New Japan Pro Wrestling
Sakura Genesis 2025
April 5 2025
Ryōgoku Kokugikan
Tokyo, Japan
Watch: NJPW World
Meet Our Reviewers
Neil David: Neil feels enthused to be back reviewing New Japan! He spent a lot of time stuck in the doldrums of BritWres, as he is wont to do, but is enjoying sticking his head above the parapet to give his thoughts on the action from the cerulean mat. He’s even happier today as he’s joined by his old comrade J Michael, a writer without peer. You can follow Neil on Blue Sky if you like – @neil-david.bsky.social – but he doesn’t know his password.
J. Michael: J. Michael’s recent dreams have included an hours-long stretch of him deliberating at an ice cream shop over which flavor to get, and putting away the laundry. So, if you’re wondering where the mundanity of his writing comes from, it’s because, when his mind enters the limitless space of dreams, when it can paint any picture it can, it went to ice cream and laundry. You can’t follow him anymore, because he finally had enough of the app run by the guy ruining America in his yearning for the days of apartheid. You should follow Neil, and encourage him to write more.
A Look at the Jr. Genesis Main Event
We are only reviewing the main event, although Jr. Genesis was an excellent show, including:
- An excellent debut for MAO, who I deemed the missing ingredient
- A somewhat moving, somewhat stupid, and entirely wonderful match between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Ryusuke Taguchi
- A MAGNIFICENT 4.4 star match between the Ichiban Sweet Boys and the War Dogs team of Taiji Ishimori and Robbie X, for the ISB’s Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship.
- The Sweet Boys had one of the best NJPW matches of the year in the SJTL Final back in the fall of 2024, and they will probably be competing against themselves all year in this division.
- Robbie X looked tremendous, and his exclusion from the BOSJ field is baffling. Do we really need BUSHI in it, and his relentless competence, when Robbie X could have significantly better matches and eat as many losses as needed?
- Eagles and Fujita are unbelievably great in the tornado sequences. Their fluidity and precision is off-the-charts. They should just hold the belts all year, and be sent around the world to highlight the depth and ungodly levels of talent in this division.
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship – Hardcore Match
El Desperado (c) def. Clark Connors
Many will balk at the 40 minute runtime, or find themselves literally frightened by it. And while I can’t dispute that it does drag in the second half, mainly because the exhausted crowd loses steam considerably until the final 5-7 minutes, this match was an astounding feat for both wrestlers. It was an oddly thoughtful and adroitly constructed match of intense barbarity, savage intransigence, creative sadism, and outright mayhem.
It will be fairly compared/contrasted with Desperado’s dream match from a month ago, the Fluorescent Light & Glass Board Xtreme Three Way Death match at the Barb Sasaki show, against Jun Kasai and Masashi Takeda, the Matisse and Degas of gut-churching professional wrestling. That match was a bloody masterpiece, with Despy at full Muta Scale, and walking out of the match with the mutilated body he always desired. Just a few years ago, the only real scar on Despy was the one he got from the de-masking BOSJ final with Hiromu in 2020. El Desperado now joins the ranks of the Suzu Suzuki, Rina Yamashita, etc as the Beautiful People with Maimed Backs.
This match had none of the explicit bloodshed, to the dismay of the participants, it seems, as Connors at one point looked in perplexed frustration at the lack of haemoglobin on his hands and just started pushing his forehead, to no avail. And perhaps, for some, that lack of vermillion spirits will detract from the match. But that would be overlooking the bounty of outrageously brilliant work that happened in this contest.
In the preview of Jr Genesis that John and I wrote for the site, I spent an excessive amount of words hyping up the emergent Desperado-Connors rivalry. I’ve written before about Desperado’s connection to Kota Ibushi, his generation-defining conflict with Hiromu Takahashi, and the overlooked genius of his series with Taiji Ishimori. Desperado, amongst several others, captures the essence of New Japan long-term storytelling, which is building these profound relationships through years-long series of altercations. El Desperado vs. Clark Connors is reaching the precipice of joining that list. One of the things I noted about their previous match-ups was the ferocity with which they did everything; they do not hold back on anything. In particular, the way they whip each other into the chairs. Maybe it was because BOSJ 2023 was replete with that spot in seemingly every match (easy to do with entire sections entirely empty), but Connors and Despy were dialed up to a 10 when no one else cared enough to muster anything beyond a 4.5.
We certainly saw that on display in this match, in various forms. Of course, the way they threw themselves into the chairs was immaculately feral, just an incredibly reckless display of dedication. But, it was the way they used those kendo sticks, the most banal of hardcore devices, that took this match to another level. For those of us in the English-speaking world, we’ve reached our fourth decade with these things, the 30 year anniversary of ECW incorporating them in 1994, at the time a bit of very topical humor about a dumb American kid getting punished for being dumb in Singapore. Now, it’s probably best known for being the answer to the question: why do we have to listen to Tommy fucking Dreamer in 2025? The answer: he got over by getting beaten to a pulp by one of those canes.
The way Connors decimated Despy with the sticks was abhorrent and captivating. In a time where headshots are so taboo, he blistered Desperado’s crown with incredibly swift and powerful swings. It was such a massacre that it inspired a legitimately moving moment where a young Desperado fan took off his Despy mask and started screaming, imploring Desperado to fight through the agonizing brutality. The kid was so voluminous that he caught the eye of Connors, who went over and grabbed the youth by his collar. The crowd gasped. And laughed, honestly. This was a funny match, in a way.
