In the leadup to the New Beginning in Osaka the term being thrown around was “Switchblade Shock”, harkening back to February of 2012 when Kazuchika Okada, fresh off his return from excursion, beat Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP title. The “Rainmaker Shock” of 2012 ushered in a new era and a new ace of NJPW. Seven years later, the big question was whether Jay White could recreate the same result against the same opponent, in the same city. A White title victory would be slightly less shocking than Okada, since White had spent all of 2018 being elevated into the upper card, and he had already scored big wins over Okada and Tanahashi, but it still seemed like a tall order for him to defeat the eight time IWGP Champion. However, when the bell rang at the end of the New Beginning tour it was Jay White who stood tall, having completed the “Switchblade Shock” and become the first IWGP Champion from New Zealand.
The main event between White and Tanahashi was a good match – probably the best NJPW main event of 2019 so far – and White managed to survive everything that Tanahashi threw at him (although Tanahashi never connected with a proper High Fly Flow). Tanahashi went to the top to try and hit a standing High Fly Flow on White, but Switchblade caught him and reversed it into a Blade Runner for the three count. The most surprising part of the match was not that White won so much as the fact that he won after just one Blade Runner. This was an emphatic victory for White, with minimal Gedo interference. Throughout the New Beginning tour White had been building up his new submission – Tanahashi Tap Out – and targeting Tanahashi’s leg in order to soften him up, so it was quite surprising that there wasn’t as much of an emphasis on the submission here. White still worked over Tanahashi’s leg, but mostly he relied upon his array of suplexes and strikes, as well as the Blade Runner, which is rapidly approaching elite levels of threat in the hierarchy of NJPW finishers. Post-match White took the microphone and boasted that he had beaten all of the favourites in New Japan – Kenny, Okada, Tanahashi – and proclaimed this the Cutthroat Era.
Beyond the seismic shift in the main event scene this was a bit of a mixed show – the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title match between Taiji Ishimori and Ryusuke Taguchi was very good, but the undercard was quite weak and the Okada vs. Bad Luck Fale match was bizarrely placed in the semi-main event spot. Fale generally has has best matches against Okada (or Tanahashi) but this match was nothing special and had no real stakes to it. At the very least the Jr. Heavyweight match should have gone on second to last. Okada got a win over Fale, which was nice after all the losses that Tanahashi and Okada suffered on the New Beginning Tour. I suspect that Okada might be White’s first challenger, since Switchblade has consistently had Okada’s number it would be a good win to give the new champion. At the very least it gives Okada some momentum heading into the New Japan Cup.
Ishimori vs. Taguchi was definitely the second best match on this card, and Taguchi showed that he can still go at a high level when he wants to. Taguchi spent most of the tour tormenting Ishimori with reminders of his past gimmick as a member of the Toryumon group the Sailor Boys, and the mind games continued into this match as Taguchi came out wearing an old Sailor Boys costume. Ishimori had the last laugh though, as he showed Taguchi just how to do the Sailor Boys’ dance in the ring. This match had some great near falls, as Taguchi came very close to winning the whole thing with a Dodon, but ultimately Ishimori retained after a Bloody Cross. After the match Ishimori called out Jushin Thunder Liger who was sitting ringside doing commentary. This seemed like a good challenge to keep Ishimori occupied before Best of the Super Juniors and Hiromu Takahashi returns from his injury.
The undercard for this show was fairly underwhelming (pun intended), with the only real highlights being the opening match that saw Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Takashi Iizuka continue their feud en route to Iizuka’s retirement show, and Roppongi 3K come out to challenge Shingo Takagi and BUSHI after an LIJ vs. Suzuki-gun six man tag match. Tenzan looked like he was going to be able to get through to Iizuka for a moment in the match after showing him an old t-shirt from the time when Tenzan and Iizuka were a team, but once again he failed, and Iizuka ripped the t-shirt apart. Roppongi 3K’s challenge to LIJ should be good, and they definitely looked cool when they came down to the ring dressed all in black, but the fact that they’re back in the title picture already just highlights the lack of depth in the Jr. Tag division. There’s a desperate need for some new blood so that we can move beyond the LIJ-Suzuki-gun-Roppongi 3K triangle.
