Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2021, 3.10

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Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2021, 3.10

Post by cero2k » Mar 11th, '21, 12:35

NJPW New Japan Cup 2021, Day 5
March 10, 2021
Kyoto, Japan

Bullet Club (EVIL, Dick Togo, KENTA, & Bad Luck Fale) vs Juice Robinson, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Toru Yano, & Yuya Uemura - 5/10
This had some cool stuff. Robinson was the babyface in peril, with Tana as the hot tag, and the guy he paired up with was KENTA. If they were on the same side of the brackets, I'd say it was a spoiler, but they're not. EVIL submitted Uemura with the Darkness Scorpion.

Satoshi Kojima, Tomoaki Honma & Yuji Nagata vs. The United Empire (Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Will Ospreay) - 5/10
Ok match, nothing special. We got Ospreay vs Kojim,a, Nagata vs O-Khan, and at the end, Cobb once again to the win with the Tour of the Islands on Honma.

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Kazuchika Okada, SHO & Tomohiro Ishii) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) - 6.5/10
This was another one of those match were every combination available yields a great wrestling sequence. They're obviously building Shingo vs Goto here, but we still got to see the other guys do their thing. At the end, BUSHI pinned SHO with La Magistral.

New Japan Cup 2021 First Round Match
Chase Owens vs. David Finlay (w/Juice Robinson) - 6.5/10
Good, well wrestled match, it went as long as it should have. I enjoyed Owens' desperation to get the win, trying out different things to see what would stick, like when he considered taking off the floor padding for a move and realizing that he had a clear shot with the belt instead. I did think that Finlay could had looked stronger than Owens, I think at this point Finlay is slightly higher in the totem pole, at least enough to win with a move and not a roll up.

New Japan Cup 2021 First Round Match
Yujiro Takahashi vs. YOSHI-HASHI - 6.5/10
This was considerably boring and about 10 minutes long, but I enjoyed it more than the Yujiro vs Okada matches from last year. I attribute it to both men being in the same level, same size, that they had a better pace for each other. Okada vs Yujiro made the latter look super slow because of how fast Okada can look at times, but here, YH is just slightly faster then Yujiro, so the difference didn't hurt the match. The wrestling itself was basic and uneventful, but it was good for what it was. YH won with Karma.

YOSHI-HASHI vs David Finlay for the next round.

New Japan Cup 2021 First Round Match
Jay White (w/Gedo) vs. Toa Henare - 8/10
The battle of the Kiwis. This was probably Henare's longest singles match ever, if not just straight up longest match overall, this was also his biggest marquee match of his career, and he looked good, but make no mistake, this was 90% Jay White. This in a way felt like a 20+ minute squash, it was just White all over the place. Henare's hope spots were good and all, but it was just waiting for the inevitable. White won with the Bladerunner.

Post-match - White cut his winner's promo talking about he'll win the IWGP World Championship and break it up again into the IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Championships, and proposed Tanahashi to lay down and he'll protect Tanahashi's title lineage.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
This was a weak show, maybe the weakest of the tour, even with Jay White in the main event, it's not enough to make up for the three top matches involving YOSHI-HASHI, Yujiro, Finlay, Owens, and Henare. It's like we were watching a Young Lions Project here. This fortunately is the final night of the first round, so from now on, we'll be getting far better pair ups. Skip this show.
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