI, JUICE ROBINSON, RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, RICOCHET, & YOSHITATSU- 7/10
This was ten minutes of all-action, and all of it (aside from Ricochet’s stupid 619 the turnbuckle pad spot) was great! These teams are having a rematch on day five of this tour and I can’t wait to see it.

BULLET CLUB (Kenny Omega & Bad Luck Fale) vs. CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii & Kazuchika Okada) (w/Gedo)- 8.75/10
Okada’s year of awesome continues. These four had an extremely exciting match that kept you guessing at every single turn.

A pretty good Road to… show from New Japan. The undercard was what you’re going to get from one of these shows, the ten man tag team clusterf*cks were both good, and the main event was fantastic. I won’t recommend that you watch the whole show, but you should definitely go out of your way to watch the main event.