Cero Reviews NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 16 - New Japan vs. NOAH

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Cero Reviews NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 16 - New Japan vs. NOAH

Post by cero2k » Jan 12th, '22, 15:47

NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 16 - New Japan vs. NOAH
January 8th, 2022
Yokohama Arena, Yokohama, Japan

**Pre-Show**

Yasutaka Yano vs. Kosei Fujita - 6.75/10
This match is a representation of both company's youngest wrestlers in their respective rosters. It's not a particular preference of Fujita over Oiwa, nor Yano over Fujimura. This was good and basic and it had the crowd going. They went back and forth, kinda switching between the dojo's different styles of match. The final minutes before the time limit draw had two fantastic near submission spots with Fujita locking in a Boston Crab on Yano.

TenKoji (Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima) & Yuji Nagata vs. Funky Express (Akitoshi Saito, King Tany & Mohammed Yone) - 5.5/10
It's not the first time these men have shared the ring, but it's definitely been a while now. I wanna say 2016-ish unless I missed some show where Yone and Taniguchi worked with NJPW.

The match was ok, I quite enjoy Yone and Taniguchi beyond the Funki schtick, so having them pair up with Nagata and Kojima was a treat. Some of the spots with Tenzan and Saito looked weak, but all things considered, you can't complain much. I think this match has given us a real glimpse of what the rest of the show will be, a lot of back and forth to showcase everyone, a couple of near falls towards the end, but nothing to big, and then the win, as we had here with Kojima pinning Taniguchi with a Lariat.

Something else that I do wanna pay attention for the rest of the show is seeing who holds the ring at the end in the post-match happenings, because so far, it's been all NJPW.

**Main Show**

Quite unfortunate that for the rest of the show, we're not going to be getting a lot of the copyrighted audio, but it also brings me hack to the days that Puro promotions were using non-copyrighted songs and couldn't play during broadcasts.

Daiki Inaba, Daisuke Harada, Hajime Ohara, Kinya Okada & Yoshiki Inamura vs. CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii & YOSHI-HASHI), Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi - 7/10
We had some stuff with Goto and Inaba, and Harada and Taguchi, and it was all good, but when Ishii and Inamura paired off, everything exploded, they worked together a short amount of time, but it was all dynamite going off. At the end, things came down to YOSHI-HASHI and Okada, and of course YOSHI-HASHI almost lost on a couple of occasions, but at the end he got the win with a Boston Crab of all things, which is a weird flex by NJPW, but it may just be because Okada is a senior Young Lion equivalent in NOAH.

Post-match - Inamura and Ishii kept doing until they got pulled apart. This was so good, we're gonna need Ishii vs Inamura one day.

Atsushi Kotoge vs. SHO - 6/10
Rookies pre-show match aside, this was the only singles match on the whole show. It's an interesting move since it's both NOAH's (arguably) biggest Jr. babyface project versus NJPW's biggest Jr. heel projects. It's matches like this were you really start to see the NJPW leverage in the politics of wrestling.

SHO won the match after hitting Kotoge with the wrench behind the referee's back. Kotoge had a good performance earlier in the match after coming back from SHO's early control, but when things got out of hand for SHO, he started to rely on tricks until the win. I thought this could had been an easy one to give to NOAH

BULLET CLUB (Gedo & Taiji Ishimori) vs. Stinger (HAYATA & Seiki Yoshioka) - 6.5/10
The only Bullet Club match of the night, and it's NOAH's former Jr. champion Ishimori.

The match was a great showing for Yoshioka more than the rest, he was babyface in peril and also part of the comeback, but he also had to be on the other side of Gedo's cheating, with him going ham on Yoshioka with a belt outside the ring. HAYATA didn't do as much, but he got the win the 403 Impact on Gedo after Yoshioka took out Ishimori. HAYATA is the current Jr. champion in NOAH, so it makes sense to have him get the pin.

Suzuki-gun (DOUKI & El Desperado) vs. Los Perros del Mal de Japon (NOSAWA Rongai & YO-HEY) - 6.5/10
My first mark out of the night actually goes to listening to Perros Del Mal intro, only to then turn into Prefiero ser tu amante by Paty Cantu. And I'm still going to complain that they didn't book Los Ingobernables de Japon vs Los Perros del Mal de Japon, but I understand that's only a big deal to me and not a marquee match to anything in Japan or the US.

Match was ok, a lot more NOSAWA than I would have liked, also meaning a lot more cheating. DOUKI and Despy were almost babyfaces as they had to deal with NOSAWA's tactics. YO-HEY had a decent showing, but he didn't get much to work with in both time and competition.

I was kinda surprised that NOSAWA took the fall, I figured that's why DOUKI was there, and if DOUKI didn't even take the loss, not sure why they didn't take the opportunity to work a spot in the match where DOUKI's loyalty was, him being "El Japones del Mal" and all. I also thought that they were going to try and build something with NOSAWA and Despy because the former disrespected the IWGP Jr title early in the match, but at the end, things looked more focused on YO-HEY.

Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki, Taichi & TAKA Michinoku) vs. Sugiura-gun (Kazushi Sakuraba & Takashi Sugiura) & Toru Yano - 6.5/10
KENTA was originally meant to be with Sugiura-gun, but after his injuries on 1..5, he was replaced by Toru Yano of all people. Also, granted we're getting Ogawa vs Sabre in a bit, but a missed opportunity to not let Sakuraba and Sabre mat wrestle for a bit.

Match was a bit meh with the sole exception of seeing Suzuki and Sugiura mix it up again. These two had some history during the Suzuki-Gun/NOAH invasion, Sugiura even joined Suzuki-gun towards the end. They're pair up was exactly what you'd imagine, a lot of striking. The rest was half comedy, half Sakuraba being too old for this, and the final minutes where TAKA got some near falls on Sugiura before getting pinned by the same.

Go Shiozaki & Masa Kitamiya vs. House Of Torture (Dick Togo & EVIL) - 6.75/10
Shiozaki probably got booked to this match and his first impression was "wait, how is NJPW the top company?" but then again, people probably ask the same things about WWE and AAA on their respective countries.

The match wasn't necessarily bad wrestling, but to have Shiozaki and Kitamiya and use them to have HoT do their schtick feels like a huge waste. It was towards the end that Togo and EVIL just took over after a referee bump, cheated like hell, SHO and Yujiro came out to cheat, but at least it led to a good comeback from both Kitamiya and Shiozaki, the latter getting the win via Lariat while Kitamiya had EVIL locked in.

Naomichi Marufuji & Yoshinari Ogawa vs. Suzuki-gun (Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Zack Sabre Jr.) - 7.5/10
This was really good. I don't really know the history between Kanemaru and Marufuji or Ogawa that well, but Kanemaru was one of those names that worked NOAH and then joined NJPW via Suzuki-gun.

Match was mostly Sabre vs Ogawa stuff and Kanemaru and Marufuji, but they did mix around a bit. Marufuji got cut off and Ogawa had the hot tag, but Marufuji still had a comeback all by himself later in the match, which eventually led to him kicking and kneeing Kanemaru about 70 times before getting the win with a Shiranui.

Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) vs. Kongo (Aleja, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Kenoh, Manabu Soya & Tadasuke) - 9/10
I loved this match. More than any other match in the show, this one had the biggest match feel to it, and also the most heat. Shingo, Naito, Nakajima, and Kenoh all did a great job at talking shit about each other without really fully starting a feud or anything.

The match was all about mix and match, we got all types of pairings, or at least as many as they could fit in, and for that matter, everyone got a chance to shine even if it was a little, even Alejo who I figured was there to take the pin, but wasn't. The best stuff was not surprisingly Naito vs Kenoh, Naito vs Nakajima, and Nakajima vs Shingo, but the stuff with Hiromu vs Alejo and Shingo vs Tadasuke were also great, the latter of which ended up being the finish.

Post-match - Not the biggest fan, but it's ok. Kenoh and Naito kept fighting and got into a bit of a pull apart, but Naito wasn't selling and Kenoh ended up looking a bit weak here. Loved seeing LIJ standing together, but not at the expense of Kongoh.

Hiroshi Tanahashi & Kazuchika Okada vs. Kaito Kiyomiya & Keiji Mutoh - 8.5/10
Half of this match was the ceremony of having Mutoh pair up with either Tana and Okada, which meant that Kiyomiya had to carry the action side, which unfortunately also meant that what we got from him was mostly selling with the exception of a couple of good back and forth runs he had with Okada.

Match saw Tana and Okada work perfectly in synch with quick tags, mostly working over Kiyomiya until Mutoh got a hot tag. Mutoh's pair up were mostly short until the end where he did spend some time in the ring. Towards the end, we did get a good exchange between Tana and Mutoh, working each other's legs, Mutoh even hit the Shinning Wizard on both Tana and Okada, but couldn't get the win. At the end, it came down to Okada and Kiyomiya, who had a great exchange trying to hit their signature moves, but at the end, Okada won with the Rainmaker.

Post-match - Under the weight of having failed NOAH in the main event, Kiyomiya started to cry, so Okada told him that if he was gonna cry, to get the fuck out of his ring. Backstage, Mutoh told the press that he's not willing to give up on Kiyomiya.

Tanahashi and Okada closed the shows with promos talking about professional wrestling being great and bringing people together.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
The show wasn't the greatest thing in terms of match quality or work rate, I wouldn't be surprised if people who only jump to watch Puro when a big show happens doesn't appreciate the show because it lacked 'workrate' and some people think that's the only thing to look out for in Japan. Truth is, this was a really fun and exciting show to watch, the political gymnastics that you read between the lines were really interesting and probably a whole article in itself. There's a reason why CHAOS opened the show in one match and then Suzuki-Gun had 3 matches throughout the card.

The one thing I did feel at the end of the show, is that if everything goes down in a positive way, this show was a means to build some huge singles matches down the line for another show, maybe not even that far down the line.
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