{"id":11131,"date":"2019-02-03T18:45:33","date_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:45:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/?p=11131"},"modified":"2019-02-03T18:45:56","modified_gmt":"2019-02-03T23:45:56","slug":"njpw-the-new-beginning-in-sapporo-review-2-2-3-2-19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/2019\/02\/03\/njpw-the-new-beginning-in-sapporo-review-2-2-3-2-19\/","title":{"rendered":"NJPW The New Beginning in Sapporo Review, 2\/2-3\/2\/19"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">In the wake of Wrestle Kingdom 13, the month of January was dominated by two major storylines.\u00a0 First, Jay White\u2019s challenge to Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Heavyweight Title, which will be decided at The New Beginning in Osaka on February 11<sup>th<\/sup>.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 However, the ending of the second night ended up feeling rather flat, despite the crowd going home happy with a Naito victory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"ja\" dir=\"ltr\">\u672d\u5e4c2\u9023\u6226\u304c\u7d42\u4e86\uff01\u672c\u65e5\u3082\u6ca2\u5c71\u306e\u304a\u5ba2\u69d8\u306b\u3054\u89b3\u6226\u3044\u305f\u3060\u304d\u8aa0\u306b\u3042\u308a\u304c\u3068\u3046\u3054\u3056\u3044\u307e\u3057\u305f\u30022\u67086\u65e5(\u6c34)\u306f\u3001\u9577\u91ce\u904b\u52d5\u516c\u5712\u7dcf\u5408\u4f53\u80b2\u9928\u306b\u306618:30\u8a66\u5408\u958b\u59cb\u3067\u3059\u3002\u7686\u69d8\u306e\u3054\u6765\u5834\u3092\u304a\u5f85\u3061\u3057\u3066\u304a\u308a\u307e\u3059\uff01<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/vbNqFgLkBb\">https:\/\/t.co\/vbNqFgLkBb<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/njnbg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#njnbg<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/njpw?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#njpw<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/nIAWpZpeWG\">pic.twitter.com\/nIAWpZpeWG<\/a><\/p>&mdash; \u65b0\u65e5\u672c\u30d7\u30ed\u30ec\u30b9\u30ea\u30f3\u30b0\u682a\u5f0f\u4f1a\u793e\u55b6\u696d\u90e8 (@njpw_nyao) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/njpw_nyao\/status\/1092024994027102213?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 3, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The big title match\nheadlining the two shows in Sapporo was Naito vs. Taichi, which had been building\nfrom New Year\u2019s Dash the day after Wrestle Kingdom.&nbsp; The Fatasticamania Tour saw Taichi come after\nNaito, and on the first night of the New Beginning shows Taichi picked up a win\nin a six-man tag match against the IC Champion.&nbsp;\nIn the build-up to the match the \u201cSapporo Terror Incident\u201d of the 1980s\nwas mentioned several times, when Yoshiaki Fujiwara attacked Riki Choshu ahead of\nhis title match against Tatsumi Fujinami.&nbsp;\nThis led to the title&nbsp; match being\ncancelled.&nbsp; Given this history, it was almost\na given that something was going to happen before the match, and as if on cue\nTakashi Iizuka ran out to attack Naito as he made his way to the ring.&nbsp; This led to a long delay before the match actually\nstarted, as Naito was taken to the back to be checked on by the doctor, and\nTaichi gloated in the ring.&nbsp; Finally, as\nthe fans began to wonder if the match was going to be cancelled, Naito made his\nway back to the ring and the match started.&nbsp;\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"ja\" dir=\"ltr\">THE NEW BEGINNING in SAPPORO \uff5e\u96ea\u306e\u672d\u5e4c2\u9023\u6226\uff5e(2\/3)\u3092\u516c\u958b\uff01<br>\u30e1\u30a4\u30f3\u306fIWGP\u30a4\u30f3\u30bf\u30fc\u30b3\u30f3\u30c1\u30cd\u30f3\u30bf\u30eb\u9078\u624b\u6a29\u8a66\u5408\uff01<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/s_d_naito?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@s_d_naito<\/a> VS <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/taichi0319?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@taichi0319<\/a>\uff01\u524d\u4ee3\u672a\u805e\uff01\u82b1\u9053\u3067\u5f37\u8972\u3055\u308c\u305f\u5185\u85e4\u304c\u52d5\u3051\u305a\u3001\u82e5\u624b\u306b\u62c5\u304c\u308c\u9000\u5834\uff01\u3053\u306e\u5f8c\u3069\u3046\u306a\u3063\u3066\u3057\u307e\u3046\u306e\u304b\u2049\ufe0e<br>\u767b\u9332\uff06\u8996\u8074\u25b7<a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/E7joKC2UCb\">https:\/\/t.co\/E7joKC2UCb<\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/njnbg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#njnbg<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/njpwworld?