As for the other matches on this show, EVIL and SANADA vs. Ayato Yoshida and Shota Umino was fun, although the result was never in doubt. Yoshida and Umino continued to impress despite continuing to lose. Yujiro Takahashi and Chase Owens vs. YOSHI-HASHI and Tomoaki Honma was a weird match, with a team that felt like it was thrown together in the case of YH and Honma, and a weird placement on the card after two LIJ matches that were much better than it. Guerrilas of Destiny vs. Togi Makabe and Toru Yano was similarly a throwaway match, notable only in the sense that GOD defeated two members of the NEVER Six Man Tag Team Champions (the other, Taguchi, lost to Ishimori to make it a clean sweep for Bullet Club over the NEVER champions). In isolation there was nothing terribly wrong with these matches, but they felt out of place on a big show like this.
The biggest moment of the night, after Jay’s victory, came when Kota Ibushi made a surprise appearance and announced that he will be staying in New Japan and making his return in the New Japan Cup. With AEW announcing that Kenny Omega had joined them last week there had been a lot of speculation that Ibushi would be joining him at some point, so this was some good news for NJPW. The crowd popped big for Ibushi’s appearance, and even more so when he announced that he would be staying in New Japan. With Ibushi, Okada, and potentially Naito appearing in the New Japan Cup this year the field looks stacked, and any one of those men could go on to win. Personally I think that they’ll wait to do Naito vs. White, which is the one big match that they still haven’t done, and either Okada vs. White or Ibushi vs. White will headline the Madison Square Garden show in April.
The New Beginning in Osaka continued the trend of 2019 in New Japan – resetting the company after a mixed 2018. This began at Wrestle Kingdom 13 with Tanahashi winning the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and now feels complete with Jay White’s title win. I’m generally pretty excited about White’s victory, since he feels like a genuine heel who gets a lot of heat both in Japan and in America/Europe. Kenny’s title reign suffered in part from the fact that he couldn’t seem to make up his mind whether he wanted to be a face or a heel, whereas White is clearly a heel. It also adds a new level of uncertainty to the results going forward, since I didn’t expect White to beat Tanahashi it now feels like anything could happen. I feel like White is not going to be a long-term champion, but rather he is being set up for a redemption story, most likely for either Okada or Naito. My money would be on Naito, since LIJ have started the year so strongly, and a good way to recover from 2018 would be to give Naito his IWGP Title story. It’s conceivable that they could put the title back on Okada, but I still think that it’s too early to go back to a long Okada reign right now. If I was Gedo, I’d probably have Okada win the New Japan Cup, lose to White at MSG, then have Naito win the title at Dominion and go into Wrestle Kingdom 14 as the champion. They need a big draw for 2020 since they’re doing a two day Wrestle Kingdom event, and White isn’t that, at least not yet. Naito, and the legions of LIJ fans, on the other hand makes perfect sense.
- Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Jyushin Thunder Liger, and Satoshi Kojima def. Takashi Iizuka, Minoru Suzuki, and TAKA Michinoku, 12:56
- EVIL and SANADA def. Ayato Yoshida and Shota Umino, 10:08
- Tetsuya Naito, Shingo Takagi, and BUSHI def. Yoshinobu Kanemaru, El Desperado, and Taichi, 11:02
- Chase Owens and Yujiro Takahashi def. YOSHI-HASHI and Tomoaki Honma, 9:38
- GOD (Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa) def. Toru Yano and Togi Makabe, 9:44
- Taiji Ishimori def. Ryusuke Taguchi, 16:10
- Kazuchika Okada def. Bad Luck Fale, 18:10
- Jay White def. Hiroshi Tanahashi, 30:28
