Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2021, 3.9

[cero2k]

NJPW New Japan Cup, Day 4
March 9th, 2021
Okayama, Japan

CHAOS (Toru Yano & YOSHI-HASHI) & Yuya Uemura vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, EVIL & Yujiro Takahashi) - 4.5/10
This was meh, the match to build is YH vs Yujiro, so that by itself is weak. Then they focused a lot of Yano vs Fale, that is also not that important. EVIL won with the Darkness Scorpion on Uemura.

Gabriel Kidd, Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma vs. The United Empire (Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Will Ospreay) - 6.5/10
Pretty good stuff. Honma was the babyface in peril, Ospreay and Kojima paired up, and at the end, Cobb got the win over Kidd with the Tour of the Islands. Everyone looked great and EU keep getting wins, they're arguably the strongest stable in the Cup right now.

FinJuice (David Finlay & Juice Robinson), Hiroshi Tanahashi & Toa Henare vs. BULLET CLUB (Chase Owens, Gedo, Jay White & KENTA) - 5.5/10
The worst thing that could ever happen to Finlay was for someone to tell him that maybe it be good if he dressed with similar tights as his tag team partner.

We got more Henare vs White build here, as the best so far. We got Owens vs Finlay build up, and sometimes you forget how good Owens can be. At the end, it came down to Henare pinning Gedo with the Toa Bottom, after the latter tried using knucks.

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Kazuchika Okada & SHO) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) - 6/10
I'm kinda surprised that Okada is still in the tour, I figured that losing early would mean he'd take time off, but nope.

Match was good. The stuff with Shingo vs Goto was great, but we also had a decent pairing with Goto vs BUSHI and Naito vs both Okada and SHO. Okada and Naito were totally in 'take it easy' mode tonight though. Goto won over BUSHI at the end.

New Japan Cup 2021 First Round Match
Yuji Nagata vs. Yota Tsuji - 7/10
This was great, these two are so accustomed to wrestling each other, that given the extra time to do their thing, they came up with a great match. The one thing here, and it could had been a bad landing or something, but Nagata seemed like he blew up midway through the match. It may just be age and ring rust.

Match saw Nagata go for Tsuji's arm, while also going at him with strikes and kicks from all corners. Tsuji's offense was more hoss based, with tackles, strikes, and the occasional slam or senton, using his size to his advantage. As the match went on, Tsuji started getting some near falls with roll ups, but couldn't keep Nagata down, who had done enough damage to win with the Backdrop Suplex bridge.

New Japan Cup 2021 First Round Match
Tomohiro Ishii vs. SANADA - 8.5/10
I loved the idea of this match, with it being a struggle to bring each other to one's style, or at least until SANADA had enough and said, fuck it Ishii, bring it! But as he answered, SANADA managed to slowly bring Ishii into his type of match, and as they started to chase their signature moves, SANADA got closer and closer to the win until he got a pop-up TKO and a snap moonsault for the win

Every wrestler in the promotion should have at least one match with Ishii a year, to be reminded what it means to wrestle a titan.

Nagata vs SANADA in the next round

Post-match - SANADA cut his winner' promo, he hoped for the lights off, but they couldn't, so instead he did with with the lights on.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Another good and easy watch from NJPW. These 2-3 match Cup shows have been pretty easy to get through, not that I'm skipping the tag matches, but a lot of them start to look quite similar to each other as the days go on, and they just feel like the end quicker than usual.