It was these moments that more than made up for the lack of bloodshed. “Sanguinary,” as a word, might be related to literal blood itself, and derives from it, but it is most often used as a temperament, someone murderously aggressive, someone bloodthirsty. This match lacked the blood, but it was sanguinary as fuck. That was in full display as Connors tied Despy’s hands together around the ringpost (with his 100 proof branded belt, adjusted so the camera had a full view of his logo), and annihilated him with the kendo stick. He then unleashed the most ghastly spot in the match, when he poured his liquor onto Despy’s wounds. And the camera did, indeed, manage to zoom in on an open, oozing wound that was fucking grisly. He poured his goddamn alcohol into that, and Despy took it, the sick fucks.
A later spot highlights why Desperado is, unquestionably, one of the greatest babyfaces in the current wrestling landscape. One thing to note, historically, is that Desperado’s move towards Hontai babyface was a gradual, years-long process. First, Suzuki-gun endeared themselves to the audience by showing empathy and friendship towards one another. Then, near their dissolution and certainly afterwards, Desperado started wrestling against the heels, but did not meekly accept the diablerie thrown at him; if someone poked him in the eye, he poked back, and he was still very keen on fucking people up with chairs. That part of his game has largely disappeared; he doesn’t need those tactics when the fans are mostly invested in nicer, more sporting fare like his pristine legwork.
However, he will still fuck you up, if you try to fuck him up and fuck up. Clark Connors took a Desperado towel from a ringside fan, wrapped it around his liquor bottle, and smashed it against the ring post. This might have been the most demented choice in the match, since glass went everywhere, and undoubtedly hit some fans. Connors took the remnants and intended to actually bottle Desperado like it was fucking Trainspotting up in here, but Despy blocked and took possession of the glass weapon. He then tied up Connors and asked him three times whether Connors would submit, which is a wonderful allusion to the time in the bible when Jesus shanked Peter with a shard from a red-figured Greek krater after being denied three times. Connors told Desperado to go fuck himself, a callback to Despy’s verbiage when Connors had him tied to the ringpost earlier. And so Despy, like all good babyfaces, completely fucked up the heel in a horrific manner. Turnabout is always fair play.
By the way, here’s a fun stat. The first pinfall of the match occurred at the 4:13 mark, right after Despy did that cool spot where he bodyslammed Connors on a chair, with the chair on Connors back the whole time. The next pin came TWENTY-THREE minutes and twenty-six second later, after Desperado, having recovered from the kendo shots and being powerbombed through a bunch of chairs, hit… a vertical suplex. This match was really fucking hilarious, too. Connors’ first pinfall came after he stomped Desperado facefirst into some barbed wire, 26:47 into the match. In total, there were only nine pinfall attempts in the 37:53 match, which might be normal for a hardcore death match, I guess, but it was the 8th pin that deserves some attention.
It may seem pedestrian compared to the rest of the match, but Despy hit a goddamn spinebuster from the top rope to the floor, through two tables. It may be the same mechanics, essentially, as a powerbomb, but a spinebuster through tables off the top rope to the floor is pretty fucking cool. When Desperado rolled Connors back in, Connors feebly lifted a shoulder at 2.8, in the process flipping Desperado off and sending us to the endgame.
That moment was also special because, as was shown in the pre-match video package, it was Despy’s brazen act of flipping off Connors during their match at last year’s BOSJ that sent 100 Proof into a psychotic rampage, leaving Desperado a lifeless pile of skin and muscle. That’s why I am convinced that this could be a memorable feud, historically. These little callbacks, allusions, and references, and the way that they have been able to retain the best parts of their matches while building new sequences, are the genetic code to a great rivalry.
To show how much this match was densely packed with mental spots and ideas, I only mentioned the barbed wire before, and yet these two lunatics wrapped their hands in the wire and did a Frye-Takayama spot. When you look at Desperado’s best feuds, and honestly, the best rivalries in this company, there’s some kind of spark between the participants, the kind of thing that sets both puro-freak’s and pujoshi’s hearts into overdrive. In this case, Connors and Desperado have that chemistry you see in some feuds where they exhibit a kind of fraternal kinship, that they relish the competition.
In this case, in nearly all segments of the match, from the chest-slapping beginning to the kendo fight in the crowd to the barb wire atrocities, they had beaming smiles. John Rawls, I wish you were still alive to see this, the tangible manifestation of your theories of justice and fairness at play. What we had here were two dojo-bred technicians gleefully indulging their maniacal egos, encouraging each other and relishing every second. This isn’t like how Connors and Moloney aligned through shared sensibilities; these two simply cannot be allies. That would limit their chances to destroy each other, and they simply could not allow that. This was wrestling as playing, and for that, I’m glad this was a hardcore match.
For all great rivalries, you need this level of profundity in the relationship. And, of course, you need a landmark match. Here, they delivered one, a nearly flawless masterpiece; the only things that bring it down slightly (and I mean, I’m giving it a 4.9/5.0) is that it dragged a bit when things were being set up (normal for any hardcore match, of course, but still a drag), and the crowd losing energy at times in the latter half, simply because they could not physically maintain the level of hysterics for 37 straight minutes. ****9/10
Kick-Off Match
Katsuya Murashima def. Daiki Nagai
Neil: I really hope Murashima has his excursion with RevPro. Primarily, it’s because I quite like him and would love to see him live at such an early point in his career. However, there is an altruistic reason for wanting him in the UK: he’d bloody love chippies. Americans may disagree, but I don’t think anybody deep fries a carbohydrate like the British. My only slight misgiving is that RevPro are primarily based in the south, and it’s common knowledge that chippies improve as you travel north. The north of England is probably the sweet point for most. We’ve recognised the need for moisture and offer classic options like gravy, curry sauce and mushy peas. It’s not uncommon to find a vat of beef dripping for everything to bubble in. He could, of course, travel further north to Scotland. That’s where the best chippies are, but their esoteric nature is probably best saved for when experience gifts a more finely tuned appreciation of their deep fried anythings.
