NJPW New Japan Cup Results
March 12, 2017
(1) Jushin Thunder Liger & Yuji Nagata def. David Finlay & Tiger Mask. This was originally advertised as two different opening matches, but Nakanishi came down with the flu so they improvised. Nagata submitted Tiger Mask with the armbar.
(2) Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa & Bad Luck Fale [Bullet Club] def. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima & Hirai Kawato. A fairly easy win for Bullet Club. Kawato got attacked before the match started, as Kojima and Tenzan were on their way to the ring. They took turns triple teaming each of the babyfaces, and Kawato did his best to mount a comeback at the end, but it wasn’t enough. Loa pinned Kawato off a variation of the Samoan Driver.
(3) Tetsuya Naito, Evil, Bushi & Hiromu Takahashi [Los Ingobernables de Japon] def. Michael Elgin, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kushida & Ryusuke Taguchi. A fun back-and-forth with the key players being Elgin and Evil from the heavyweight side, while Kushida and Hiromu built up heat for their upcoming title rematch. Evil looked particularly strong, especially coming off his win over Tanahashi last night, and picked up another win here with the STO on Taguchi.
(4) Jado, Gedo, Toru Yano, Hirooki Goto & Kazuchika Okada [Chaos] def. Taka Michinoku, El Desperado, Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & Takashi Iizuka [Suzuki-Gun]. Another wild brawl that spent most of its time outside the ring, with very little semblance of order. Certainly not a bad match, but it was pretty much your standard Suzuki-Gun madness. Yano pinned Iizuka with a low blow and a roll-up. Jado and Gedo posed with the junior tag titles after the match, before throwing them back to Taichi and Kanemaru.
(5) Juice Robinson def. Yujiro Takahashi to advance to the second round. Juice got destroyed for the first three quarters of the match, but they had a nice back-and-forth exchange building to the end. Both guys hit their signatures and kicked out multiple times, and Robinson got the pin with Pulp Friction. Okay match. Juice easily has the hardest road to the finals, looking at a monster of a battle in the second round against either Shibata or Minoru Suzuki.
(6) Sanada def. Yoshi-Hashi to advance to the second round. A surprisingly slow-paced match centered on both guys looking for their submission and working the other over to put them in position for their respective finishes. Sanada got the Skull End locked in halfway through but Hashi got to the ropes. Hashi then got the Butterfly Lock in but Sanada got to the ropes. Sanada kicked out of a Swanton Bomb, Hashi kicked out of the TKO. In the end Sanada managed to get the Skull End locked in a second time and picked up the win.
(7) Katsuyori Shibata def. Minoru Suzuki to advance to the second round. This was as physical and as brutal as you’d expect these two to be. So many kicks, elbows, headbutts and slaps my jaw hurt just watching. Taichi was ringside and attacked Shibata multiple times while the referee was distracted. There’s just something about Taichi that you want to see Shibata kick him in the face, over and over again. Suzuki didn’t go down easy, and had the sleeper locked in multiple times, but couldn’t hit the Gotch-style piledriver. Shibata got the win with a big right hand and the PK.
(8) Tomohiro Ishii def. Kenny Omega to advance to the second round. The surprise of a lifetime. This match was even more physical than Shibata and Suzuki, and not even by a small margin. Ishii took everything Omega threw at him for more than 20 minutes, on spaghetti legs, but refused to go down. The story will be that, just like in his match with Okada, after hitting four V-Triggers, pulling out Croyt’s Wrath, and connecting with everything else in his toolbox, Kenny couldn’t find the One Winged Angel. Ishii put on the performance of a lifetime, including a cool quick-release powerslam, some wicket headbutts, and a rana from the top rope! After countering five attempts at the One Winged Angel, Ishii got the win with a wicket lariat. After what many assumed would be his revenge path to the title, the dismantling of Kenny Omega continues in what will be an incredible redemption story. Some excellent long-term story telling by New Japan.
So it will be Juice Robinson vs. Katsuyori Shibata in the second round, as well as Tomohiro Ishii vs. Sanada to round out the bottom of the bracket. Toru Yano vs. Bad Luck Fale and Yuji Nagata vs. EVIL are the other two second round matches, and all four will be spread across house shows over the next week. The full shows won’t be on New Japan World, but they will upload the tournament matches the day of each show.
After all the upsets and surprises it would be foolish to claim anything at this point, but the most likely scenario seems to be EVIL vs. Ishii in the finals. EVIL got a huge upset over Tanahashi and if he moves past Nagata (which he should) building up Bad Luck Fale as the ultimate hurdle to overcome in the semi-finals would legitimize him as a major player. You can’t rule out Shibata, but after an upset over Omega it would seem almost a waste to have Ishii lose going forward. Keep in mind that the G1 last year had a five-star match between Omega and Ishii, and that could well be the plan for the title for the Sakura Genesis show in April.
A really good show tonight that far surpassed the opening night. I would encourage western fans upset at Omega’s loss to look at the long-term story-telling that New Japan is doing with him. In this case, when his losses mean so much and the matches are of this quality, losing can mean a lot more than winning. Keeping Omega and Okada completely separated until a major show like Dominion over the summer, or even until Wrestle Kingdom for the big rematch, could be much better in the long run. He had the best year of anyone in the world in 2016; the systematic breakdown of his character in 2017 has the potential to be an incredible story if they are building him back up for something even larger in the end.
