NEW JAPAN PRO WRESTLING
NJPW STRONG #6
SEPTEMBER 11, 2020
OCEANVILLE PAVILLION
PORT HUENEME, CALIFORNIA

Watch: New Japan World

The second night of Fighting Spirit Unleashed 2020 is upon us. This installment offers up a stronger card than last week, headlined by KENTA defending his IWGP U.S. Title challenge contract against Jeff Cobb. Let’s get into it.

ACH & TJP Def. Adrian Quest & Logan Riegel

We know how great ACH and TJP are, Adrian Quest has looked really nice in his several Strong matches, and Logan Riegel–although only being on Strong once– looked solid enough. The expectations were pretty high for this, but it blew those expectations out of the water. These four put on about as good of a 10-minute tag match as you can, especially in an empty arena. A great balance between fun high flying, technical prowess and good striking mixed in with some pretty exciting near falls. ACH has been the MVP of Strong in my opinion and should be on the next flight to Japan when allowed to receive a serious junior heavyweight push. ***3/4

Rocky Romero Def. Danny Limelight 

There really isn’t much to say about this one. It was a good, solid match that allowed Limelight to look strong in defeat and gave Rocky another win. No negatives to say about it, but this wasn’t following the hot opener. ***

Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa Def. David Finlay & PJ Black

This is the Guerrillas of Destiny that I like, when they let their athleticism and charisma do the talking. Combined with the fantastic babyface selling from Finlay and the high flying from Black, it made for another pretty good tag team match. I like this mini feud between Finlay and Bullet Club and am looking forward to seeing how he overcomes them. ***1/4

IWGP U.S. HEAVYWEIGHT Championship RIGHT TO CHALLENGE CONTRACT: KENTA © Def. Jeff Cobb

The work and the story were really good, however this was the wrong type of match to have in this setting. With a crowd, Cobb trying to overcome a bad knee and the Bullet Club would’ve made for some good drama. They did hook me to the point that I thought Cobb was going to overcome the odds and was legit annoyed when Chase pulled the ref out, so I have to give it points for that. I’m looking forward to what these two can do in the G1 in front of actual people. This is a tricky one to rate because I know this would’ve been around the 4 star mark with a hot crowd, but to no one’s fault, it didn’t.  ***1/2

Final Thoughts

In my opinion, this was the best episode of Strong so far and is worth the watch from start to finish. The next mini-season of episodes is called Lion’s Break Crown and begins next week, so I’m looking forward to seeing what that entails.