This was a Young Lions match, and both men looked promising. Murashima has a great powerslam and wrenched his crabs in like he should. **½
Special Singles Match
Yuya Uemura Def. SANADA
Neil: I would love to believe J Michael’s assertion that SANADA is some kind of anti-wrestling savant, deconstructing our very notion of professional wrestling from the inside. It would be lovely to think that someone can take an art form and stretch it to breaking point, like Stewart Lee did with comedy or Mark E Smith did with music.
Unfortunately, SANADA just isn’t that. He represents men who are very good looking and nothing else. He is a beige carpet of a man, who thinks that having personality comes from wacky outfits. He looks like he is reminding himself to breathe in and breathe out.
This pairing was particularly interesting, as both SANADA and Uemura have that disgustingly handsome matinee idol look. It would have been nice to tell a story of a SANADA that sees some of himself in the young upstart and uses the fire that lights to push himself to prove he still has it. Unfortunately, SANADA just did his moves like he always does.
I’m very excited about Uemura, and this match was another example of the potential that he has. SANADA, for all his faults, is very good at Snakepit-esque chain wrestling and Uemura was more than capable of holding his own. He rolled around to maintain wristlocks and grabbed armbars out of body slams. In general, there was some bloody good wrestling here.
I enjoyed SANADA using Milano Collection AT as a foreign object, but he tended to slow this match down to a plod. It speaks volumes that the crowd only seemed to appear when Yuya was dropping big kicks and giving them some dynamism.
Of course, we got a ref bump and a low blow. Uemura got the win and it did feel slightly flukey. Ultimately it won’t matter as this was just a stepping stone for him to challenge Tsuji later in the show. Hopefully he can leave SANADA firmly in the rear view. ***¼
J. Michael: If anything, I think this supports my thesis, and Neil’s real world comps are brilliant. SANADA probably thought it would be amusing to have a normal match, after so much utter drivel, and have the match end on a flash submission just as it was gaining momentum. Considering that he wore a shirt and pants decorated with metallic dot candy, and then came out later in firetruck red ski boots (which my wife tells me were a trendy fashion a few years ago), it’s very clear that SANADA is, intentionally, a very unserious person. He’s very much the Japanese Wrestling David Bromstad (to be clear, the bearded, neck-tatted My Lottery Dream Home David Bromstad). At the very least, his work is exponentially more tolerable if you delude yourself into thinking that. I, though, am a true believer in my own theories. I think we might need to belt up HOUSE OF TORTURE SANADA, honestly.
This was a technical affair, mostly, but there’s one spot I wanted to highlight, to show just how amazing Yuya Uemura is at everything, especially the minutiae. We all know that SANADA has a great trademark sequence in which he does two leapfrogs, one facing his opponent and one blind, followed by a dropkick and plancha to the floor. Most of the time, guys end up watching SANADA load up on the plancha. This is a common complaint from people that need things to fret about, that guys watch their opponents load up on moves, especially aerial ones. You know, either the matwork-fet group or the people that post old wrestling match-list flyers from the 1950’s. And they are correct, it is weird when guys just stare, Fire in the Sky yokels-transfixed-on-descending-mothership, for 3-5 seconds as someone flips, twists, or sprints towards them. I mean, the alternative is that they don’t pay attention and everyone gets hurt, but these austere motherfuckers pine for the days when a splash to the corner was enough for a pinfall.
Anyway, Uemura stumbled around a bit, coming into position at the exact precise moment SANADA would be launching himself. Then, instead of the usual crumble, he flung backwards into the guardrail. It was one of the best sells on that move in recent memory, and about as well as it gets. It reminds me of that match between Taichi and Will Ospreay from New Beginning 2023. Those are two guys who have a lot of load-up time for moves, especially Ospreay. But they had such trust and confidence in their abilities and experience, that they was essentially no instances of either one watching the other load up a move. It’s a sign of maturity and thoughtfulness, someone who thinks of how the audience sees a match. Uemura showed that ability in that one instance.
One more note on SANADA’s brilliant comic mind. He’s been fucking with the announcers recently. For instance, on the 3/16 New Japan show, SANADA clearly showed his reverence for Steve Austin by completely dismantling the Japanese announcer situation. First, he whipped EVIL, his new faction leader, into guest Tanahashi, and then later EVIL and SANADA somehow found Milano Collection A.T. in the outskirts of the crowd and whipped themselves into him. On the 4/2 Road to Sakura Genesis show (his final War Dog tag, in the end), he whipped Uemura into Milano, with Milano screaming “NANDE?!” several times in a row.
Here he simply dragged Uemura to Milano, with the commentary desk barely a leg’s stretch in front of the first row, and slammed Uemura’s head into Milano’s back. Then he did the thing where he puts his finger to his ear to soak in the crowd response. I can’t fully describe the look of nodding self-satisfaction of SANADA’s face when he did it, but if you go back and watch anything from this show after reading this review, please, I beg of you, to go back and watch that one moment. It’s at 14:14. Right after, Uemura chopped SANADA, who went backwards and wiped out Milano again, thus making Uemura an accomplice, and probably not an unwilling one.
