Cero Reviews NJPW 50th Anniversary Show

[cero2k]

NJPW 50th Anniversary Show
March 1st, 2022
Nippon Budokan, Tokyo, Japan

50th Anniversary Ceremony - They brought out the hontai roster to be ringside. Old NJPW annoucner Tanaka Kero did ring introductions for the legends: Wataru Inoue, Jushin Liger (with full get-up), Kuniaki Kobayashi, Seiji Sakaguchi, Norio Honaga, Tiger Hattori, Motoyui Kitazawa, Milano Collection AT, Minoru Tanaka, Masahito Kakihara, Kazuo Yamazaki, Yoshiaki Fujiwara, Akira Maeda, Shiro Koshinaka, Kengo Kimura, Masahiro Chono, Keiji Muto, Riki Choshu, & Tatsumi Fujinami. Via video, Satoru Sayama.

Not sure if it was because he couldn't move well, but Sakaguchi stood up shaking everyone's hands as they came out after him. He had a speech, thanking the crowd for the support.

Kazuchika Okada also had a small speech thanking the legends and hoping to keep the spirit of Pro Wrestling going.

Ryohei Oiwa, Tiger Mask & YOH vs. House Of Torture (EVIL, SHO & Yujiro Takahashi) (w/Dick Togo) - 6/10
Ok match, somewhat uneventuful. With a Young Lion in the match, there was little need to have the HoT cheat to win, making it less infuriating for some I guess. Yujiro got the win over Oiwa.

Suzuki-gun (Taichi & TAKA Michinoku) & Minoru Tanaka vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, El Phantasmo & Taiji Ishimori) - 6.5/10
Minoru Tanaka's entrance was cool, they highlighted all of his NJPW accolades in his career. They acknowledged he's here representing GLEAT.

Not super action packed, but a really good match, Taichi and Tanaka looked great. Tanaka paired up with Ishimori and just looked like if he was 30 years young, and Taichi with Fale, where Taichi got to show off a bit of power and sumo proficiency. ELP got the win over TAKA with Thunderkiss after he again, couldn't bring himself to using the Superkick.

Post-match - When doing the too sweet, Fale and Ishimori did the lower one, while ELP initially went for the upper one. This is relevant because Jay White on Impact talked about bringing back the upper Too Sweet, as the Bullet Club has started some restructuring following the turn on the Guerrillas.

Suzuki-gun (DOUKI, El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) vs. #STRONGHEARTS (CIMA, El Lindaman & T-Hawk) (w/Issei Onitsuka) - 7/10
Finally, arguably the greatest trio in Pro Wrestling today get to wrestle for NJPW. T-Hawk and Lindaman have to be one of the few best wrestlers in Japan to not have shared the NJPW ring. Even Miyahara has already shared the ring with Tanahashi. Onitsuka, they're protégé from GLEAT is out there with them as a second.

Desperado has been calling out Lindaman for a Jr. Heavyweight title match, so they immediately targeted each other. They paired up later in the match as the hot tag after T-Hawk, who had been isolated, made the tag. They got a couple of near falls on each other before passing over to CIMA and DOUKI for the finish, where CIMA got the win after a #STRONGHEARTS fast paced combo and the CIMA Meteora. DOUKI did get a great near fall, if not for T-Hawk who broke out the pin.

They should had considered replacing the injured Tenzan and Ibushi with T-Hawk and Lindaman for the New Japan Cup.

Post-match - Despy and Lindaman teased each other, but with DOUKI down, Despy didn't want to start a fight.

Kosei Fujita, Satoshi Kojima, Yuji Nagata & Yuto Nakashima vs. United Empire (Aaron Henare, Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Will Ospreay) - 7/10
After some initial chaos all around, UE cut off Nakashima for a while. Kojima took the hot tag and him and Nagata ran wild for a bit. Towards the end, Fujita took the tag against O-Khan, and he had a couple of good spots along with Nakashima, but at the end, fell to O-Khan's Eliminator. Not much to the match, but it definitely worked to somewhat re-introduce the UE as a full team, we hadn't seen Henare, Cobb, and Ospreay for some time.

