| Shota Umino, Ren Narita, Tomoaki Honma def. Yuya Uemura, Yota Tsuji, Toa Henare |
| Jeff Cobb, Ryusuke Taguchi, Jyushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask, YOSHI-HASHI def. TAKA Michinoku, Taichi, El Desperado, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Minoru Suzuki |
| Will Ospreay and Dragon Lee def. Hikuelo and Taiji Ishimori |
| Bad Luck Fale def. Mikey Nicholls |
| Juice Robinson def. Chase Owens |
| SANADA, EVIL, BUSHI, Shingo Takagi, Tetsuya Naito def. SHO, YOH, Kota Ibushi, Tomohiro Ishii, Kazuchika Okada |
| IWGP Tag Team Title Match: Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) def. Most Violent Players (Togi Makabe & Toru Yano) |
| Jay White def. Hirooki Goto |
Wrestling Hi no Kuni is one of the smaller New Japan shows in the run up to Wrestling Dontaku – this year they drew around 2,700 fans to Grand Messe Kumamoto. I understand the appeal of these shows to the local fans – especially since Kyushu doesn’t get a huge amount of big promotions coming through regularly – but the card for this year’s show wasn’t hugely inspiring. Jay White headlined against Hirooki Goto in a singles match, while Mikey Nicholls took on Bad Luck Fale and Juice Robinson took on Chase Owens. The other big match saw the Guerrillas of Destiny defend their IWGP Tag Team Titles against the Most Violent Players, Togi Makabe and Toru Yano.
The main event of this show between Goto and White was not one of my favourite matches this year, as it combined a lot of the worst aspects of NJPW main event style – slow build up, interference, and some ridiculous finisher reversals. The match went for over 22 minutes as well, which it really didn’t need to, although at least the crowd was invested in Goto’s comebacks. There were at least some relatively interesting segments in the match, and Goto hit a particularly impressive Code Red from the top turnbuckle and came close to getting a pin following a GTR sequence. However, Goto continued his trend of losing in big matches by eating a Blade Runner and the pin in the end. White winning here doesn’t surprise me since he’s clearly at a higher level than Goto, but it’s been sad to see Goto’s decline this year. He was in the pre-show at Wrestle Kingdom and the Honor Rumble on the G1 Supercard. He’ll surely get a runout in the G1 Climax, but at his point it’s hard to see Goto doing anything of note beyond maybe another NEVER Title reign.
The other singles matches on this show were okay – Nicholls vs. Fale wasn’t amazing, but it was short. Fale won to regain some of his monster power following his loss to Juice at Sengoku Lord. Juice vs. Owens was my favourite match on the show, a very solid 8 minute affair that ended with a Pulp Friction victory for Juice. It’s good to see Juice getting a decent amount of momentum, although the US Title is still treated mostly as an afterthought at this point. Chase is doing well as an old-school NWA style heel, and he played off Juice’s natural babyface tendencies well in this match.
The Tag Team Title match was very much the definition of just being there – GOD have something of a hot feud going with the Briscoes in ROH but since they’re double tag team champions they have to do something in New Japan and MVP were their first challengers. Yano is funny enough, but no one seriously expected GOD to drop the titles to Makabe and Yano here, and sure enough they didn’t, after a roll up by Tama Tonga got the pin over Makabe. Several nights earlier at the Aki no Kuni Sengoku Emaki show in Hiroshima Roppongi 3K defended the Jr. Tag Team Titles against Shingo Takagi and BUSHI in a match that was a lot more interesting than this one (although again it went nearly 30 minutes which is just too long). Shingo was protected from taking the fall again, as BUSHI was pinned by YOH to retain the titles. The Jr. Tag division is generally less interesting to me since they literally seem to have 3 teams in the division, but it was good to see Roppongi 3K get a successful win, and finally move past Los Ingobernables de Japon before Best of the Super Juniors starts.
The other matches on this show were tag team matches to build up to future matches – SANADA got the pin in the LIJ vs. CHAOS match ahead of his title match with Okada (also featuring EVIL and Ishii, and Naito and Ibushi who are competing for the Intercontinental Title), Jeff Cobb pinned TAKA Michinoku in the Hontai vs. Suzuki-gun match leading up to his NEVER title match with Taichi, and Will Ospreay pinned Hikuleo to give him some momentum going into Best of the Super Juniors while Taiji Ishimori and Dragon Lee clashed ahead of their Jr. Title match.
Overall, this show was very much a glorified house show and nothing on it really stood out. I’m sure that the New Japan fans in and around Kumamoto appreciate getting to see a live show every year, particularly after the devastating earthquake in 2016, but it’s not a must see show as far as the general New Japan audience goes. The Road to Wrestling Dontaku tour has been expanded this year and honestly it feels like they’ve spread it too thinly to make any of these shows feel like a bigger deal than the usual Road to shows. Up next is the two day Wrestling Dontaku on May 3rd and 4th in nearby Fukuoka, headlined by Dragon Lee vs. Ishimori on night one, and SANADA vs. Okada on night two.