Either way, SANADA is the funniest person alive, Yuya Uemura is still the chosen one, and now that Yuya is settled in his rightful position as the next leader of Hontai, the next decade is pretty much in place to be amazing. ***1/3
NJPW WORLD Television Championship
Great-O-Khan def. El Phantasmo (c)
Neil: I’ve come to really appreciate El Phantasmo recently. I’ve always enjoyed his work in RevPro and I think he’s generally had a good showing in New Japan. He’s a midcard act with a midcard title who puts together an interesting stories whilst wrestling right on the edge of his ability. I know that sounds like I’m damning him with faint praise, but let’s take this match as an example. There was action right from the bell, there was a dangerous leap from the ropes to the first row of seats and an incredibly effective story of a babyface battling an exploited injury.
I thought the finish was very good, with Great-O-Khan smashing ELP’s injured shoulder onto a chair and leaving him outside for the court-out. The smash came around the 14-count so we didn’t have to sit through an age of waiting, but was just long enough for use to will ELP back into the ring.
This was just bloody good pro-wrestling in a neat eleven minute package. ***½
J. Michael: I really like ELP. I listed some things that have been weird about his development in the last two years in the Sakura Genesis preview, but he’s very likable. I didn’t think his match with TJP was on the level of the NJC main event, but it was a really great match that I felt comfortably putting in the four-star level.
I was a bit thrown by the indifference towards the ELP-GOK Cup match, which I thought was a decently enjoyable match. I’m inclined to over-rate GOK’s work, but I thought their chemistry was fine. They focused on ELP’s right arm, which led to a cool spot where ELP did a tope with his damaged arm tucked away. Eventually, GOK hit a TTD to the floor, which should be the end of any match, but ELP made it back into the ring at the 19-count (Shota Umino did the same three days later). They wrestled a few more minutes, and the work was fluid and engaging to watch. ELP’s arm gave out trying to get GOK up for the CRII, and Khan ran through his usual closing sequence to finish the match. They did set the arm aspect aside for a while, but whatever.
ELP came in with a KT’d right shoulder, and that played into various parts of the match. He came out incandescently as Neil described, then GOK took over with grappling and power throws. Whenever ELP tried to turn the tide, his arm gave out. He did still flash the typical ELP cleverness, escaping from that thing GOK does where he sits on the guys neck like a throne, which might be the first time anyone’s actually escaped that royal sentence.
The sequences here were sharp as fuck. They were stiff with the striking, especially GOK, and ELP sold the arm the entire match, although the typical ELP excessiveness came into play when Jado apparently, I don’t know… popped his shoulder back into place or something? I’m pretty sure Jado has no formal educational training in anything, so most likely the match should have ended there, almost certainly with an old time doctor with one of those leather bags coming into the ring with a bottle of ether, a rag, a bullet to bite on, and a handsaw.
Things really break down when we reached the morality play in which Jado stopped both GOK and ELP from using a chair on each other, followed by GOK administering a TTD on ELP through some chairs. Apparently the chairs was the missing ingredient from the previous times GOK has obliterated people’s spines with that move to a concrete floor. Unfortunately, this sequence shows the difference in why El Desperado is a babyface that gets the responses of a main eventer, and why ELP is a babyface that gets inconsistent reactions. El Desperado would have used that fucking chair. This isn’t necessarily ELP’s fault, but it feels like his work in the ring has sharpened as he’s recovered from his cancer scare and his hiatus. Endings like this make him look foolish, although it does make GOK look cool. If you’re paying attention, GOK is getting more cheers and chants, so it looks like that G1 Climax/Naito Title Challenge run last summer/fall actually has paid off. ***2/5
Hiroshi Tanahashi Final Road ~Connection~
Shota Umino def. Hiroshi Tanahashi
Neil: This might sound like a crazy statement, but I enjoyed Umino’s work in this match more than I did in the New Japan Cup final. Perhaps it was because the weight of judgement wasn’t as heavy here. We all know that Tanahashi is broken down, with the knee injuries that affected so many G1s finally catching up with him. Just seeing Tanahashi is enough; his CV is peerless and his aura is timeless. Nobody really expected Umino to come out and have a banger with Tanahashi, so we were able to just watch.
In the end, Umino gave me more to chew on here than he ever has before. As the closing stretches of the match thundered forward, I loved the way he would almost tour the ring with his arms outstretched. Was he looking to the crowd for approval? Or was he challenging them to boo him as he decimated the beloved veteran? He spent a lot of the match going after the older man’s broken knees and smashing him in the back of the head. There was a viciousness that challenged the viewer to actually have a well formed opinion about Shota, beyond the artificial echo chamber that has surrounded him since day one.
There was a series of suplexes, where Shota repeatedly dropped Tanahashi on his head but the Ace of The Universe kept standing up. Whether he has knees, whether Shota is good, whether he joins Hontai, wins, loses, draws… that’s timeless wrestling.
Of course, Shota will always Shota. He found his viciousness in the match, but then left the ring too early and had to be told to get back in by the ref. It’s a constant tug-of-war with him. He reminds me of a boring essay from university. I can think about Shota all day long, but my takes will always be passionless. He just doesn’t inspire much interest.
