In the wake of Wrestle Kingdom 13, the month of January was dominated by two major storylines. First, Jay White’s challenge to Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Heavyweight Title, which will be decided at The New Beginning in Osaka on February 11th. Second, faction warfare between Suzuki-gun and Los Ingobernables de Japon, with the two New Beginning in Sapporo shows being headlined by Tetsuya Naito vs. Taichi for the Intercontinental Title, EVIL and SANADA vs. Minoru Suzuki and Zack Sabre Jr. for the Heavyweight Tag Team Titles, and BUSHI and Shingo Takagi vs. El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru for the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles. The result was a surprising clean sweep for LIJ, which came only a month after they secured a clean sweep of titles at the Tokyo Dome. However, the ending of the second night ended up feeling rather flat, despite the crowd going home happy with a Naito victory.
The big title match headlining the two shows in Sapporo was Naito vs. Taichi, which had been building from New Year’s Dash the day after Wrestle Kingdom. The Fatasticamania Tour saw Taichi come after Naito, and on the first night of the New Beginning shows Taichi picked up a win in a six-man tag match against the IC Champion. In the build-up to the match the “Sapporo Terror Incident” of the 1980s was mentioned several times, when Yoshiaki Fujiwara attacked Riki Choshu ahead of his title match against Tatsumi Fujinami. This led to the title match being cancelled. Given this history, it was almost a given that something was going to happen before the match, and as if on cue Takashi Iizuka ran out to attack Naito as he made his way to the ring. This led to a long delay before the match actually started, as Naito was taken to the back to be checked on by the doctor, and Taichi gloated in the ring. Finally, as the fans began to wonder if the match was going to be cancelled, Naito made his way back to the ring and the match started.
This lead to a twenty minute match, which finally ended with a Destino for a successful Naito title defence. Naito and Taichi both bumped like madmen at times in this match – Naito really doesn’t care about his neck it seems – and Taichi was able to demonstrate a lot of resilience, even kicking out of a first Destino. My main problem with this match though, was that despite getting to look strong in the match, Taichi lost after Naito had barely been able to compete in the match. If Taichi can’t beat Naito in this scenario, when are we supposed to realistically believe he will ever be able to beat him? I would much rather have seen Taichi and Naito have a match without the pre-match shenanigans, even with the same finish. As it is, all the good build-up to the match has been wasted, and Taichi just looks like a joke. And what was the point of doing such a long call back to the Fujiwara’s attack on Choshu, only for it to make no difference to the result? This was really an over-booked mess around what could have been a good match.
The two tag team title matches were better than the main event, and the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Title match was probably my favourite of night two. The one-on-one Jr. Tag Title matches are so much better than the triple threat style matches that Gedo seems so fond of booking, and both teams were given eighteen minutes here, which was much longer than at Wrestle Kingdom. It’s still a bit of a stretch that Shingo is treated as a Junior, but he and BUSHI have developed a lot of chemistry as a tag team, and although I like Desperado and Kanemaru, I don’t think they needed to give them the tag titles back immediately. Now that LIJ have fairly decisively defeated Suzuki-gun, presumably Roppongi 3K will be next. That should be a good match, but the only drawback is that the Jr Tag division is very thin, and we’ve seen all these matches so many times before. They could really do with bringing in some new blood for some fresh matchups, although who that will be is anyone’s guess with ACH apparently off to WWE, KUSHIDA gone, and Chris Sabin out with a long-term injury.
On the first night in Sapporo EVIL faced ZSJ and SANADA took on Suzuki in singles matches, which ended with one victory apiece for LIJ and Suzuki-gun. Their Heavyweight Tag Title match was good, although I felt like the first half of the match dragged due to all the crowd brawling that inevitably comes with a match with Suzuki. Once they got back into the ring though, the match was good, particularly in playing up the fact that all four men know each other so well at this point. Suzuki and SANADA were particularly creative with their reversals and counter-reversals in this match. A Magic Killer brought a near fall for EVIL and SANADA, but they finally finished the match with a Magic Killer on Suzuki, followed by a moonsault from SANADA. This was probably the right decision in hindsight (although I expected at least one title change), since Suzuki and ZSJ have far more potential as singles stars right now, and EVIL and SANADA could do with a solid title reign until the G1.
