Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2021, 3.11

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Cero Reviews NJPW New Japan Cup 2021, 3.11

Post by cero2k » Mar 12th, '21, 15:22

NJPW New Japan Cup, Day 6
March 11, 2021
Ehime, Japan

David Finlay & Yota Tsuji vs. CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii & YOSHI-HASHI) - 6.5/10
I think this will be the first and last time I write the following - this match is building to the Finlay vs YOSHI-HASHI singles match. Not surprisingly, both I and the people live were more interested in Tsuji vs Ishii beat the hell out of each other. Match was good, YH vs Finlay was good and promising, but it's just not a pair up that I care much for, maybe the singles will change my mind. Ishii pinned Tsuji at the end.


Satoshi Kojima, Tomoaki Honma & Yuya Uemura vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, Jado & Yujiro Takahashi) - 4/10
Kojima saved this match, but in reality, it was just boring. Nothing was bad about it, but it's a combo of older guys that can't go as hard anymore. Yujiro pinned Uemura with Pimp Juice.

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Kazuchika Okada & SHO) & Yuji Nagata vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) - 7/10
This was really nice. Because of the necessary pair up of Nagata vs SANADA and Shingo vs Goto, they actually gave us a lot of Naito vs Okada, which now feels somewhat fresh since they haven't really crossed paths as much in the last year.

The wrestling was great all around, whatever the pair up. At the end, it came down to SHO and BUSHI, and after some great combo moves, SHO ended up getting the win with Shock Arrow.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Juice Robinson & Toa Henare vs. BULLET CLUB (Chase Owens, Jay White & KENTA) (w/Gedo) - 6.5/10
The greatness of this was building Tanahashi vs White, but getting KENTA and Robinson mix it up with the other two was also great. Henare didn't do much and Owens was there to take the loss at the hands of Tanahashi. Fun match.

New Japan Cup 2021 Second Round Match
Toru Yano vs. Great-O-Khan - 7/10
This was great for what it was, in terms of Yano matches, I really enjoyed how things played out. Story here was that O-Khan underestimated Yano. From the start, O-Khan challenged Yano and accepted to wrestle him with his hands tied behind his back and showed that tying him up would be useless. O-Khan countered Yano's attempt to lure him to the ramp, with a threat to break his KOPW trophy, even at the end, when Yano went all out and tied O-Khan's hair to the rail, O-Khan said fuck it and cut it down! Yano was forced to try and wrestle O-Khan, and O-Khan dominated him. It wasn't until O-Khan's own anger at having cut his hair betrayed him, causing the referee to distract himself, taking away the scissors that O-Khan used to try and stab Yano, and with that distraction, Yano got a low blow in and allowed him to roll up O-Khan for the win.

I'm ok with this. O-Khan already got a big win in the tournament, and lost to the one guy that makes the least amount of damage when losing to him. I think the Naito loss is far more protected this way than O-Khan going and losing to some other wrestler.

New Japan Cup 2021 Second Round Match
EVIL (w/Dick Togo) vs. Jeff Cobb - 8.5/10
This was awesome, Cobb looked like a total monster, being able to handle EVIL, that is not a small guy and dealing with the EVIL+Togo combination. It wasn't; until Yujiro, who had been on commentary for the second half of the show, had to jump the rail and distract the referee to allow EVIL to low blow Cobb and finish him with Everything Is EVIL. It's a win that EVIL gets in the books, but we all knew Cobb had this won.

Match itself was fun, 100% a hoss fight. EVIL's offense looks so much cooler when clashing with someone as big as Cobb, sometimes these matches make me realize how little of a hoss division NJPW lacks compared with AJPW or BJW. Likewise, Cobb doing some of his spots on EVIL, just made him look so powerful.

Yano vs EVIL is next in line.

Post-match - EVIL cut his winner's promo saying he'll win the Cup, beat Ibushi, and take the newly created title and remove the IWGP name from it and destroy the legacy once and for all.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Good show. I really enjoyed the matches that I liked, while the rest were ok to good, I mean, the worst match was ok. It's at this point that the Cup is just bound to pick up.
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