NJPW New Year Dash 2016

NJPW New Year Dash 2016NJPW New Year Dash 2016

By Big Red Machine
From January 05, 2016
Discussion

NJPW New Year Dash 2016 (1/5/2016)- Tokyo, Japan


MANABU NAKANISHI, RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, YUJI NAGATA, SHIRO KOSHINAKA, & SHO TANAKA vs. YOSHIAKI FUJIWARA, YOHEI KOMATSU, TIGER MASK IV, CHEESEBURGER, & JUSHIN “THUNDER” LIGER- 4.5/10

MATT SYDAL & RICHOCHET vs. DAVID FINLAY JR. & JAY WHITE- 5.25/10

JUICE ROBINSON vs. JAY LETHAL (w/Truth Martini)- 5.5/10
I could have done without Truth’s interference. Did Lethal really need distractions from Truth to help him beat C.J. Parker?

TOGI MAKABE, KUSHIDA, TOMOAKI HONMA, SATOSHI KOJIMA, & HIROYOSHI TENZAN vs. THE BULLET CLUB (Karl “Machine Gun” Anderson, Doc Gallows, Yujiro Takahashi, Tama Tonga, & HAKU!) (w/the Bullet Babe)- 6/10
F*cking HAKU is teaming with Bullet Club! THIS IS SO AWESOME!
The match itself was fine. I was quite surprised that they jobbed Honma out to the guys on their way out of the promotion.

HIROSHI TANAHASHI, MICHAEL ELGIN, & MASCARA DORADA vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES (Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI, & EVIL)- 6.75/10
I hope that, after watching this match, New Japan feels really bad about how much they wasted Mascara Dorada last year.

CHAOS (Shinsuke Nakamura & YOSHI-HASHI) vs. BULLET CLUB (AJ Styles & Kenny Omega)- 8/10
Well… that was unexpected.
Great heat on YOSHI-HASHI, and Nakamura had some great sequences with both AJ and Omega, and a fantastic final minute or two.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT- speaking of unexpected…
First Omega attacked AJ. Then Bullet Club came out, seemingly to pull him off, but it turned into a kind of multi-layered Russo Swerve with first the Young Bucks, who had been holding Omega back, joining Omega to triple-superkick AJ after Gallows, Hall, and Anderson helped him to his feet, and then Gallows, Hall, and Anderson all started yelling at Omega and the Bucks and they had a standoff… but then they all too-sweeted each other and started stomping a mudhole in AJ and taking turns laying in the punches.
I think it would have been better to do this kind of like Evolution turning on Orton. Have the others come out to celebrate after this big win with AJ getting Fale’s shoulders and Omega getting on Hall’s shoulders… and then have Omega give the thumbs down and Fale dumbs AJ and then everyone beats him down.

KENNY OMEGA PROMO- GREAT! He’s not going to be a Junior Heavyweight anymore. Instead, he’s going after Nakamura. Also, apparently, in kayfabe, the Bullet Club is its own entity with its own pay structure and contracts, and AJ actually had a Bullet Club contract and not a New Japan one. Obviously this ass-kicking means he has been fired from Bullet Club.
Oh. And Omega and the Bucks came back out and gave AJ a double-superkick into a Styles Clash. I have to admit: with everything that has been but into that move over the past two years, I’m more interested to see what happens to the Styles Clash than I am to see what happens to AJ or Omega coming out of this.

HIROOKI GOTO, KATSUYORI SHIBATA, & reDRagon vs. CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, Rock Romero, Trent Beretta, & Kazuchika Okada (w/Gedo)- 8/10
An awesome match with great action the whole way through and a great showing from everyone. Even Ishii was good. I also popped for the finish the move that Goto used to get the win started off the exact same way as the inverted CHIKARA Special and I actually thought that was what he was going to do.

NEVER OPENWEIGHT SIX MAN TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH: Toru Yano & The Briscoes(c) vs. The Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale & The Young Bucks) (w/Cody Hall)- 5/10
Every bit of that 5/10 is from stuff the Briscoes did with the Bucks. I’ve seen way more than enough Yano matches for one lifetime (although that doesn’t say much, because I’d argue that once you’ve seen five, you’ve already seen too many), and he always does the same sh*t. Fale is okay when he’s in there with someone he knows and someone who can carry him. He doesn’t know the Briscoes and Yano certainly can’t carry him (and plus, I just saw everything these two can do together last night). Even the Bucks were no good with Yano because they were just doing annoying crap to play into Yano’s comedy spots, or being annoying on the apron while Yano was getting beaten down, which meant I couldn’t even enjoy seeing Yano get beaten up.
It seems to be that if you’re going to beat some Bullet Club guys in a six man tag for these titles, you should probably beat the guys who are leaving instead of the guys who are staying, right? And doing this would also avoid both having to pin one of your newly-crowned IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions (why even put the belts on them if you were going to have one of them get pinned here?) and also avoid giving us Fale vs. these guys in a trios match for the second straight night

Kevin Kelly claimed that one of the tag matches that the Bucks and Briscoes has last year was “one of the matches of the year.” I understand that you’re trying to hype up the product, but it actually does more damage if you exaggerate things to the millionth degree and someone checks it out and is disappointed because you were full of sh*t than it would do for you to not hype the product up at all, because if you exaggerate and people check it out and realize you’re exaggerating, then they won’t believe you when you’re actually telling the truth. So how about we keep it to simple claims that “it was a great match (and you can watch it with your ringside membership at ROHWrestling.com) instead of claiming that a ten minute match with nothing on the line was “one of the best matches of the year,” okay?
Striker put over Fale’s “timing” and talked about how lots of young wrestlers need to “learn” it, but Fale has it because “he doesn’t rush.” Um… care to explain how this makes any sense in kayfabe, Matt? Or are you just going to do your best to ruin my suspension of disbelief?

A good show from New Japan, but it’s really important for the semi-main event and its aftermath.

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