Shota Umino & Ren Narita def. Yuya Uemura & Yota Tsuji – fun Young Lions match to open the show, with a really nice bridging front suplex from Narita for the win.
Minoru Suzuki, Taichi, TAKA Michinoku, Yoshinobu Kanemaru & El Desperado def. Jyushin Thunder Liger, Toa Henare, Tomoaki Honma, Yuji Nagata & Satoshi Kojima – standard Suzuki-gun multi-man tag match, notable that Taichi won again with his new submission move.
Dragon Lee, Toru Yano & Togi Makabe def. Taiji Ishimori, Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa – the best parts were the interactions between Lee and Ishimori, Yano got a rollup pin on Loa to continue the tag title feud.
Mikey Nicholls def. Chase Owens – they both tried, but the crowd was dead and the match was very average.
Hirooki Goto & Ryusuke Taguchi def. Jay White & Hikuleo – weird tag team combinations, Goto got the win over Hikuleo to build up to the White vs. Goto match at Hi no Kuni.
Tetsuya Naito, EVIL, SANADA, BUSHI & Shingo Takagi def. Kazuchika Okada, SHO, YOH, Tomohiro Ishii & YOSHI-HASHI – fun ten-man tag match that highlighted the upcoming Jr. Tag Title match, and the EVIL vs. Ishii, and Okada vs. SANADA matches, Naito pinned YOSHI-HASHI with a Destino.
IWGP US Title Match
Juice Robinson def. Bad Luck Fale – slow match that was built around Juice trying to overcome his injured back to slam Fale, finally Juice won with a Pulp Friction.
IWGP Intercontinental Title Match
Kota Ibushi def. Zack Sabre Jr. – decent main event, which Ibushi won with a Kamigoye to move ahead to 3-2 in New Japan matches against ZSJ.
This was the first Sengoku Lord show that New Japan has run, replacing the Sakura Genesis show in between the New Japan Cup and Wrestling Dontaku in Fukuoka in May. Nagoya is usually a good crowd for wrestling shows, and New Japan drew over 4,700 fans to the Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium for this show. However, this show lacked the intensity of Sakura Genesis shows in the past, and ended up as an eminently skippable filler show.
The highlights of the show bookended the card – the Young Lions’ match at the start and then Ibushi vs. ZSJ in the main event for the Intercontinental Title. Uemura and Tsuji finally broke their run of time-limit draws on the Road to Wrestling Dontaku tour, with Tsuji getting the first win of the pair, then Uemura levelling the score before Tsuji took a 2-1 lead after the third show. On this card the two teamed together against the older Young Lion team of Umino and Narita, but they had a strong showing in defeat. Both Tsuji and Uemura have come on in leaps and bounds since their debuts, and Tsuji particularly looks great as a bigger, power fighter Young Lion. Given the hierarchy of Young Lions the result of this match was never in doubt, but the younger team had some good hope spots, and Narita won with a beautiful front bridging suplex.
The main event between Ibushi and Sabre was also a solid match, between two wrestlers who have good chemistry together. Coming into this match both men had a 2-2 record – Sabre with two victories in the New Japan Cup and Ibushi with two in the G1 Climax. In this match they took advantage of their previous meetings in countering each other’s signature spots, something that Sabre is always good at doing. As the match went on it devolved into a striking battle, which favoured Ibushi although Sabre did hit a big Zack Driver and try to work over the head and neck with his submission holds. Ibushi missed the Bomaye, and the first Kamigoye attempt, but finally he was able to counter Sabre’s submission into a Kamigoye for the three count. I generally enjoy seeing Ibushi go up against Sabre, and this match was worth checking out if you’re a fan of either. After the match Naito came to the ring to challenge Ibushi, again. Their matches are always good, but we literally just saw this match at the start of April. I guess they can stretch it out until Dominion, but it’s a tired move to go straight back to this rematch again.
The rest of this show was unremarkable to say the least. The other two singles matches on the card were not great, although at least the crowd was invested in Juice Robinson trying to overcome Bad Luck Fale. The story of the match was Fale targeting Juice’s back so that he couldn’t bodyslam him, which led to lots of slow Fale beatdowns. Fale just really doesn’t seem particularly motivated and the long sections of this match that he spent on offense were quite bad. Finally Juice managed to overcome the punishment he had taken and slam Fale, then hit a Pulp Friction for the win. I’m glad Juice won here and got a chance to defend his title since New Japan have booked the US Title quite terribly, but Fale needs a really top opponent to produce anything like a good match these days. Unfortunately the other match between Mikey Nicholls and Chase Owens didn’t even have the crowd invested, beyond the very end of the match when Chase nearly hit a package piledriver. It’s clear that the crowd don’t care about Nicholls at all yet. He’s been put in a bad spot by debuting in the New Japan Cup when no one knew anything about him, but he hasn’t really given the crowd much to care about either. Hopefully he can win the crowd over – and being in a tag team would probably help – but this was a very average match.
The tag matches on the show were fine for the most part, with the highlight being the ten-man CHAOS and Los Ingobernables de Japon match. The matches were mostly used to further storylines for the future – GOD vs. Makabe and Yano, Goto vs. White, Roppongi 3K vs. Shingo and BUSHI, EVIL vs. Ishii, and SANADA vs. Okada. That’s not a bad thing per se, but given that there was only one good singles match on this card it had the feeling of a glorified Road To show rather than a major event. The card for Wrestling Dontaku looks more promising at least, with a number of interesting matches booked for those shows. The multi-man tag matches in New Japan are fine for setting up future storylines, but they’re no substitute for good singles matches on a big show.
Overall, this is a show to skip unless you really like Kota Ibushi and Zack Sabre Jr. Save yourself the time of watching Fale go through the motions, and Owens and Nicholls battle against crowd apathy. Coming up on the Road to Wrestling Dontaku is Sengoku Emaki in Hiroshima on April 26th, which features Roppongi 3K defending against Shingo Takagi and BUSHI (again) and the Wrestling Hi no Kuni in Kumamoto, headlined by Goto vs. White. There are a lot of multi-man tag matches too though, so we will most likely have to wait until Wrestling Dontaku itself to get another standout show from New Japan. The G1 Supercard at the start of April ended up taking all the focus for the big matches, which makes sense, but it means that we’re now in a reset period before Dominion.
