NJPW Destruction in Kagoshima 2019

YOUNG LIONS CUP LEAGUE MATCH:
Clark Connors vs. Yuya Uemura - 6.25/10

YOUNG LIONS CUP LEAGUE MATCH:
Michael Richards vs. Ren Narita - 6/10

KARL FREDERICKS, ALEX COUGHLIN, MANABU NAKANISHI & TOA HENARE vs. RYUSUKE TAGUCHI, SHOTA UMINO, YOTA TSUJI, & YUJI NAGATA - 4.5/10

Having the Young Lions take the fall in these matches makes me a lot less interested in who wins their ongoing tournament.

CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii, YOSHI-HASHI, & Roppongi 3K) vs. BULLET CLUB (Guerrillas of Destiny, Chase Owens, & Bad Luck Fale) - 4/10

CHAOS jump the bell on Bullet Club, which I’m fine with because of how often Bullet Club do it to them. Bullet Club wind up quickly in control and False abuses the referee for no reason and doesn’t get DQed. The usual bullsh*t on the outside happened while the referee took forever to start counting them out. YOSHI-HASHI got a roll-up pin on Tama Tonga, then had some sort of celebratory seizure or something. Then he got beaten up by the heels.

HIROSHI TAHANASHI, JUSHIN �"THUNDER” LIGER, TOGI MAKABE, & TOMOAKI HONMA vs. SUZUKI-GUN (Minoru Suzuki, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, DOUKI, & Zack Sabre Jr.) - DUD!

Suzuki-Gun jumped the bell on their opponents and we immediately spill to the outside. Stuff happened, and eventually the babyfaces got the advantage back. Suzuki shoved down a referee, which was not a DQ. He then got a chair and shoved the referee down when the referee tried to take it from him, then hit Liger with it. This, apparently, was a DQ. The reason this was a DQ tonight and not in every other Suzuki-Gun match where the same thing happens is…?

Also, Zack Sabre Jr. won the RPW Undisputed British Heavyweight Title back from Tanahashi last night, a mere two and a half weeks after winning it. Tanahashi made ZERO successful defenses, and wrestled ZERO match in RevPro as champion. What was the point of changing the title then? All they did was cheapen it?

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Suzuki ripped Liger’s mask off. This feud has been going on for about five months with zero movement. WHY THE F*CK COULDN’T THIS HAVE HAPPEEND THREE MONTHS AGO?! I’m already well past the point of caring about a singles match between these two. I also find it hard to care about Suzuki ripping off Liger’s mask when I remember all of the other times that someone ripped someone else’s mask off in New Japan and it didn’t lead to sh*t.

LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Shingo Takagi, Sanada, & BUSHI) vs. CHAOS (Rocky Romero, Kazuchika Okada, & Hirooki Goto) - 6.5/10

LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON (Tetsuya Naito & EVIL) vs. BULLET CLUB (Yujiro Takahashi & Jay White) (w/Gedo) - 6.25/10

Bullet Club jumped the bell but LIJ were ready for them so their attack failed. Unfortunately, this did not stop us from spilling to the outside for the usual bullsh*t. EVIL pinned Yujiro (as if there was any other possible outcome).

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Meh. White tried to attack Naito but again Naito was ready for it so his attack failed. Then Naito got way too close to White while taunting him, allowing White to hit him in the nuts.

IWGP JR. HEAVYWEIGHT TAG TEAM TITLE MATCH:
Bullet Club (El Phantasmo & Taiji Ishimori)(c) vs. Birds of Prey (Will Ospreay & Robbie Eagles) - 9.5/10

OUTSTANDING junior heavyweight tag team action!

G1 BRIEFCASE MATCH: Kota Ibushi(c) vs. KENTA - 4/10

KENTA jumps the bell on Ibushi. Heels jump the bell on their opponents in basically every match on the card in NJPW (this is the fourth bell-jumping on this show alone!) and the referee always responds by just calling for the bell… but not this time. This time f*cking Red Shoes has to get in KENTA’s face and start lecturing him. Why doesn’t Red Shoes react this way every other time this same thing happens?

Then KENTA- the heel- picks up Ibushi’s G1 briefcase- a weapon- and ignores Red Shoes’ demand to hand it over… and Red Shoes responds to the heel ignoring his demand to hand over a weapon by TURNING HIS BACK TO THE WRESTLERS. You don’t get any points for guessing what happened.