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#njpwworld<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fMRL9cUd1h\">pic.twitter.com\/fMRL9cUd1h<\/a><\/p>&mdash; njpwworld (@njpwworld) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/njpwworld\/status\/1092000358912540673?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 3, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This lead to a twenty\nminute match, which finally ended with a <em>Destino<\/em>\nfor a successful Naito title defence.&nbsp; Naito\nand Taichi both bumped like madmen at times in this match \u2013 Naito really doesn\u2019t\ncare about his neck it seems \u2013 and Taichi was able to demonstrate a lot of resilience,\neven kicking out of a first <em>Destino<\/em>.&nbsp; My main problem with this match though, was\nthat despite getting to look strong in the match, Taichi lost after Naito had\nbarely been able to compete in the match.&nbsp;\nIf Taichi can\u2019t beat Naito in this scenario, when are we supposed to realistically\nbelieve he will ever be able to beat him?&nbsp;\nI would much rather have seen Taichi and Naito have a match without the\npre-match shenanigans, even with the same finish.&nbsp; As it is, all the good build-up to the match has\nbeen wasted, and Taichi just looks like a joke.&nbsp;\nAnd what was the point of doing such a long call back to the Fujiwara\u2019s\nattack on Choshu, only for it to make no difference to the result?&nbsp; This was really an over-booked mess around what\ncould have been a good match.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The two tag team title\nmatches were better than the main event, and the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Title\nmatch was probably my favourite of night two.&nbsp;\nThe one-on-one Jr. Tag Title matches are so much better than the triple\nthreat style matches that Gedo seems so fond of booking, and both teams were\ngiven eighteen minutes here, which was much longer than at Wrestle\nKingdom.&nbsp; It\u2019s still a bit of a stretch\nthat Shingo is treated as a Junior, but he and BUSHI have developed a lot of\nchemistry as a tag team, and although I like Desperado and Kanemaru, I don\u2019t\nthink they needed to give them the tag titles back immediately.&nbsp; Now that LIJ have fairly decisively defeated\nSuzuki-gun, presumably Roppongi 3K will be next.&nbsp; That should be a good match, but the only drawback\nis that the Jr Tag division is very thin, and we\u2019ve seen all these matches so\nmany times before.&nbsp; They could really do\nwith bringing in some new blood for some fresh matchups, although who that will\nbe is anyone\u2019s guess with ACH apparently off to WWE, KUSHIDA gone, and Chris\nSabin out with a long-term injury.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">On the first night in\nSapporo EVIL faced ZSJ and SANADA took on Suzuki in singles matches, which\nended with one victory apiece for LIJ and Suzuki-gun.&nbsp; Their Heavyweight Tag Title match was good,\nalthough I felt like the first half of the match dragged due to all the crowd\nbrawling that inevitably comes with a match with Suzuki.&nbsp; Once they got back into the ring though, the\nmatch was good, particularly in playing up the fact that all four men know each\nother so well at this point.&nbsp; Suzuki and\nSANADA were particularly creative with their reversals and counter-reversals in\nthis match.&nbsp; A Magic Killer brought a\nnear fall for EVIL and SANADA, but they finally finished the match with a Magic\nKiller on Suzuki, followed by a moonsault from SANADA.&nbsp; This was probably the right decision in\nhindsight (although I expected at least one title change), since Suzuki and ZSJ\nhave far more potential as singles stars right now, and EVIL and SANADA could\ndo with a solid title reign until the G1.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The other big matches\non these two shows centred around Tanahashi and Okada uniting forces to take on\nJay White and his Bullet Club allies.&nbsp;\nWhite and Fale made history as the first two wrestlers from New Zealand\nto headline a New Japan show on night one, and White continued his dominance\nover the faces of NJPW by forcing Tanahashi to tap out on night one, and then\nYOSHI-HASHI on night two in a six-man tag match.&nbsp; White named his new submission TTO, or \u201cTanahashi\nTap Out\u201d, just to rub salt into the wound.&nbsp;\nI don\u2019t actually expect White to win the IWGP Heavyweight Title in\nOsaka, but they\u2019re really setting him up for success by giving him so many high\nprofile wins.&nbsp; It wouldn\u2019t be the most\noutrageous thing in the world if White did capture the top title this year,\nalthough I don\u2019t see Tanahashi losing in his first defence, particularly with the\nMadison Square Garden show coming up.