This is compounded by his confused booking. There’s nothing wrong with him having some trepidations about joining Hontai, but where do these trepidations come from? What does he even want from wrestling? He feels like a ball of nothing.
To skip to the end, Goto challenged Umino after the main event. Why? I’m not too sure. Umino didn’t seem particularly excited for it and neither did the crowd. More on that later… ***3/4
J. Michael: I’m glad Neil went through granular things like sequences and match dynamics so exquisitely, because I am also fucking exhausted already with thinking about Shota. I’m enjoying the development, I’m excited to see how everything unfolds through the G1 Climax, where I presume something seismic will occur (if it doesn’t happen before), but I am fucking done thinking about his story. Or another World title shot in America. Fuck all of that. Sure, he made the New Japan Cup finals, but he also received the most undeserved Wrestle Kingdom title shot we’ve ever seen. Fuck it.
On the other end, Neil and others have noted how Umino is hitting motherfuckers really hard lately, and that is the development that deserves the most attention right now. Amongst Shita’s generation, of this youth movement, only Gabe Kidd lays it in, and knows how to lay it in when it matters. I heavily heaped praise on Yuya Uemura earlier, and he does pretty well in this area, but that double-chop thing he does when charging the corner, a trademark of his that he did so well last year, has looked abysmal since he returned. Half the time he only connects with one hand and you can barely hear it. I’m pretty sure he missed SANADA entirely in their match on this card. Tsuji’s rightfully been praised for that chop he laid into Gabe Kidd at New Beginning, one that literally stopped the match for a standing ovation, but it’s not like he was known to blister opponents previously. Ren Narita’s weak and sucks. Ryohei Oiwa’s actually very good with this, but it feels like he’s not going full strength, like there’s more he could put behind his strikes. Kosei Fujita absolutely rules at this, so he’s the exception at the moment. This is another one of those things where Konosuke Takeshita stormed into the company and made everyone look inferior.
And that goes for Shota above all others, because he definitely looked somewhat impotent in the striking game. Sometimes he’d really lay in a good shot, but most of the time they looked perfunctory. That’s certainly changed now that this buff version of Umino emerged, post-disgrace. He looked great here challenging Tanahashi, and the crowd, to respond to his demeanor and his presence. Ultimately, this was the best Tanahashi match of 2025 thus far. ***3/5
NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship
HOUSE OF TORTURE (SHO, Ren Narita, and Yujiro Takhashi) (C) Def. BULLET CLUB WAR DOGS (Gabe Kidd, Taiji Ishimori, and Drilla Moloney)
Neil: What do you want me to say? I feel like a broken record at this point. The House of Torture are the worst. This match was never going to be the end of the feud, so we knew what we were getting going in. We got weapons, low blows and general House of Torture bullshit. Perhaps more egregiously, we got a complete waste of Gabe Kidd and Dan Moloney.
There was a glorious moment when Kidd slapped the teeth out of Ren Narita and then stared at him. He dared him to fight back without a single word. It’s in those moments that Kidd shines, and this feud gives him scant opportunities to do so. Rubbish. **
J. Michael: You can forgive Neil, who is returning to the New Japan fold, for being unfamiliar with the majestic changes that have made HOT good recently. Unfortunately, those things were not on display here, because this 6-man tag sees the best of HOT (SHO) paired with the worst of HOT, and the entire company (Yujiro Takahashi and Ren Narita).
Oddly enough, even though Ren Narita is utter garbage, he might be the best seller in the company, which was on display in this match. Neil noted the best example of that: when Gabe Kidd leveled him with a catastrophic slap. Neil is right to give so much credit to Kidd for how amazing that moment came across, but take a good, long look at Narita during it as well. His sell was as crucial as Kidd’s presence. Unfortunately, Narita then turned the tide with a typically underwhelming move.
Thankfully, the War Dogs guys have a bounty of cool moves, which fit the 6-man format well, especially when 2/3rds of the other side have some of the lamest offense imaginable, and no one ever responds to anything they do. It also contained at least 3-4 separate instances of SHO doing that thing where he covers his mouth in a cartoonish laugh, which always manages to make up for how unfathomably pathetic his partners end up being.
This one moved swiftly along and never dragged. Now HOT is even better with SANADA in the fold, and the War Dogs don’t get dragged down with this title. Because as much as I’d have loved for them to win the titles, each of the three are better served elsewhere. ***1/4
NEVER Openweight Championship
Konosuke Takeshita (c) def. Ryohei Oiwa
Neil: I’m as guilty as anyone for scratching my chin and appreciating when wrestlers “let things breathe” but it’s bloody good when they don’t. I don’t necessarily mean flips, as cool as they are. I mean two wrestlers going for each other right from the bell and trying to hurt each other.
I accidentally made the time bar pop up just after the entrances. I saw that the match was a pithy ten minutes and wondered if someone got injured. That wasn’t the case: they just had a concise match that ticked all of my boxes.
The two men were absolutely glued together for the majority of this match. They really sold the fact that this was a contest, and it felt like the ending could come at any moment. There’s nothing better than that feeling for me; I couldn’t take my eyes off the TV.
So many moments in this subverted expectations. Escape attempts were foiled and moves were reversed in the nick of time. Oiwa’s limb work never felt trite or forced. It was focused, and so was I.
Oiwa wasn’t perfect – he had to be told to tighten up a sleeper at one point – but this feels like a proper push. It was a textbook elevation in defeat.
