Night 10
Date: July 28, 2019
From: Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium (Aichi, Japan)
Undercard Results:
Ren Narita def. Yuya Uemura
Fale, Yujiro, & Chase def. Ibushi, Honma, & Henare
Archer, ZSJ, Suzuki, & Kanemaru def. Okada, Ospreay, YOSHI-HASHI, & Umino
EVIL, SANADA, & BUSHI def. Tanahashi, KENTA, & Karl Fredericks
B Block Matches:
Hirooki Goto def. Toru Yano
I’ll keep the review short and simple just like the match itself. Goto literally pulled a roll up on Yano a minute into the match and that’s that. A win for the Samurai Warrior is always a good thing. YTR will get another moment later on.
Tomohiro Ishii def. Juice Robinson
I hate sounding repetitive here but man, Tomohiro Ishii is the MVP of this tournament and it showed. I love Juice, big fan of his but he rarely meshes well with a lot of wrestlers in the roster and we’ll get more onto that later, with Ishii though, you bet they meshed well and what a hard hitting affair this was! Ever since that Moxley match, Juice had a change of attitude and brought more hard hitting strikes into his arsenal. Arguably Juice’s best match in the tournament by far and I actually did not expect this to be as good as it turned out, but it’s a welcomed surprise. These two just went at it nonstop for the whole 17 minutes. Ishii’s patented vertical drop brain-buster earned him the win in the end though. I wish Juice would’ve won and challenge for the NEVER belt because man I wanted to see more action between these two!
Jeff Cobb def. Taichi
Going to be completely honest, I don’t remember much from this match. It was a solid affair for sure but their match for the NEVER Openweight title earlier this year was more memorable. Not a great match nor it is bad. Just decent is the best way to describe it I think. Cobb wins with the Tour of the islands avenging his loss to the Holy Emperor at the 12 minute mark.
Jay White def. Shingo Takagi
The Ishii vs. Juice match is the best of the night for me, but Switchblade vs. Shingo is surprisingly not that far behind. A first time matchup between these two and barring the interferences from Gedo, this was actually a great match. Jay as always plays the villain role so well, even better than Marty Scurll but I digress. He doesn’t get much credit into this aspect, but Shingo can really work the crowd well and get them all behind his back, cheering against the evil gaijin wrestler. Dare I say he’s better at it than EVIL and SANADA both of whom are his LIJ compatriots. Anyway, it was a solid effort from both men, will probably go down as one of the underrated matches of the entire tournament. Jay wins with the Bladerunner after a match time of 19 minutes and 26 seconds.
Jon Moxley def. Tetsuya Naito
Last match of the night and it was a shocker for many people including yours truly, Moxley vs. Naito for the first time, one of the most anticipated matches when the tournament blocks were announced. Now first, I’ll get this out of the way, the match itself was actually disappointing. Again, it was good but it didn’t seem to click well between these two. The taunting was fun and all but the execution of action did not feel like it was there, no instant chemistry unlike with Mox and Ishii or even Shingo. Maybe their styles are just way too drastic with one another for it to work the first time. The finish though, that’s what really got into everyone. Social media exploded with the Moxley victory as seemingly everyone, like myself, picked Naito to win and eventually headline Wrestle Kingdom once more but that felt like it was thwarted for a moment when Mox hits the Death Rider and take the win. This was a champion vs. champion after all but man nobody expected going into this year’s G1 for Mox to go undefeated in his first 5 matches, I guess New Japan is really milking this for however long they’ll have him. I don’t mind it at the very least and I actually wasn’t mad that Naito loss, it’s just that I still hope the dream of seeing him be double champ is alive after the tournament.
