Cero Reviews NJPW New Year Dash!! 2021

[cero2k]

NJPW New Year Dash 2021
January 6th, 2021
Tokyo Dome City Hall, Tokyo, Japan

Yuji Nagata vs Gabriel Kidd - 6/10
Ok opener, solid wrestling by Kidd. Nagata submitted Kidd for the win.

Tiger Mask & Yuya Uemura vs Suzuki-Gun (Minoru Suzuki & DOUKI) - 6.5/10
This was pretty great, they gave them a ton of time, I mean, it's 10 minutes, but it's quite good for the second match in the card with Uemura and Tiger Mask. The match was all about Uemura vs Suzuki, Young Lion was just out there to get in a fight with the meanest motherfucker in the business, and it was great, Uemura looked fantastic.

Tiger Mask and DOUKI did some stuff, but they went in and out. Mask looked good considering he just came back not long ago from health issues.

TenCozy & Yota Tsuji vs The Empire - 6.5/10
Match was ok, Empire was slightly more vicious tonight, which is to be expected after losing all their WK matches. They cut off Tenzan and worked over him a while, then at the end it was Cobb and Tsuji that went at it until the Empire hit a super elevated Os Cutter combo for the win.

Post-match - Empire kept attacking Tsuji until Tenzan tried to make the save, only to get taken out too by O-Khan via piledriver. Kojima covered Tenzan's body to protect him, and so he got beat up too and took a Hidden Blade. They're selling like Tenzan is injured and did the stretcher job, removing the bottom rope and all.

Ospreay cut a promo asking if people still think they're weak, because they just beat up a lot of people. He said that WK won't define them and that he is now pissed off. They will dominate and control 2021 as the "United Empire". Pretty much what I expect from this team, losing all matches at WK couldn't go without repercussions.

Suzuki-gun (El Desperado, Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Zack Sabre Jr.) vs. BULLET CLUB (El Phantasmo, Taiji Ishimori, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) - 7/10
I really enjoyed this, two heel teams that just want to beat the shit out of each other. Dangerous Tekkers are pissed off of being robbed at WK and Despy and Kanemaru are gonna back them up. There was a lot of brawling here, but once the ref got things under control, we saw BC cut off Despy, then Sabre came in and just made Roa into knots.

At the end, ELP pinned Kanemaru for the win. This tells us that this Suzuki-Gun vs Bullet Club deal will continue, at least we got two tag title feuds coming out of this, and for that matter, since Moxley is all talk, we may hopefully get KENTA vs Suzuki in the meanwhile.

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Kazuchika Okada, Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano & YOSHI-HASHI) vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, Chase Owens, EVIL, Jay White & Yujiro Takahashi) - 7.5/10
This was fucking crazy! There's two big things about this match. One is how Bullet Club cut off Okada and made him the babyface in peril, they straight up humiliated him, if anything else, it was a great heat moment. The second is Ishii pinning White after a brainbuster, what this means, I don't know, this loss following yesterday's promo makes it look like White could indeed be on his way out, but hopefully it all means that he will go into a year of depression and comeback towards the end, his own ballonmaker year.

In this same vein, it's somewhat interesting that it was Ishii of all men that pinned White, it could had been Goto or Okada, but it was Ishii. This doesn't need to be important, but it wouldn't be out of this world that Ishii will be getting some spotlight early in the year to chase someone.

Post-match - Okada and EVIL eyed each other, hinting a feud between the two.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi, Master Wato, Rocky Romero & SHO vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon - 7/10
This match was just good wrestling, nothing particularly out of this world, but it was used as a means to set up three feuds going forward. We knew about SANADA vs Ibushi after yesterday's challenge, but through this match, it seems that Tanahashi vs Shingo are gonna be facing each other, as well as Hiromu vs SHO. Two highly positive directions for these titles.

I'm particularly interested in Tanahashi vs Shingo, that is a total clash of styles at this moment, Shingo is incredibly physical and Tanahashi was been working more on the story side of matches. I have all confidence that they'll have a great match, but I'm just curious to see how it'll go down.

Post-match - BUSHI cut a promo talking about LIJ's dominance at Wrestle Kingdom (at least for Hiromu, SANADA, and Shingo). They posed and fistbumped.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
This could be said to be a nothing show, nothing really special happened and it was for the most part tag matches. If you're just a junkie for either workrate or stories, you're not gonna see much here of either, but it's a transitional show to someone follow up the fallout of Wrestle Kingdom.