NJPW Wrestling Satsuma No Kuni 4.28

Gabriel Kidd & Tiger Mask vs. Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura - 5.5/10

Good opener, this is my first time seeing Tiger Mask after recovering from some health problems, so I take it he has fully recovered. This match got about 10 minutes, which is somewhat long for these openers. At the end, Tsuji tapping out Kidd with a Crab.

Suzuki-gun (DOUKI, Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr.) vs. BULLET CLUB (Jado, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) - 6.5/10

Bullet Club jumped SZKG while they were doing their entrance and started with a beatdown outside the ring. Ok match, somewhat basic. Taichi was the babyface in peril, Sabre had the hot tag against both Guerrillas. Finish saw BC cut off DOUKI with a kendo stick shot, hit a Magic Killer, and when they went to do the same with Sabre, Taichi, fed up and who has very little patience now a days, ran in with a ladder and took out both Guerrillas for the DQ loss. I was missing me some Tekkers!

Post-match - Tekkers tortured the Guerrillas a bit. Sabre cut a promo on the Guerrillas telling them that they've taken everything from them, but come Fukuoka, they earn their title shot and Taichi regains his Iron Hand.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. BULLET CLUB (Gedo, Taiji Ishimori & Yujiro Takahashi) - 6.5/10

This was a tale of two matches, one half of it was a Taguchi comedy match, the other a Tanahashi match. The Taguchi stuff all revolved around him getting his butt worked and making a comeback, while Tanahashi's match was more about the hot tag and comeback, ending with him tapping out Gedo with a Sharpshooter.

Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) vs. The United Empire (Aaron Henare, Great-O-Khan, Jeff Cobb & Will Ospreay) - 7.5/10

BUSHI and Cobb aside, this match was all about pairing up the ongoing feuds. O-Khan vs Naito was the heat segment, Shingo vs Ospreay the meat of the match, and hot tag, and finally, SANADA vs Henare where they started to take it home. At the end, it was down to Cobb and BUSHI, with the former getting the win, as usual, with the Tour of the Islands. Really good match.

I really love the inner chemistry of UE, and I quite enjoy the chemistry between UE and LIJ.

Post-match - Just stay with me here. Ospreay made out with his championship in front of Taichi, who was on commentary. Ospreay vs Taichi maybe?

NJPW King Of Pro-Wrestling Title Creation Of Darkness Blindfold Match
Toru Yano (c) vs. EVIL (w/Dick Togo) - 7/10

The amount of things YTR promotes as his entrance gear has gotten out of hand. Anyway, rules of the match are nothing like a normal blindfold match, in this one, you have to put the blindfold on your opponent so that pins, submissions, and even count outs can be legal. So a wrestle can be outside the ring without being counted out, but as soon as that wrestler has a hood on, the counting starts like a normal match, so you could legally break up a count or a pin by removing the mask instead of the usual methods.

The match was a usual YTR match, where he gets his ass kicked for a while, has a comeback, and then repeat a couple more times, exploring the stipulation in different ways.

For what it was, this was great. A vast improvement on the blindfold stipulation, it created a realistic struggle for both men to win the match,

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship Match
Roppongi 3K (SHO & YOH) (c) vs. Suzuki-gun (El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) - 8.5/10

This was a really good match, it was a long match, but it went by quite fast, I didn't notice the time until they hit the 20 minute mark.

The match was a lot of R3K being on the defensive, both YOH and SHO had separate babyface in peril runs, and that was just half of the match, SZKG still had a second, lesser heat run over YOH. YOH's leg and SHO's head were the main focus of Kanemaru and Despy. I didn't feel like they overused the 2-on-1 or tornado tag stuff as much as usual tag matches overuse now a days, it really wasn't until the last 5 minutes that we started seeing some near falls that I felt we had reached that point.

At the end, SHO pinned Kanemaru after a Strong X.

Post-match - YOH and Despy had a quick staredown, they're wrestling soon for the Jr. Heavyweight title. Afterwards, SHO and YOH cut their winner's promo.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

Good show, went by fast. Given the card, I kinda put it on to have something to watch, I wasn't super hyped about, but I was pleasantly surprised by the whole card, it really delivered in a positive way.

This show also had about 1K people in the crowd, I don't believe Kagoshima is in the same status as the lockdown prefectures in Japan, so lucky for NJPW that they had scheduled this show.