Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2020, Day 9

[cero2k]

NJPW New Japan Cup 2020, Day 9
July 11, 2020
Osaka-Jo Hall, Osaka, Japan

Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura vs. Great Bash Heel - 6.5/10
Your usual Young Lion opener, but Tsuji and Uemura are so great, that whatever they did with Makabe was good.

Gabriel Kidd & Hirooki Goto vs. TenKoji - 6/10
Same as before, but somewhat shittier because Kidd is not at the level of Uemura and Tsuji are right now. Solid stuff overall. Kojima pinned Kidd.

DOUKI vs. Master Wato - 6/10
Wato is really going to need a lot of work as he goes forward. Kawato to start off, has a terrible look, his face doesn't even scream 'wrestler' to you, add to that shitty attire and shitty hair and a name like "Master" and it's already on the way to being typecast as a geek.

The match wasn't bad, both Wato and DOUKI are pretty competent wrestlers, it's just really lackluster. I'm guessing Wato was supposed to debut on the BOSJ and get some wins and loses and look good, but now with that out of the door, he has to wrestle SZKG's lowest in the totem pole. Wato won with a Twisting Senton.

Post-match - Kanemaru attacked Wato and Tenzan of all people made the save.

BULLET CLUB (Taiji Ishimori & Yujiro Takahashi) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI & SANADA) - 6.5/10
Ok match, good action, but nothing out of the ordinary here other than BC and Yujiro especially getting the win with Pimp Juice over BUSHI. Finishing sequence was cool.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, Ryusuke Taguchi & Yuji Nagata vs. Suzuki-gun (El Desperado, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr.) - 6.5/10
Suzuki got replaced because he had high temperature and wasn't allowed to work. This was mostly setting up more work on Tanahashi's legs towards tomorrow

Post-match - DT attacked Ibushi, but Tana came back and ran them off along with Ibushi. Interesting that the champions would be standing tall at the end here.

CHAOS (SHO, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Hiromu Takahashi, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) - 7/10
This wasn't the best, but it was my favorite. SHO vs Takagi built up their stuff obviously, but we got Yano playing around with everyone, Hiromu and Ishii going at it, and at the end, LIJ hit a 3-man combo on Yano for the win. This was just a bunch of fun action.

Post-match - LIJ celebrated with their titles and posed around. Fun happy stuff.

New Japan Cup 2020 Final Match
Kazuchika Okada vs. EVIL - 8.5/10
Very good match, a decent tease of things to come, and a somewhat culmination of EVIL's path to win the cup and Okada's sliding into the finals because he's Okada.

Story here was that EVIL went straight for Okada's neck, while also taking out Okaad's Rainmaking arm. As the match went on and EVIL had trouble, he relied on cheating like he had throughout the New Japan Cup, but Okada kept coming back. Eventually, out of nowhere, of all people, Gedo and Yujiro attacked Okada, which at this point you could argue that Gedo will always have it for Okada, but it was still quite odd. After that, EVIL hit Okada in the balls again and hit the EIE for the win.

This was somewhat long, which I don't usually mind, but for the whole New Japan Cup, i've felt that Okada's Cobra Clutch really kills the momentum of the match. Versus Hiromu, it wasn't that bad, but here, it really slowed down everything on the two big occasions he locked it in. This whole New Japan Cup felt like Okada didn't go all out and played around with a new move because he knew he wouldn't be winning and would be taking a step away from the title race.

Post-match - EVIL calls out Naito, who puts him over saying that he likes this EVIL that will stop at nothing to get results. Naito gives him the fist bump, but as EVIL's first rises, it becomes a Too Sweet, Naito looks at the gesture, looks at EVIL, and the next thing he sees is the ceiling as EVIL drops him with EIE.

The leftovers of Bullet Club came out to join EVIL and do the group Too Sweet and make it official. They booted Naito some more until Hiromu, SANADA, BUSHI, and Shingo made the save.

Backstage, EVIL said that Naito's LIJ was rotten and that he was disgusted at what the team had become. Pretty much what we had seen from EVIL for a while now and he waited for the right time to break away. The thing that I didn't expect was for him to join BC, but it makes total sense non-kayfabe, BC is down to no one, Yujiro is their biggest guy as a heavyweight right now, and we have no idea when any of the Tongans, or White, or KENTA will return, so they're going to hope and rebuild Yujiro into a decent level, and add EVIL as the new stable's ace.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
A one-match show and that match wasn't particularly awesome, but the outcome was all worth it. The finals of this show are not usually the lead-in show to Dominion, and so they kept the better matches for the next day and thus this show was just filler or build up.