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The undercards of both shows were very similar, with Hiroyoshi Tenzan and a partner facing off against Takashi Iizuka and TAKA Michinoku.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 It hasn\u2019t happened yet, but I imagine that this storyline will come to a head at Iizuka\u2019s retirement show on February 21<sup>st<\/sup>.\u00a0 At any rate it\u2019s the most interested I\u2019ve been in Iizuka for a long time.\u00a0 The other main undercard story was Ryusuke Taguchi preparing for his Jr. Heavyweight Title match against Taiji Ishimori.\u00a0 On both nights Taguchi\u2019s team picked up a win over Ishimori\u2019s team, although I don\u2019t know too many people who actually expect Taguchi to get the job done in the title match in Osaka.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Overall, the New Beginning in Sapporo was a decent set of shows, but definitely ones that can be selectively watched.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 The Tanahashi and Okada against White and Fale match is worth watching as a preview for Jay\u2019s title challenge, and the two tag team title matches are both good, although not without flaws.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 I read that New Japan drew over 10,000 fans to the Sapporo shows, which is up on last year\u2019s numbers, so I understand the appeal of running multiple shows in the same town.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 If 2019 is the year of Naito\u2019s redemption we might just come to see Sapporo as the start of that story, rather than a wasted opportunity with Taichi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed-twitter wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Naito: I will keep this IC belt and challenge for the IWGP title. <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/njnbg?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">#njnbg<\/a><\/p>&mdash; chris charlton (@reasonjp) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/reasonjp\/status\/1091993068562071552?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">February 3, 2019<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Night One:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Ren Narita def. Yuya Uemura<\/li><li>Toa Henare and Manabu Nakanishi def. Shota Umino and Ayato Yoshida<\/li><li>Tiger Mask and Hiroyoshi Tenzan def. Takashi Iizuka and TAKA Michinoku<br><\/li><li>Toru Yano, Ryusuke Taguchi, Togi Makabe, YOSHI-HASHI and Tomoaki Honma def. Taiji Ishimori, Tanga Loa, Tama Tonga, Chase Owens, Yujiro Takahashi<\/li><li>Taichi, Yoshinobu Kanemaru, and El Desperado def. BUSHI, Shingo Takagi, and Naito Tetsuya<\/li><li>Minoru Suzuki def. SANADA<\/li><li>EVIL def. Zack Sabre Jr.<\/li><li>Jay White and Bad Luck Fale def. Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kazuchika Okada<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Night Two<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>Toa Henare def. Yota Tsuji<\/li><li>Tiger Mask and Manabu Nakanishi def. Ayato Yoshida and Shota Umino<\/li><li>Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Ren Narita def. Takashi Iizuka and TAKA Michinoku<\/li><li>Toru Yano, Ryusuke Taguchi, Togi Makabe, and Tomoaki Honma def. Taiji Ishimori, Tanga Loa, Tama Tonga, and Yujiro Takahashi<\/li><li>Jay White, Bad Luck Fale, and Chase Owens def. YOSHI-HASHI, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Kazuchika Okada<\/li><li>Shingo Takagi and BUSHI def. Yoshinobu Kanemaru and El Desperado<\/li><li>SANADA and EVIL def. Minoru Suzuki and Zack Sabre Jr.<\/li><li>Tetsuya Naito def. Taichi<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In the wake of Wrestle Kingdom 13, the month of January was dominated by two major storylines.\u00a0 First, Jay White\u2019s challenge to Hiroshi Tanahashi for the IWGP Heavyweight Title, which [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":11134,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2,204,37,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-featured","category-njpw","category-njpw-reviews","category-reviews"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9jnWd-2Tx","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/02\/newjapan-tnbsapporo2019n1-logo.jpg?fit=1192%2C635&ssl=1","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11131"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11135,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11131\/revisions\/11135"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11134"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/prowrestlingjournal.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}