Post-match - O-Khan cut a promo in behalf of the group about being all back together.

Great Bash Heel (Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, Shiro Koshinaka, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) - 7/10
While Ishii and Yano are now part of CHAOS and Koshinaka is 'retired', they are indeed the original G.B.H. guys, hence the pair up tonight. To note on the other side, SANADA, how the only one holding gold in LIJ, came out last. Riki Choshu joined commentary at this point.

Crazy to say this, but this match was mostly Yano comedy and Koshinaka hip attacks doing the work until the end where we got some Ishii vs Shingo and it was obviously glorious. Towards the end, G.B.H. all ganged up on Shingo, but when they left Honma alone, LIJ took control, took out everyone outside, and allowed Shingo to get the win over Honma with The Last of the Dragons.

Bishamon (Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI) vs. Six Or Nine (Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi) - 8/10
This year, instead of having the singles champions face off, we have the tag heavyweight and Jr. heavyweight champions battle each other. I really don't mind this, especially this year with these teams. It's not like these men are strangers to each other, at least not CHAOS and Taguchi, but they're rarely in a position to get time to build up something and hit second or third gear on each other.

Arguably the best thing of the match was seeing Goto and YH have to deal with a high flyer coming at the from every corner. Taguchi going submission artist was good, but as usual, it always comes too late in the match. Other than that, we saw Bishamon cut off Taguchi, gain momentum for a while, and get the win with Shoto on Taguchi, who tried hard at the end, but couldn't take on both Goto and YH.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada & Tatsumi Fujinami vs. Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr.) & Yoshiaki Fujiwara - 8/10
In one of those rare shows of respect, Suzuki held the ropes for Fujiwara during his entrance. Okada has been wearing the Inoki/Fujinami style robe since Wrestle Kingdom, but Tanahashi also joined the look for this match with his own "Immortal Dragon" robe. There's a little less than 200 years of experience combined in this match.

Sabre and Okada opened the match with a great great exchange, we got Fujinami and Suzuki going at it and it was short, but great seeing the Dragon and the Wind go at it. Finally, Fujiwara came in and paired up with both Tana and Okada, who did all they could to make him look good, we all wanted to see the armbar, but instead he started headbutting the ringpost and it was kinda scary. We got the awesomeness of the Suzuki-Sabre submission combo on Tana before another good Sabre run.

There was a side story that Suzuki and Fujiwara were not getting along, but more as in the latter didn't acknowledge Suzuki and I think Suzuki was somewhat hurt that his senpai wouldn't work along with him. It built up to Suzuki and Fujiwara finally bonding over headbutting Okada and then Suzuki-Gun and Fujiwara all locking in the armbar on their opponents.

Finish saw Okada hit the Rainmaker on Suzuki for the win. Low key, this makes me think that Sabre may be going after Okada soon.

This was a really fun match, not just watching the old timers pair up with the current guys, but it also had some really good wrestling. Fujinami may not move like he used to, but the man looks in great shape.

Post-match - Tana, Okada, and Fujinami all celebrated together. Okada had a speech about their responsibility to represent wrestling and while it was unfortunate that Inoki couldn't be there with them, but he wanted to make sure his legacy would live forever until the day he can be there with them. Tanahashi and Fujinami also shared some words of promise, love, and sent out a big Inoki ichi, ni, san, DAAAAHHHH!!! They even got Chono and Choshu to join in.

OVERALL THOUGHTS
Fun show, felt like a true celebration of wrestling, with a bunch of pair ups, young guys, current stars, and old timers. Some of the pair ups felt fresh since they were not trying to build to anything since the upcoming tour is a singles tournament anyway.

New Japan debuted this new Matrix camera rig, so every time they did replays, they would give us a 180 degree view of the move, some moves looked really cool like this.

For some reason, there was no Japanese stream on World, so I had to watch it on English. I think I now understand why Meltzer keeps complaining about the lack of chanting fans. English team lack soo much charisma and energy that the show actually lacks that energy that chanting fans would bring. I hadn't felt this way watching the Japanese feed. Lots of info with Kelly and Chris, but the energy just feels so lacking.