NJPW Road to New Beginning 2017: Day 6

HENARE vs. TOMOYUKI OMA - 4.5/10

A simple but well-executed story, and they even managed to make a freakin' HIP TOSS not feel out of place as a nearfall.

JUSHIN "THUNDER" LIGER & YOSHITATSU vs. SATOSHI KOJIMA & YUJI NAGATA - 6.25/10

Surprisingly good for the combination of the time it got and its place on the card.

HIROYOSHI TENZAN & TIGER MASK IV vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Takashi Iizuka & TAKA Michinoku) - 4/10

Stuff happened. Some of it was even decent. Then Iizuka just went ahead and got DQed for using the Iron Fingers on Tenzan. Then TAKA held Tiger Mask so Iizuka could hit him with them as well. Maybe this would have gotten some heat, but I've spent years watching Iizuka matches lead to nothing but more bad matches with bad finishes, so who could possibly give a sh*t.

TEN MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH:
Juice Robinson, Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, KUSHIDA, & Katsuyori Shibata vs. CHAOS (Will Ospreay, Hirooki Goto, Jado, Gedo, & YOSHI-HASHI) - 6.75/10

The match was good for what it was, aside from Shibata eliminating himself just to keep attacking Ospreay. This feud doesn't feel anywhere near heated enough for that. The finishing sequence here was really great, but it feels like a big step backwards. Robinson just lost a NEVER Openweight Title match to Goto in Sapporo over the weekend. Having him now eliminate Robinson to presumably set up another one feels like we're just running in circles.

TEN MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH:
Suzuki-Gun (Minoru Suzuki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Taichi, & K.E.S.) vs. CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, Toru Yano, Roppongi Vice, & Kazuchika Okada) - 7.5/10

Once again the match was very good (especially the stuff between Okada and Suzuki), but the booking makes it feel like we're going backwards. Suzuki works over Okada's knees and eliminates him to set up for a title shot, K.ES. going after Ishii and Yano's tag belts, etc. The only new bit here is that it seems that Kanemaru and Taichi will be the Suzuki-Gun members now going after the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles.

TEN MAN ELIMINATION TAG TEAM MATCH:
Los Ingobernables de Japon vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Michael Elgin, Dragon Lee, Ryusuke Taguchi, & Manabu Nakanishi - 6.75/10

Another match with some baffling booking. If you're trying to get us hyped up for Sanada, BUSHI, & EVIL challenge Tanahashi, Taguchi, & Nakanishi for the NEVER Openweight Six Man Tag Team Titles, then you would think that perhaps the challengers would eliminate the champions in the end. Instead we got Taguchi winning the match, beating Sanada, despite the fact that Sanada had hit him in the leg with a baseball bat. I also wasn't fond of the stuff they did with Naito and Elgin, but that's more because I think it would have been much better to just have Elgin win the match.

Saturday's results piqued my interest enough to make me seek out this show, and I have to say I'm disappointed. This show feels like we went backwards; like we're building to the same matches we just saw with clean finishes on Saturday… and, of course, the matches will be less exciting this time because we've seen them already, with the babyfaces going over clean.