Greetings stablemates,
New Japan has seen more of a shake-up in the past couple months than in the past two years combined (injuries aside). Have these changes been good, bad, ugly, beautiful, or drenched in apathy? As New Japan is divided by factions, so will be this state-of-the-promotion appraisal.
This post is fresh off the heels of this year's New Japan Cup, and before the faction madness begins, I do have one point to make regarding the tournament. For every NJ Cup and G1 tournament, I make a bracket, and as the tourn progresses, I put a star next to every match I think is exceptional. I've gone as far as using a 3-star system, but usually just one means it's great and that's enough to help me remember the matches that I liked. I couldn't find my bracket from last year's NJ Cup, but I did find the one from 2 years ago. 2 years ago, I had 10 starred out of 29 total matches. Amazing ratio. This year, I only had one starred match. It was the final, and I felt like they'd built up to it really well over the course of the tournament, though I'm not sure whether it would stand up to my starred matches of the past, which stood out to me as singularly interesting matches, regardless of booking, which has always been a major strength of NJ tournaments. So yeah I'm disappointed with recent matches, but I was still entertained overall, looking forward to each of the 11 consecutive NJ Cup events.
HONTAI
Tanahashi wasn't even in the Cup. I thought maybe he'd take the time off but he was still in mid-card tags, usually tagging with Okada who was also absent from tourney competition. It feels like they're using him like Nagata 10 years ago, where he can still feasibly challenge for mid titles, and can get any crowd reaction he wants at any given time, but his headlining days are a wrap until he does a Muta-style tour, which, if he retires at the same age (60), would be in 2037.
There were 2 Hontai entrants in the Cup. Tama Tonga and Shota Umino. White-meat Tama has crowd support, including my babyface mark ass. As the current Never champ, he had a first round buy, then made it past Henare and Goto to get to the semifinals, where he lost to Finlay. Shooter is beyond white-meat and well into baby-kisser territory. The crowd supports him but it's thinner and shallower. I was really looking forward to seeing him main event with his Dad reffing, and that was really cool the first time, but now I've seen it twice and could wait awhile before revisiting that angle. Shota beat Takahashi and Zack Sabre, then lost to Finlay in the quarter-finals. He's headed toward a rematch vs Zach to challenge for his (recently introduced) World TV title.
TMDK
This faction started getting over during the 2022 G1, thanks entirely to Jonah and the push they gave him. When he went back to WWE, NJ briefly used Nichols and Haste, the original TMDK guys, but their run was short, as their previous NJ runs had been, so NJ's TMDK is now seemingly just Zack Sabre Jr and his enlisted youngboy Kosei Fujita. At the tail end of the tourney, there was a teaser vid for Robbie Eagles joining TMDK, so I guess that makes 3 members with 2 sometimes-guys. There is precedent for NJ taking a faction from elsewhere and booking a new version of it...
LOS INGOBERNABLES DE JAPON
The Cup began with 3 LIJ members on its bracket, and ended with 2. Shingo lost in the first round to Henare. On paper, this sounds absurd, but I actually like it a lot. Shingo is KOPW champ (the Yano gimmick championship thing) and he and Henare will have a Mui Thai street fight match to settle their score. It will probably be horrible but great. Who better to try and get Henare over, win or lose?
Naito has been used really well this year so far. Good high profile matches, and his presence always means something. He beat El Phantasmo and Chase Owens in entertaining matches before striking out to his stablemate.
