New Japan Pro Wrestling
World Tag League 2018 Night 5
November 23, 2018
Culttz Kawasaki
Kanagawa, Japan

Watch: NJPW World

Non-World Tag League 2018 Results:

  • Guerrillas Of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) def. Yota Tsuji & Yuya Uemura
  • Suzuki-gun (Davey Boy Smith Jr., Lance Archer, Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr.) def. TenKoji (Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Ren Narita, Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma
  • CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii & Toru Yano) def. BULLET CLUB (Hangman Page & Yujiro Takahashi) & Kota Ibushi
  • CHAOS (Kazuchika Okada, SHO & YOH) def. Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito)

WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2018 MATCH
Beretta & Chuckie T Def. Shota Umino & Ayato Yoshida

The Best Friends are having themselves quite a nice little tag league so far, undefeated and consistently have pretty good matches. The Young Lion duo are also having a good run as well. For a team that probably won’t win a match they did a good job here of making me buy into a few of Shotas’ role up attempts on Chuckie until finally succumbing to the Piledriver.  ***1/4

WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2018 MATCH
Minoru Suzuki & Takashi Iizuka Def. Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi

I thought this was going to be the first outright bad match of the tournament, but you know what? It was just average so I have to give them credit for that. Not much else to say about really. **1/2


WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2018 MATCH
Juice Robinson & David Finlay Def. Michael Elgin & Jeff Cobb

Juice is so good at wrestling! So, so good. Just the small things he does like shout advice to Finlay when he’s in a submission or yelling out to the referee when he wants to make a tag so the ref can see it and that’s not even going into his actual in-ring work, which is great. The Juice “mark out” aside, this was the best match of the night, however, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again I just wish Cobb wasn’t the proverbial punching bag for his team. I’m not sure if it was the drama surrounding Elgin last year but he just bugs me in his matches, he always seems to get the most offense in and takes the least from his opponents. Am I on an island here or have other people noticed this too? I know it sounds like I just buried this match but it really was very good. ***1/2

WORLD TAG LEAGUE 2018 MATCH
EVIL & SANADA Def. Togi Makabe & Toa Henare

This was a fun showcase for Henare, got to have some cool hoss fight moments with EVIL and who doesn’t love hoss fights? I’m officially over Makabe but I can put it up with him of it means seeing Henare get some more shine. A pretty good much but nothing to go out of your way to see. ***1/4

Final Thoughts:

Night 5 was another pretty good World Tag League 2018 show with some good, fun wrestling. I don’t know what we did to deserve a good World Tag League this year but thank you, I guess.