The ending of this match was a cavalcade of violence. They stood in the ring and smashed each other. It wasn’t calculated. It was purely instinctual and animalistic. Takeshita’s selling was interesting in that he seemed to reach a point where he ran on rails, fighting because he is a person who fights and that’s deep in the core of his soul. His eyes were glazed over but his limbs knew exactly what to do.
This was a great match, and is definitely worth seeking out. ****¼
J. Michael: Neil covered it all beautifully, so I just want to point out the parts of the match that show how impossibly extraordinary Takeshita is at every aspect of professional wrestling, the best in the world for sure, and why Oiwa proved in this match that the hype was indeed credible and justified, and that he will be a match machine himself very soon:
- Early on in the match, Oiwa took the advantage, so Takeshita foggily rolled out of the ring. HOWEVER, Oiwa anticipated this and actually rolled out of the ring faster and met Takeshita on the floor
- Takeshita turned the tide on the floor and hit a nasty running boot, with such momentum that Takeshita toppled over the guardrail. The replayed this spot, and just think about that. Consider all the running boots that Yujiro Takehashi does in him matches, with all the set-up and patience in building the anticipation, and then no one cares because it looks pedestrian as fuck. They replayed a running boot, that’s how fucking awesome Konosuke Takeshita is… and it looked amazing on replay, too!
- Oiwa got the crowd to gasp and cheer in delight when he held onto a Takeshita bodyslam, pulled his opponent to the mat and re-applied an armlock. Think of the level of connection, and the credibility imbued in a wrestler, where they could get that type of reaction for a technical spot like that. Oiwa already has that.
- On the subject of replays, Takeshita hit a seismic superplex on Oiwa. Superplexes are so commonplace now, but this was so so technically flawless, with Takeshita holding the suplex just a little bit on the lift, that it rocked the crowd, and looked even better on replay, yet again. These two didn’t do anything revolutionary in this match, and yet they had people mesmerized because they are just too goddamn good at it.
- Oiwa’s kick-out at one got another big reaction. Kicking out at one has been done to fucking death in this company lately, and often are so telegraphed that the response isn’t even to the kickout, but the follow-up that everyone is expecting. This one was fucking fantastic, though. I think it was the tempo of this one that set it apart. Takeshita hit a gnarly looking brainbuster, there was a pause, and then Oiwa emphatically kicked out at one, full leg kick and everything. It wasn’t part of a formulaic sequence, it happened in a legitimately unexpected place.
- There was an awesome moment where both of them went for a rolling elbow, but Oiwa beat Takeshita to the punch. Oiwa’s big mistake, though, was targeting the left arm, because he left the most dangerous weapon in wrestling free to utilize: Konosuke Takeshita’s right elbow. That led to the endgame
I don’t think Oiwa lost anything in coming up shirt here, even though he is now 0-3 in title matches, and has now twice lost in contention for this championship. He’s still only six months back from “excursion.” As this match clearly showed, the future is in good hands, especially with Takeshita around ****1/4
IWGP Tag Team Championship
United Empire (Jeff Cobb and Callum Newman Def. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Tetsuya Naito and Hiromu Takahashi) (C)
Neil: While this match was very good, and I enjoyed many aspects of it, the booking has left me scratching my head a little bit. Cobb has made his free agent status quite public, and while it does smell very much like a worker negotiating in public, I would be tempted to call his bluff if I were New Japan. Newman is a useful man to have around, but I struggle to see him moving past the BUSHI role for United Empire.
Things can be booked and people can be moved, and none of those factors necessarily negate win for Cobb and Newman. My issue is Naito. Just before the bell rang, Hiromu danced like the loony he is and Naito looked stoic just behind him. It dawned on me that this was probably the perfect spot for him. He can still be a featured act, essential for a wrestler of his drawing ability, but it’s away from the main events that his body can’t quite cope with. Taking the tag belts from him may end up being a mistake. You can’t leave Naito off a big card, and the tag matches could book themselves.
Cobb’s heart didn’t seem to be in this. There were some great moments – battering Hiromu while staring at Naito was a standout – but he seemed half a step slower than normal. A lot of his work didn’t have the same height or snap.
Interestingly, Newman got the pin over Naito which is a clear elevation. We’ll see what happens going forward, but I’ve not seen much from him recently that would warrant it. ***¾
J. Michael: The most disappointing aspect of Callum Newman’s match with Naito last month was in comparison to his World Tag League run. In World Tag League 2024, Newman looked sharp, intense, and capable. He looked fast, which he should seeing as his gimmick is “I watched Dragongate as a kid so I want to do that somewhere beside Dragongate,” but his striking has snap and power behind it, and he seemed adept at moving in and out of space in the typical New Japan tornado tag.
When he came back, I had hoped that WTL Newman would present itself against Naito. What that match confirmed for me was that, at this stage in his career, maybe Callum Newman is better off developing in a tag team. This match confirmed that Newman can, indeed, look competent and even compelling in a tag environment. Because honestly, after that Naito match, it wasn’t even a given that he could navigate a tag team match adroitly, Because even taking into account Naito’s inform status, that Naito is literally a invalid being move by electronic impulses inside his body, being involuntarily induced by some sort of invisible laser machine operated by New Japan personnel (possibly the guy KENTA kept calling fatty), Newman was particular atrocious in the latter stages of that match.
I’m happy to say that Newman’s work here was well accomplished. His sequences with Hiromu were excellent, and with him in the driver’s seat, the endgame of the match was executed well. Those last few minutes with Naito were exponentially better than the entire New Japan Cup match.