Sanada's Cup began with a win over Taichi. Besides the final, this was the one other match of the Cup that might have earned a star from me, except I didn't give a shit about Sanada in the first round, and I was a little salty that Taichi got cut off. But after the match, they did a mutual respect handshake spot, and it had a sincerity about it that set Sanada up, more than the match itself, for him to make an impact in the Cup. That's the power of Taichi-- the guy can emote pathos like a son of a bitch. Sanada went on to beat Kenta, and then Naito. After the Naito match, Taichi, who had been on commentary, rolled into the ring, along with the other 3 Just Guys, and Sanada pledged solidarity with them. It was a nice counter to the memory of Evil turning full heel on Naito in the Cup 3 years ago. There was no big melodramatic turn, just a faction repositioning, where Sanada would be a bigger player within Just 5 Guys, like the Shingo to Taichi's Naito. He then beat Mark Davis to reach the finals vs Finlay. Oh, and Sanada won all his matches with a new DDT kind of finisher, and after the faction switch, shaved the facial hair, dyed the hair back to a natural black, and got a more traditional haircut. He legit looks so different he feels like a different person. I feel like it took me about 9 months after his initial debut before I realized I didn't care for his matches, and now I feel ready to hit a reset on that which may last as long as another 9 months.
UNITED EMPIRE
Yes, you read correctly that Mark Davis made it to the semifinals. UE smoked ass in this tournament, including the non-tourney tags. Despite who won what matches, they came out feeling like the strongest faction. Jeff Cobb, Great O'khan, and especially both Aussie Open members were kicking ass in the tags all tourney long. Aussie Open will be next to challenge Bishamon for their IWGP Heavy Tag titles.
Kyle Fletcher won his first match against Yoshihashi and lost his second match against Goto. Cobb had a buy to the second round, but lost his first match to Evil. Great O'khan also had a buy to the second round, losing his first match to Finlay. Henare upset Shingo in the first round, then lost to Tama Tonga. Mark Davis beat Yano in the first round, then lost to Ospreay, who'd had a buy to the second round. However, Ospreay was injured, so Davis took his place in the subsequent matches as though he'd won. He beat Evil, avenging Cobb's loss, and then lost in the semifinals to Sanada. Imagine how much more impactful it would have been for Sanada to have beaten Ospreay, but still, Davis had a killer showing in his extra appearances, and was good on guest commentary to boot.
HOUSE OF TORTURE
Formerly the promotion-dissolvingly-bad dominant heel faction, HOT have been penitently booked as jobbers for a while now. They're starting to be used again for heat, but only to get rookie acts off the ground.
Takahashi lost to Shooter in the first round. Evil had the most legitimizing run he's had in a long time, with wins over Narita and Cobb, before falling to Davis in the semis. HOT is feuding with Narita's faction...
STRONG STYLE
After disbanding Suzuki-Gun, it seemed like Minoru would check out for awhile. But he's still around on roughly the same (part-time) schedule, lending his clout to a new trio that seems centered on legitimizing Ren Narita. Suzuki is the vet, Desperado is his protege and over in his own right, and they're looking to extend that chain to Ren. The crowd is into it, and when they won the Never 6-man titles from HOT in February, they really felt like they had some upward momentum.
The only Cup competitor was Narita, who lost to Evil in the first round, thusly extending the feud.
CHAOS
Where are the bosses? Okada was not in the Cup, he's just been doing tags with Tana, doing his brashly confident rainmaker thing. Ishii lost in the first round to Finlay, on a show that never made it to XWT. Goto and Yoshihashi are tied up with Aussie Open. Yano dropped his first match to Mark Davis, which was entertaining of course, being a Yano tourney match. Yoh was on all the cards supporting his tag partner Lio Rush, who I don't think is officially Chaos, but you gotta have multi-mans in NJ so he might as well have been.
Lio unsuccessfully challenged Hiromu for the Jr Title on the Cup finals day. Lio was a cardio phenom, he went hard for the duration and blew Hiromu up, good clean fun for the viewer. Impossible to disassociate the in-ring athlete from the out-of-the-ring flake, but this was still Chaos' finest hour of the Cup shows, official member or not.
