NJPW New Japan Cup 2017: Day 2

JUSHIN "THUNDER" LIGER & YUJI NAGATA vs. DAVID FINLAY JR. & TIGER MASK IV - 4.5/10

Very good opener for the time it got.

HIROYOSHI TENZAN, SATOSHI KOJIMA, & HIRAI KAWATO vs. BULLET CLUB (Bad Luck Fale, & the Guerrillas of Destiny) - 5/10

Bullet Club jump the young boy while Ten-Koji are still making their way down the ramp. The match was fine for the time it got, and the finish looked pretty sick.

HIROSHI TANAHASHI, MICHAEL ELGIN, KUSHIDA, & RYUSUKE TAGUCHI vs. LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, & EVIL) - 7/10

A good match with a very fun final two minutes.

CHAOS (Jado, Gedo, Kazuchiza Okada, Hirooki Goto, & Toru Yano) vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Takashi Iizuka, TAKA Michinoku, Taichi, El Desperado, & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) - DUD!

Standard Suzuki-Gun cheating with the ring bell hammer and choking people with cables and all of that stuff that they do in every match to the point where it doesn't mean anything anymore. And how many times does Iizuka have to cheat right in front of the referee and ignore the referee's instructions before the ref actually does his job and just DQs this asshole? Yano is complaining about all of Suzuki-Gun's tactics, so he's a hypocrite as well as a cheater. Good. Even more reason to dislike him. And yes, the finish was Yano pinning someone after a low blow. Has anyone even tried to explain why he is treated like a babyface?

NEW JAPAN CUP FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Juice Robinson vs. Yujiro Takahashi - 6.75/10

NEW JAPAN CUP FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Sanada vs. YOSHI-HASHI - 6.75/10

Good story based around both guys' respective submission finishers.

NEW JAPAN CUP FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Katsuyori Shibata vs. Minoru Suzuki (w/Taichi) - 7.5/10

I was hoping for something a lot more mat and submission based as opposed to the usual Shibata "just hit each other very hard" match so I didn't enjoy this quite as much as most people. The last few minutes were great, though, and the crowd was really into Shibata. Great match!

NEW JAPAN CUP FIRST-ROUND MATCH: Kenny Omega vs. Tomohiro Ishii - 8.25/10

This was very interesting as I was expecting it to be very much a clash of styles that works itself into a great match like Ospreay and Shibata had last month, but instead these two both moved their styles more towards a middle ground to minimize the clash and went out there and had an awesome match.

Final Thoughts
A very good show from New Japan aside from that one DUD in the middle.