So now we know that Madison Square Garden will be headlined by Jay White defending his IWGP Heavyweight Title against Kazuchika Okada, winner of the 2019 New Japan Cup. Okada emerged from the field of thirty two entrants in the Cup, the first time the competition had been that big, and defeated SANADA in the final to secure his second Cup win. Before the tournament started I thought that they would go with Okada, and despite the final being in SANADA’s home prefecture of Niigata, it would have been a big upset to have Okada lose in the final, given that the winner got a spot at MSG. The fact that the final match had an air of inevitability around it put a slightly down note on what overall was a solid tournament.
Okada’s route to the final was a good deal more straightforward than SANADA’s – Okada defeated Michael Elgin in round one, followed by Mikey Nicholls, Will Ospreay, and then Tomohiro Ishii in the semi-final. Of his four opponents, the one that was most uncertain was probably Ishii, who could have been a credible challenger for White’s title. Ospreay has also been pushed strongly over the last couple of months, so I suppose there was an outside chance that he might have beaten Okada as well, but realistically speaking Okada was the stand out name on his side of the bracket. SANADA, in contrast, ended up having to go through Hirooki Goto, Minoru Suzuki, Colt Cabana, and then Hiroshi Tanahashi to get to the final. Cabana match aside, SANADA could have lost any of these matches, and taking into consideration the fact that Tanahashi, Tetsuya Naito, and Kota Ibushi were all on his side of the draw, just his getting to the final was a big achievement.
The final match itself was decent, but I couldn’t really shake the feeling that SANADA was never going to win, and even though the hometown crowd popped hard for some of the near falls – especially from SANADA’s TKO – it wasn’t a shock when Okada finally hit a Rainmaker for a three count. Knowing that the winner was going to MSG, rather than the usual Sakura Genesis payoff, mostly killed the suspense for me, since it was clear that Okada is the bigger name out of the two. SANADA was definitely elevated by this run, but at the end of the day a White vs. SANADA main event just felt like too much of a long shot. I think I preferred both of the semi-final matches just because there was more of a sense of uncertainty about the outcome. My favourite match of the tournament might well have been Tanahashi vs. SANADA, and despite losing the final match SANADA pulled out some extremely smooth reversals to set up the Skull End. We’ve been saying for a while that this is SANADA’s year, but 2019 might actually be SANADA’s year.
The thirty two man tournament setup was generally met with praise from most observers, and in theory the idea was good, but some of the matchups ended up being quite weak, especially in the early rounds. The standout matches from the early round were probably Ishii vs. Yuji Nagata, Tanahashi vs. Shota Umino, and Ibushi vs. Naito. Ospreay continued to get a strong push, even though his grunting is turning me against him again, and he had some decent big man matches on his way to the quarter final. Zack Sabre Jr. had a strong cup run, upsetting EVIL and then Ibushi on the way to a quarter final defeat at the hands of Tanahashi. Taichi also looked really good in matches against Tomoaki Honma and Ishii. I think that keeping the New Japan Cup at a larger size is a fine plan, but I’d like to see a bit more thought put into some of the matchups. Mikey Nicholls seemed like an unfortunate casualty of the brackets by being dropped into the tournament when most of the audience didn’t have time to really invest in his performances.
With the New Japan Cup behind us and a press conference on Monday the card for the G1 Supercard on April 6th has become much clearer. White will be headlining against Okada, and personally I expect White to hand Okada a third straight loss and leave MSG as the champion. New Japan have invested a lot to make White a credible main event player, and having him drop the title on his first defence would go some way to undermining that. There’s also the issue that New Japan generally doesn’t do short title reigns to consider, the title already changed hands on January 4th and February 11th, so to have a third change in four months would be surprising. At least this match is almost impossible to predict though, since Okada regaining the title that he lost last year would certainly be possible. We all know that Okada is still the Ace of New Japan, even though he hasn’t been in the title picture since June 2018.
The semi-main event sees Jay Lethal defend the ROH World Title against Marty Scurll and Matt Taven in a ladder match, although that match might be upstaged by the preceding one in which the Intercontinental Title will be contested between Naito and Ibushi. Ibushi beat Naito in the first round of the Cup to set up this match, which promises to be the best match of the card. I anticipate seeing a title change here to keep the crowd happy before White retains. ZSJ is challenging Tanahashi for the Rev Pro British Heavyweight Title, Taij Ishimori defends the Jr. Heavyweight Title against Bandido and Dragon Lee, while Jeff Cobb and Will Ospreay battle for the NEVER Openweight Title and the ROH TV Title. The IWGP Heavyweight Tag Titles and the ROH Tag Titles will be contested in a four-way match between Guerrillas of Destiny, Brody King and PCH, EVIL and SANADA, and the Briscoe Brothers. The Women of Honor Title will also be defended by Mayu Iwatani against Kelly Klein (again), and there have been hints that Hana Kimura and Sumie Sakai will be taking on Hazuki and Kagetsu from Stardom. The card is rounded out by the Honor Rumble, a singles match between Dalton Castle and Rush, and Bully Ray’s open challenge for a New York Street Fight. Overall the card looks very strong, although ten matches suggest that either quite a few of them will be short, or the show will have a long running time.
Overall, the 2019 New Japan Cup was mostly a success – the new format worked pretty well at delivering interesting matchups, and SANADA got a good rub from getting to the final in his hometown, despite not winning. If New Japan choose to go forward with the thirty two competitor format, I’d like them to try and balance the tournament a bit more evenly in the future. Okada being on one side of the draw, and Tanahashi, Ibushi, and Naito being on the other side sort of tipped their hand, and it became even more apparent when the final was Okada vs. SANADA. Part of the problem was the prize being a main event spot at MSG, which meant that they had to go with a big name rather than elevate someone from the upper midcard. Still, there were some very good tournament matches that you should go out of your way to watch, and most of the matches at least after the first round were largely high quality. Now on to Madison Square Garden in two weeks.
