BRM Reviews NJPW New Beginning in Sapporo 2020: Day 1

[Big Red Machine]

NJPW New Beginning in Sapporo 2020: Day 1 (2/1/2020)- Sapporo, Japan


TIGER MASK IV & YUYA UEMURA vs. BULLET CLUB (El Phantasmo & Taiji Ishimori)- 5.5/10
If you want to call yourself the “King of Sport” then you need to have stepping on someone’s groin be an immediate DQ, and don’t let wrestlers leave potential weapons in the ring by their corners. This was exactly what you’d expect it to be (including the above stupidity, unfortunately), with the heat on the young lion, followed by a comeback and a few minutes of frantic action until the finish. I liked that instead of just hitting moves, the babyfaces actually worked a body part on the heel.

TOA HENARE, TOGI MAKABE, & TOMOAKI HONMA vs. YOTA TSUJI, MANABU NAKANISHI, & HIROYOSHI TENZAN- 5.75/10
Solid undercard stuff.

RYUSUKE TAGUCHI & CHAOS (Will Ospreay & Roppongi 3K) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Yoshinobu Kanemaru, El Desperado, Zack Sabre Jr., & DOUKI)- 6.5/10
Suzuki-Gun jump the bell on their opponents and we spill to the outside for the usual bullshi- no! Not the usual bullsh*t! Zack and Ospreay are actually doing something interesting and exciting and creative instead of whipping each other into the guardrail and the heel choking the babyface. Holy crap!
They didn’t get heat right away, either. In fact, the babyfaces controlled a large chunk of the match early on, instead of the usual no-shine Suzuki-Gun/Bullet Club undercard tag formula. Even Taguchi isn’t doing the same stupid bullsh*t! Instead of just being a third base coach during that spot where the babyfaces take turns charging at the heel in the corner, he’s full-on dancing while directing traffic.
When the heels finally took over and things spilled to the outside, it didn’t annoy me because it didn’t feel like I was watching the exact same match I see two to three times a show on every single f*cking New Japan show. This felt like something there was actual thought put into rather than the wrestlers coloring in a paint-by-numbers picture that I already knew what it would look like because they’d shown me the same one earlier in the day.
Now, just because I’ve liked the match so far doesn’t mean I’m not going to call bullsh*t on the wrestlers fighting on the outside while the referee makes zero effort to count them out. The referee finally started the count after Kanemaru rolled back into the ring because… um… because that was the spot, and G-d forbid that we have the referee counting throughout and have Kanemaru rolling back into the ring to break the count up each time until we’re ready for the Count-Out Tease That No One Ever Buys™, so that this will look like an actual sport and not a staged performance where the rules change to suit the performer’s desires.
In a similar vein, pushing a referee down when he is trying to stop you from using a weapon is not a DQ. Was it really that f*cking important to get a spot in where Taguchi ducks a weapon shot that it’s worth making a mockery of the concept of rules and making the referees look like pathetic pushovers?
The rest of this was very good, especially the Ospreay vs. ZSJ stuff. That match should rock. They did post-match stare-downs and similar to build up both Roppongi 3K vs. Kanemaru & Desperado as well as the aforementioned Zack vs. Ospreay match.

DRAGON LEE & ROBBIE EAGLES vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI)- 5.75/10
Which idiot put this match together? NO ONE wants to boo Hiromu right now, so why the f*ck would you have LIJ play the heels and have Robbie Eagles be the babyface in peril? The action here was fine, but I was given no reason to care about the match and nothing particularly interesting happened. The Hiromu vs. Dragon Lee stuff was good, but they totally killed it for me after the match when Dragon Lee just let Hiromu- his career rival who he has a big title match coming up with- GRAB HIM BY THE MASK. With everything we know about LIJ and with everything involved in the history between these two, Dragon Lee should NEVER have allowed that to happen.

LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Tetsuya Naito & Sanada) vs. BULLET CLUB (Jay White & KENTA) (w/Gedo)- 6.75/10
Lots of stalling from Bullet Club early on. And no, I don’t buy the “mind games” bullsh*t because if that’s the case then either it needs to lead to Naito getting frustrated and making a mistake, or the heels should recognize that their mind games are failing and KNOCK THAT SH*T OFF. Now Naito is stalling and it’s not getting into the heels’ heads, either.
This match, too, wound up on the outside forever with no count-outs until it was time to tease one. The match was fine but not great until the finish, at which point it went downhill. People mock Lance Storm’s chairshots, but at least Lance actually made contact with the body part he was supposedly hitting. Gedo lightly held this chair up and it made moderate contact with Sanada’s palm. Coming nowhere close to Sanada’s head… at which point Sanada sold it like he had been hit in the head. It was pretty embarrassing.