BULLET CLUB
The other bosses, or are they? Four Bullet Club members were in the Cup, more than any other faction except United Empire with five. (I'm not counting HOT as a BC splinter anymore- they seem totally separate.) There is a major repeated story going on here-- a transference of leadership which is causing dissension in the ranks, which may lead to splinter, disband, or solidify the BC as we know it. Thankfully, The Rebel is not as bulletproof as The Switchblade, and they seem to be telling a story with a similar beginning but different middle/ending.
The former BC leader, Jay White, was rapidly drummed out of NJ in successive stipulation losses to NJ luminaries Hikuleo and Eddie Kingston, followed by a shillelagh clubbing by his dojo classmate Dave Finlay. In Finlay's subsequent appearance, which was in the first round of the Cup against Ishii, he showed up with Gedo, new heel leather bondage gear, darker hair/beard, and a slower, more heelish pacing to his walk and in-ring style, yelling that he's the new leader of the BC. He's always scowling and he yells at his BC stable-mates not to "too sweet" audience members. El Phantasmo is most resistant to his leadership, then Kenta being somewhat resistant, and then Chase who is seemingly indifferent. Fale and Ishimori were absent from the Cup tour, as were the Goodbrothers and Impact contingent, if that matters.
El Phantasmo lost to Naito in the first round. He seems like a shoe-in for LIJ if they would ever accept a US-born member. After feuding for the KOPW title vs Shingo in a "Who's your Daddy" stipulation match, he now only refers to Shingo as "Daddy" when he's on guest commentary. He's been taking LIJ hats off of kids' heads during his entrance, then giving them back- teasing that he wants to hate LIJ but actually likes them. El P is getting over as a mischievous face. Perfect for LIJ, if that's even possible.
Kenta had a buy to the second round and lost his first match against Sanada. Like El P, he's got tweener energy that could easily transition to face, heel, or walk the line. He's fucking Kenta, he can do anything. Except beat Sanada. He's the NJ Strong champ, as he beat Fred Rosser at that San Jose in February that I didn't watch.
Chase Owens had a buy to the second round and lost his first match to Naito. Chase Owens rules.
Finlay best Ishii, O'khan, Umino, and Tama to reach the finals. I mentioned his debut and new character already. It sucks pretty bad. It reminds me of how Poncho would say like, "I'm not buying into this Jay White thing", and I'd be like "No he's a rock solid worker and he plays the crowd and they're building a star, which they need" to which Poncho would reply "Yeah but meh"... I feel like now I'm where Poncho was then. I feel like a victim of irony. Can somebody tell me what the frick Finlay is bringing to the table? At this point it feels like the best thing he has to offer is the dissolution of an ineffectual faction. However, I will say that there was so much at stake for him to win the finals, it made the finals interesting. El P was very vocal that Finlay would have to win the Cup to make his claim as BC leader relevant, so the fallout of his loss might be more interesting than his Cup run.
JUST 4/5 GUYS
Somebody in the marketing head office got the memo from the LA office that Just 4 Guys sounds like Just For Guys, and they quickly had to pivot to either pull or gain a member. I like this for now because Sanada adds clout to JFG. Whatever's good for Taichi, I'm in favor of. However, in 9 months, when his new hairstyle and finisher feel normalized, will Sanada feel like the same old one-trick-pony, and be more of a detriment to the faction? I'm hoping that it's a win-win, and Taichi can get Sanada to open up a bit and evolve. It's worth hoping for. For now, they have momentum, attention, and however any of them evolve and coalesce will define whatever Just 4 Guys was ever supposed to be. Kanemaru hasn't changed, Taka's doing the same kind of schtick with different words, but Douki's been pumping iron like he's getting ready to challenge for the Jr belt. Taichi himself has a different vibe, hard to describe, except that he feels like the natural leader, despite Sanada's eminent athleticism and win over Taichi. An inauspicious start to the faction, given the horrible team name and less-than-prime membership age average, but I think they're mostly banking on Taichi's underdog charisma, which I've become a total sucker for over the past few years, so I guess that's cool.
QM out. Love ya.
