NJPW New Japan Cup 2020, Day 7

New Japan Cup 2020 Quarterfinal Match
Hiromu Takahashi vs Tomohiro Ishii - 9/10

Hiromu waiting for Ishii defiantly in the middle of the ring and Ishii answering back was the most badass thing I've seen in this whole tournament.

This was awesome, a rare opener that reaches this level of rating. Hiromu arguably came in as the underdog, but defiantly went after Ishii, got his ass kicked for a long time, but came back, and slowly started to chip down Ishii with the D and not give up, and eventually, managed to take him down, hit the D Driver and the Time Bomb and took the win, one of Hiromu's biggest wins in his career so far. I loved the chop exchange, it was like a Mexico vs Japan chop exchange.

New Japan Cup 2020 Quarterfinal Match
EVIL vs YOSHI-HASHI - DUD! But good for what it was.

YOSHI-HASHI is coming in limping to his match, good thing he has a walking stick. EVIL still hit him with a chair before the match, Pillmanized his injured leg over and over. This may be the most emotion I've seen in YH ever. He still decided to fight.

Match started, YH tried to make a stand, but EVIL took him down, locked in a Cloverleaf, and after giving him a lot of time to recover, the referee decided to call it and let YOSHI-HASHI walk another day. I was really looking forward for another YH Strong Style showing, but I can't diss this, this was perfect, doesn't make YH look like a total geek and furthers this new mad heel side that EVIL has come back with.

Los Ingobernables de Japon (Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, & BUSHI) vs CHAOS (Hirooki Goto & SHO) & Yuya Uemura - 7/10

So it's pretty obvious that SHO vs Shingo is happening for the NEVER title now. I also need to mention, how awesome is it to see all three LIJ guys come out with two belts each!

Solid tag match, this was all to build SHO vs Shingo, but we also had a good exchange between Goto and Naito, and a short but great run for Uemura vs Shingo. BUSHI pinned Uemura with a Fireman's Carry into Facebreaker.

Post-match - SHO made his challenge to Shingo for the NEVER title, but Shingo told him off.

New Japan Cup 2020 Quarterfinal Match
Kazuchika Okada vs "Bone Soldier" Taiji Ishimori - 8/10

I need to wait for Okada's post match promo, but I really get the impression that Okada's matches are all about him thinking he is destined to win the Cup no matter what, but is coming to each match a bit more cocky than usual, underestimating his opponents, and each of them have give him some trouble because of it. It definitely would still play out with Takahashi and SANADA if he wins, EVIL being the only one that could really give him a run for his money.

This started out a bit slow with Okada dominating, until Gedo came out to back up Ishimori and the match picked up a lot of momentum from there on. It's one of those that we know Ishimori ain't winning, but the fight that he brought to Okada was great. I wasn't sure what to expect from this pair up, but it kinda worked out action wise, but I just wouldn't be able to buy Ishimori really hurting Okada. The finish of the match saw Okada win with the Anaconda Vice again.

New Japan Cup 2020 Quarterfinal Match
SANADA vs Taichi - 8.5/10

This is the first time these two have met in a singles match if I'm not mistaken. I came in with a really bad feeling that this could be really really slow, but given that it was the main event of the show, they had to put some work into it, and it was only moderately slow.

Match was good, but it was indeed a bit slow at parts and went too long for that pace. SANADA was more dominant here, but Taichi kept cutting him off either by a big kick or by going after eyes. Later on, when SANADA was close to winning and even had a visual submission, Kanemaru came down to assist. Taichi then stole the Skull End, and I think he took some other people's moves too, as he came close to winning, but SANADA kept fighting back. Eventually, thanks to Kanemaru, Taichi low blowed SANADA and went for the Gedo Clutch, but SANADA countered, took out Kanemaru, and won with an O'Connor Roll Bridge.

Post-match - SANADA said that Korakuen is his favorite place to wrestle and told us 'See You Tomorrow'.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Good show overall, but I thought the match order kinda made things harder to watch. I totally understand the order because of hierarchies, but it started with the strongest 'dream match' and it all kind went down from there. There wasn't anything bad tho, just not AS good as the opener.

The semifinals are Okada vs Takahashi and SANADA vs EVIL. Each man has an argument to win, even EVIL with his newish vicious run he's showing. Okada is Okada and it IS Dominion after all, Takahashi owes us a match with Naito, and SANADA in my opinion was the original man to win it this year regardless.