Of course, he probably won’t have a tag partner much longer, or even a unit, so who knows how this development will progress. Jeff Cobb rules. This guy is so great, so preternaturally gifted, with such immaculate instincts, I’m stunned that people are handwaving his departure, as if he’s accomplished everything he could in New Japan. I’ve referenced this countless times, but the fact that he never got a run with the true secondary belt, or even one shot at the World title, is inconceivable. There’s plenty for him to do.
One thing, though, that I cannot say about his in-ring instincts is that they extend outside the ring. After the match, he mockingly wondered to the English broadcast team about his departure, clearly self-satisfied that he single-handedly beguiled the foolish internet losers like me, who writes this, and you (of equal number), who read what I write. I’m not sure exactly who reported Cobb’s potential departure, but I can take a good guess, and I’m guessing that I’d have to join the $5 patreon tier to read about it. And by “it,” I mean whatever the wrestler told them to say.
I’ve referenced this countless times, but the fact that he never got a run with the true secondary belt, or even one shot at the World title, is inconceivable. Cobb looked like a complete fucking fool with this nonsense, mocking a group of people that he made up in his head, who were unaware of something that he made up and planted and was reported by media, to a disaffected public. And, ultimately, will probably turn out to be true anyway.
That said, he looked awesome at every point in the match, having immense chemistry with both of his LIJ opponents. He bumped around for them, and tossed them around effortlessly.
But, most importantly, Naito and Hiromu were two for four with TENDEDERO, with one fake out that does not count against their total. Good, but I expect better than 50% from the #1 greatest move in professional wrestling history. *** 3/4
IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship
Yota Tsuji (c) def. King of Darkness EVIL
Neil: I used to like EVIL. Everybody has that one goth mate, and he was just that for LIJ. He’d give you a no nonsense, four star match which pretty much anybody. He was a big guy who did big guy moves and flashed some lasers around. We were happy.
Today, however, I don’t think anybody in the world has as much go-away heat as EVIL for me. He sees wrestling so differently from me, if it wasn’t reviewing the show I may have skipped this match.
The sad thing is, when this match was a straight one-on-one, without all the tired shenanigans, it was excellent. When Tsuji and EVIL were dropping big bombs on each other, I was invested.
Unfortunately, we had bait-and-switch twin brother spots, Kanemaru interferences, Dick Togo nonsense, Shingo saves, eye pokes, ref bumps… Anything good was diluted.
The live crowd clearly enjoyed this, but this was Eastenders and I’m a Coronation Street devotee.
Interestingly, Uemura made the challenge at the end and delivered a very good promo. He clearly stumbled over his words, but it elevated the promo. He felt like a young man ready to make his name and fight for something he’s passionate about. Tsuji has improved greatly for me over recent times, and has become much more settled with his charisma. This is certainly a match I can get excited for. **¾
J. Michael: I don’t take issue with Neil’s description, but I personally was not happy with LIJ EVIL. If anything, it was the expectation of four-star level matches, and the lack of them being produced, that soured me on him by 2018, especially after that dud G1 Climax he had. And, honestly, I loathed HOT right up until late 2024. I don’t think I was a delusional critic, and I especially wasn’t one of these austerity freaks, but I am a fan of things being good and worth watching, and HOT was not. It wasn’t an issue in 2022-2023; they lost all the time and weren’t booked highly. They were just a formulaic, insipid nuisance, a conveyor belt of the hackneyed, a rotating door of the uninspired. They were booked to excess in early 2024, and that should have pushed them to unforgivable lengths.
But now, EVIL is good, and I can explain why in three words: HAH HAH HAAAAHHHHH!
I’m probably even more obsessed with EVIL’s laugh than I am with the TENDEDERO nonsense, enough that I didn’t even mind the HOT act being put in the semi-main event of a major show. I mean, it’s just the semi-main, and Tsuji certainly deserves to be booked at that level, with this title, no matter the opponent.
And there were so many wonderful moments in this match. In fact, if you took that paragraph Neil wrote that began with, “Unfortunately, we had…,” and just replaced “Unfortunately” with “Thankfully,” my list would be the same. The return of the stuntman Tsuji twin, excellent leg selling from Tsuji (as set up on the 4/2 show), a hilarious Shingo save that ended up with him getting his taint rearranged, the highly proficient wrestling as Neil pointed out, and a gauntlet of powders and liquids backfiring on EVIL is ludicrous succession.
The problem though, is 21:24. All of this could have been accomplished quicker, tighter, and better. The twin magic stuff was funny, and took away the detrimental aspect to EVIL matches, which is people waiting for the interference. They got it right out of the way. But things really dragged between the Shingo save and the HOT Backfire gauntlet. But Tsuji looked good throughout, and the match with Uemura might truly shockwave us into the future. ***1/3
IWGP World Heavyweight Championship
Hirooki Goto (c) Def. David Finlay
Neil: So, Finlay didn’t win. In my review of the New Japan Cup final, I said a Finlay loss would be for the best, but now it’s happened I’m not so sure.
Like everybody, I love Goto being champion. It’s a testament to hard work, loyalty and power of being able to smash necks on your knee. However, we have to recognise this for what it is. It’s a temporary reign while some pieces are moved. It’s been an absolute success, and the crowd love their champion, but that good will can end like a car hitting a brick wall. It’s best to hit the brakes yourself.