JON MOXLEY & KAZUCHIKA OKADA vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki & Taichi) (w/Miho Abe)- 7.5/10
Moxley is wearing his eye patch. Hooray for keeping kayfabe!
They brawled on the outside and hit each other with sh*t FOREVER before the referee started to even count them out, never mind calling for a DQ because of the blatant weapon use. Just bump the f*cking referee if you want to do this sh*t.
Moxley and Suzuki pretty much stayed on the outside, and had a full-on sword fight with guardrails in the aisles. Meanwhile, Taichi had Okada in hold that we all knew Okada would never tap to in the middle of the ring. Boy it sure probably sucked to be one of the many sections that weren’t near Suzuki and Moxley. Moxley was eventually put down, allowing Suzuki to go back to the ring and extend the already long heat segment on Okada by now having it be two on one.
Moxley eventually came back in time to get the hot tag. The match got pretty damn good for a while. Taichi and Okada both got their necks worked over, Suzuki worked over Moxley’s arm, and Moxley was exactly the sort of wild-man brawler he needs to be to make his match with Suzuki work. Suzuki pinned Moxley after the Gotch-style Piledriver.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- terrible
Taichi attacked Okada after the match. First, he crushed Okada’s injured neck with the barricade. Then he choked him with the microphone stand. While all of this is happening the only person who made any effort to help Okada was the referee, who was dispatched with a quick shot from the microphone stand. None of the young-boys at ringside tried to help, nor did anyone from Okada’s stable, which makes me wonder why he is in the group in the first place. If they’re not going to help him when he needs help and he’s free to team with people outside of the group, what does Okada gain from being a member of CHAOS?
Anyway, because two angles weren’t enough, Taichi then goes for the Iron Fingers. And apparently two angles really weren’t enough, because Okada avoided the Iron Fingers and took Taichi out with a dropkick. Zack Sabre Jr. had to come out and take Okada out for Taichi, meaning that we’re going into tomorrow night’s main event with the message that the babyface can overcome the heel’s cheating with no problem whatsoever, so where the f*ck is the heat?
Someone finally came out to help Okada. That person was Okada’s stablemate Will Ospreay, who has only shown up to help that helping Okada involves attacking his own rival. In other words, Ospreay only came out to help when there was something in it for him. What a great teammate he is.
Ospreay got taken out as well, then Taichi dragged Okada to the ramp and hit him with an Air Raid Crash. Then he put him in the Stretch Plum for a while… and not one person from CHAOS came out to help Okada. Again.
Segments like this are the reason that CHAOS needs to disband. As I said earlier, if the wrestlers in the group can team with wrestlers outside of the group and they don’t come help their stablemates when their stablemates are in need then what purpose does the group serve? If CHAOS didn’t exist, I would have had no problem with this (well… aside from totally neutering Taichi heading into his match with Okada, but I wouldn’t have had a problem with the rest of it). In that case, Ospreay not coming out until Zack got involved would make perfect sense, because Ospreay would have no connection or obligation to Okada. But with CHAOS existing, Ospreay getting choked to death while he has eight buddies sitting on their asses in the locker room not helping him and then one of them only showing up to help after the guy he is booked against the next night gets involved makes it feel not like someone coming out to save his teammate but like a segment orchestrated by a booker to build up matches for tomorrow night. Yes, wrestling is predetermined… but the characters are supposed to feel like real people, not like people who make their decisions based on what makes the story the most exciting.

EVIL vs. TOMOHIRO ISHII- 1.5/10
They took turns hitting each other in the face a lot. They fought on the outside forever without getting counted out. They used weapons right in front of the referee and manhandled the referee when he tried to stop them from using said weapons, all without a DQ.
Remember all of those times when a heel would do something that isn’t really even illegal like whip someone into the guardrail, and Red Shoes would refuse to count a pin because of this? So why the f*ck isn’t he refusing to count a pin after EVIL HIT ISHII IN THE HEAD WITH A CHAIR?! I’m sorry, but if you complain about logic in WWE and say that you “want your wrestling to make sense” but don’t complain about this, you’re a hypocrite, plain and simple. And no, “referee’s discretion” is not a valid answer here. “Referee’s discretion” is something that announcers are forced to say because they know this sh*t makes no sense and that’s the only explanation they can think of, even if the explanation itself doesn’t make any sense (any referee in a combat sport who let a blatant foul go on in front of his or her face would at the very least be investigated, and if it happened more than once would almost certainly be fired).
Anyway, EVIL works Ishii’s neck over with holds and stuff. Then he does that stupid bullsh*t where instead of following up on an advantage, he just stands there and light prods Ishii’s back with his foot a few times to encourage Ishii to get up. Next time you see someone have his or her opponent’s back in an MMA fight or a boxing match and let them get up and turn around instead of going for the kill, let me know. As usual, this led to Ishii getting back to his feet, whereupon the two wrestlers took turns letting the other him hit. Find me the next time you see that in a real combat sport, too.
More stuff happened. Ishii no-sold a bunch. EVIL no-sold a Dragon Suplex. There was a point where not only was EVIL in the corner, but Ishii was also clearly pulling his hair, and Red Shoes didn’t do sh*t. Now they’re on the outside and here is more not getting counted out and more not getting DQed for weapon shots right in front of the referee. Red Shoes got shoved and didn’t call for the bell. He also somehow got used as a base for EVIL to hit Ishii with a Magic Killer because while he is capable of getting out of the way while the wrestlers are running at fast speeds, he’s not capable of doing so while one is lifting the other up and slowly lowering him down right here Red Shoes is standing.
Yes, there were some good bits in here (which is why I didn’t give it a dud or go negative, although I was sorely tempted to), but this match was everything I absolutely despise about New Japan. Making it all worse is that fact that both of these men have been booked so poorly as singles wrestlers that I don’t have any faith that anything will come of Ishii getting the win here, just like nothing came of Ishii beating EVIL on the Wrestling Dontaku tour last year. The match was nothing but a space-filler that got booked because Gedo knows that people will- for reasons completely inexplicable to me- shower this match with snowflakes.

NEVER OPENWEIGHT TITLE MATCH: Hirooki Goto(c) vs. Shingo Takagi- 8/10
This was a great battle of wills, but unlike the previous match, it wasn’t full of dumb sh*t. This was that match done right. The finish here looked utterly fantastic, too. The win feels like a real step up for Shingo, and I’m excited to see what he can do with the belt.
After the match, Shingo had a stare-down with Sho, who was on commentary. I fully support them actually using the “Openweight” part NEVER Openweight Title instead of just treating it like a belt for heavyweights and guys like Ospreay and Shingo who are mostly treated like heavyweights.


This was a meh show from New Japan, and illustrates why I hate the splitting of the big shows so much. Only one match on this show actually mattered. Everything else was essentially filler.