The other big matches on these two shows centred around Tanahashi and Okada uniting forces to take on Jay White and his Bullet Club allies. White and Fale made history as the first two wrestlers from New Zealand to headline a New Japan show on night one, and White continued his dominance over the faces of NJPW by forcing Tanahashi to tap out on night one, and then YOSHI-HASHI on night two in a six-man tag match. White named his new submission TTO, or “Tanahashi Tap Out”, just to rub salt into the wound. I don’t actually expect White to win the IWGP Heavyweight Title in Osaka, but they’re really setting him up for success by giving him so many high profile wins. It wouldn’t be the most outrageous thing in the world if White did capture the top title this year, although I don’t see Tanahashi losing in his first defence, particularly with the Madison Square Garden show coming up.
The undercards of both shows were very similar, with Hiroyoshi Tenzan and a partner facing off against Takashi Iizuka and TAKA Michinoku. Iizuka is retiring in February, and his former friend Tenzan has been trying to reach the man that he used to be before his madness set in and he started biting people. It hasn’t happened yet, but I imagine that this storyline will come to a head at Iizuka’s retirement show on February 21st. At any rate it’s the most interested I’ve been in Iizuka for a long time. The other main undercard story was Ryusuke Taguchi preparing for his Jr. Heavyweight Title match against Taiji Ishimori. On both nights Taguchi’s team picked up a win over Ishimori’s team, although I don’t know too many people who actually expect Taguchi to get the job done in the title match in Osaka. Taguchi already picked up a win over Ishimori on one of the Road To shows to win the NEVER Six Man Tag Titles for himself, Togi Makabe, and Toru Yano, so I expect that he will have to be satisfied with those titles for the time being.
Overall, the New Beginning in Sapporo was a decent set of shows, but definitely ones that can be selectively watched. The problem that New Japan has with running double header shows (Wrestling Dontaku falls foul of this as well) is that the undercard matches get very repetitive, and there was nothing in the uppercard that did enough to really recommend these shows. The Tanahashi and Okada against White and Fale match is worth watching as a preview for Jay’s title challenge, and the two tag team title matches are both good, although not without flaws. I really wanted the IC Title match to be better than it was, but the overbooking just overshadowed what ended up being some very good in-ring work. I read that New Japan drew over 10,000 fans to the Sapporo shows, which is up on last year’s numbers, so I understand the appeal of running multiple shows in the same town. Sapporo is also not one of the big hotbeds of wrestling in Japan, so the local fans probably appreciated the chance to see as many matches as possible. The real highlight of these shows was Naito ending the show by stating that his goal going forward is to be the first man to hold both the IWGP Heavyweight Title and the Intercontinental Title. If 2019 is the year of Naito’s redemption we might just come to see Sapporo as the start of that story, rather than a wasted opportunity with Taichi.
Night One:
- Ren Narita def. Yuya Uemura
- Toa Henare and Manabu Nakanishi def. Shota Umino and Ayato Yoshida
- Tiger Mask and Hiroyoshi Tenzan def. Takashi Iizuka and TAKA Michinoku
- Toru Yano, Ryusuke Taguchi, Togi Makabe, YOSHI-HASHI and Tomoaki Honma def. Taiji Ishimori, Tanga Loa, Tama Tonga, Chase Owens, Yujiro Takahashi
- Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, and El Desperado def. BUSHI, Shingo Takagi, and Naito Tetsuya
- Minoru Suzuki def. SANADA
- EVIL def. Zack Sabre Jr.
- Jay White and Bad Luck Fale def. Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada
Night Two
- Toa Henare def. Yota Tsuji
- Tiger Mask and Manabu Nakanishi def. Ayato Yoshida and Shota Umino
- Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Ren Narita def. Takashi Iizuka and TAKA Michinoku
- Toru Yano, Ryusuke Taguchi, Togi Makabe, and Tomoaki Honma def. Taiji Ishimori, Tanga Loa, Tama Tonga, and Yujiro Takahashi
- Jay White, Bad Luck Fale, and Chase Owens def. YOSHI-HASHI, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Kazuchika Okada
- Shingo Takagi and BUSHI def. Yoshinobu Kanemaru and El Desperado
- SANADA and EVIL def. Minoru Suzuki and Zack Sabre Jr.
- Tetsuya Naito def. Taichi