I’m well aware that loving Finlay is the first test you have to pass to call yourself a true Shin Nihon Freak, but this match was an example of Finlay’s ceiling. It was four-star great, and I enjoyed watching it. Ultimately though, I see the cogs with Finlay too much for him to ever go beyond the challenger level. He was dominant for much of this match, which worked very well, but it worked because I believed that the first big run of Goto offence would finish him off.
From a macro view, however, Finlay winning made so much sense. He’s had the Gedo push and the time is ticking away with Goto. A classic IWGP establishing win, where a wrestler wins a title to tell the fans he can hang at the top, wouldn’t have been exciting but it would have been logical.
What actually happened, however, defied logic. Goto won and challenged the auraless Shota Umino. He walked to the ring in an embarrassment of denim and said sweet nothings to an apathetic (at best) crowd. Shota is a confusing character with no particular direction, and even an IWGP challenge couldn’t bring any clues as to what he is or what he wants. I’m mindful that a Goto exit strategy is needed, but I’m struggling to think of a worse option.
The match itself was very good, but I never really felt like Finlay was going to win once the bell rang. It felt like a placeholder defence for a dominant champion, despite the fact that Goto doesn’t really feel like a dominant champion. Finlay hasn’t gained much by losing here, and I almost wish they’d have taken a chance on a young upstart.
I’m an unapologetic work-rate nerd, but the booking is tripping over itself at the minute. It’s almost impressive how they’ve managed to make Shota seem completely directionless yet still have him escalating to the top of the card.
I’ll be watching Windy City Riot with great interest. ****
J. Michael: I don’t know what else to say but that I vehemently disagree with nearly everything Neil wrote, to a molecular level. I disagree with his assessment of the Goto title reign, which has once again produced an excellent house, an excellent match, and a super hot crowd.
As far as recognizing this title reign for what it is, I’ve already done that. It is an invigorating title run that has been a triumph in the ring, at the gate, and in our hearts. This is not a temporary reign, nor is it not a product of dearth. This is the product of a well-conditioned series of propitious circumstances, propelled by robust crowd responses. I don’t get this analogy at all, either; you’ll crash your car into a wall only if you direct it to the fucking wall. This isn’t like that at all. The Goto title reign is a joy ride that can last as long as you’d like, as long as you don’t run out of gas. At worst, you’re waiting at the nearest station or calling AAA and waiting several hours after they told you it’d be 45 minutes.
I don’t find anything offensive in the assessment of Finlay, an analysis that is true to many, though I do disagree as a matter of taste; if anything, this match just reiterated what an absolute gem he’s polished himself into, a true alchemist overflowing with incredible looking power offense, captivating charisma and ring presence, and a true sense of big match dynamics. It worked because he is a phenomenal talent, and he does everything exceptionally well.
One weird thing about Finlay, who is as brilliant and hypnotic in control as anyone in the industry right now: he is the most hold-less man alive. I swear, go back through his New Japan Cup run, and watch this match. Outside of the opening back-and-forth at the beginning of every match, the guy never slaps a hold on to kill time, or even wear down an opponent. He stalks the ring between moves and sequences, maybe does a little ground and pound, or whatever, but I can’t even remember the last time the guy put a headlock on someone.
Another reason it works: Finlay sells like a madman. Look at the way he absolutely throws himself into the ringposts during this match. I think only Desperado is the only one that can match the reckless ambition to create a memorable match through that spot. It’s that two-way ability that makes Finlay so effective; with any opponent, even bald-ass 2025 Shota fucking Umino, he’s able to extract incredible responses, because he entices the crowd to jeering disdain when he’s on offense, and ecstatic jubilation when he’s taking offense, because he makes you believe equally in both scenarios in the moment. When you put him in there with someone as magnetic and overwhelmingly lovable as Super Dad Hirooki Goto, you get crowd interaction like we saw here.
These guys have glorious chemistry because of that dynamic. Finlay brings out peak Goto, and Goto conjures peak Finlay. The table spot was incredible, so well structured, the building of anticipation and then that immense Death Valley Driver deal. And while I disagree with Neil’s assessment, he’s spot-on when he talks about the momentum of Goto’s offense. When Goto started to go on a run, the atmosphere was electric. Because, as much as Finlay has an astounding arsenal of moves, this is Hirooki fucking Goto, Mr. Awesome Move Man. He just does things that get crowds excited. And now, more than ever, they truly want to see him win, so everything is elevated, almost beyond comprehension. He broke out a Kaiten, for fuck’s sake. This title reign is just the greatest of all gifts.
Neil is my idol and writing hero, so it pained me to go after him like this, because I do agree with a couple of things. While I’m ecstatic that Goto won, I think Neil’s reasoning for why Finlay should have won is sound, even though I think an equal case could have been made for either man, which is why this match was so alluring. I also think Neil is accurate in his evaluation of the post-match, which saw Shota get booed the most he’s ever been booed outside of Osaka.
I wasn’t able to watch the backstage comments before we published the preview John and I wrote. We finished the piece days in advance, and the World-televised Road to SG show came late, only two days before Jr Genesis. If I had seen them, I never would have picked Finlay. When Goto started talking about how hate could never defeat love, and that love will always prevail over hate, I knew there was no chance that this living saint was going to lose.
But the way he won, where he just hit that Shoten Kai out of nowhere, then hit THREE GTR’s in succession. I absolutely adore the way Goto milks each one, with expert timing, like he did in the ZSJ match, one of the greatest endings to a match I’ve ever seen, and he used it to a nearly equal degree here. Just masterful. ****1/2
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