KENTA stomps and the briefcase and wastes a bunch of time cutting a promo while Red Shoes and medics tend to Ibushi and make sure he can still go, even though in nearly every match in this promotion starts with someone jumping the bell and the referee responds by just ordering the bell rung, this time is different for no explained reason. If you’re going to bury WWE for their storyline inconsistencies, you’ve got to treat New Japan the same way.

We finally start when Ibushi says he’s okay, at which point KENTA hits the same running kick for a nearfall, then dumps Ibushi to the outside for the customary whipping someone into the barricades… because while we can’t be consistent with the rules in this promotion, we do have to be consistent by having this same spot in every single match. This goes on for several minutes while Red Shoes does not count them out. When KENTA finally rolls back into the ring, Red Shoes goes out to check on Ibushi. If you were so concerned about his health then why didn’t you go check on him before?

We eventually get the obligatory Count-Out Tease That No One Ever Buys, but when Ibushi makes it back into the ring, KENTA throws him back out to the outside for more whipping into the barricade. KENTA drags Ibushi into the stands while Red Shoes still doesn’t count anyone out. Then KENTA hit Ibushi with a DDT on the floor. Like last time- hey! Some consistency- Red Shoes waits until KENTA is back in the ring before checking on Ibushi, but then, unlike last time, instead of beginning to count Ibushi out after confirming that he is still able to continue, Red Shoes begins to yell at KENTA for clapping, because Red Shoes is more concerned with being the referee who gets in the heels face than he is with doing his f*cking job right. He finally did start counting, but Ibushi made it back in time. Shocking, I know.

I found this entire first part of the match both frustrating and boring. You can probably already tell what frustrated me, but the fact that they basically did the same thing twice just made it worse. All you needed is to send Ibushi to out the outside, do some barricade whips if you absolutely must, then do the DDT onto the floor for the count-out tease. You don’t need to a count-out tease for the barricade whips, then do some more barricade whips and the DDT for yet another one. Less is more.

Ibushi got to be defiant in the corner and finally fired off his first offense of the match in the form of a few forearms to the face but KENTA cut him off with a kick to the midsection, followed by a grounded headlock… and I would honestly rather see a headlock that at least has the heel focusing on the injured body part of the babyface than see meaningless whips into the railing.

We got stereotypical �"defiant exchanges of strikes,” followed by another trip to the outside. This time they were out there so KENTA could work over Kota’s knee. Red Shoes once again didn’t count them out, but he did come over to stop KENTA from using a chair. Then KENTA shoved Red Shoes and used the chair anyway but wasn’t disqualified. Also, I assume we were supposed to think that the chairshot hit Ibushi’s knee (I don’t think hitting the top of the guardrail with Ibushi’s knee wrapped around it like that would actually hurt his knee any more), but it pretty clearly didn’t come close.
The match is basically �"KENTA beats up Ibushi very badly, then KENTA gets cocky and starts taunting Ibushi. Ibushi defiantly fires up and they trade strikes until KENTA wins the exchange” and the cycle repeats. Kota’s selling was great… except when he was on offense, at which point he just stopped selling.

And, of course, we got a f*cking ref bump. This one happened when KENTA just grabbed Red Shoes and took him down for no reason other than to bump him. He was not DQed for this. The Guerrillas of Destiny ran in just so Kota could knock them down. Kota hit a big running knee for a nearfall but Red Shoes got pulled out of the ring. This was also not a DQ. Finally we had some people (Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI) run in to help Kota. Why doesn’t his happen every time Bullet Club pulls this bullsh*t? Also, is this a perfect example of overbooking that I wouldn’t have minded if NJPW didn’t do run-ins so damn often.

The interlopers left and Red Shoes crawled back into the ring as KENTA and Ibushi engaged in a �"forearm battle while standing up” spot that felt pathetically cliched at this point. Kamagoyes were exchanged until Ibushi got the win with one. At no point did I think the briefcase would change hands due to the way the G1 was booked, so this was just a long, repetitive match with obnoxiously bad refereeing and an annoying run-in that failed to give itself the benefit of a compelling story to help me care.

POST-MATCH SEGMENT - Ibushi vowed to have both top belts when he next returned to this building.

Final Thoughts
This was pretty much a one-match show from New Japan. The undercard was typically pointless the main event was disappointing, so the Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Title match had to carry all of the weight. It put up an extremely valiant effort, but as amazing as that match was, it didn’t make it feel worth my time to have sat through the entire show, making this show still a failure.