FORTIETH ANNIVERSARY

March 4, 2012

New Japan celebrates a big milestone in an unusually smart way, by letting a couple of young guns have the spotlight. It really shows how far they've come since the dark days of the prior decade, with all the MMA inspired bullshit.

Jyushin “Thunder” Lyger . . . is pushing fifty years old, and still spanks most of the roster for watchable work.

Shinsuke Nakamura . . . continues to be someone I find underwhelming, with a ho-hum performance in a trios match.

Kazuchika Okada . . . rises to the occasion for the second month in a row, and completely steals the show.

PRINCE DEVITT/RYUSUKE TAGUCHI/KUSHIDA vs. TAMA TONGA/HIROMU TAKAHASHI/TAKAAKI WATANABE

This is fun for what it is, even though it’s not exactly complex. The rookies get killed, and the other four show off their stuff. Taguchi and Devitt heel things up with Takahashi and Watanabe, Tama still works like he’s been watching his Snuka tapes, and Tama and KUSHIDA try to outdo each other. The rookies try to make the big comeback at the end and get the upset on KUSHIDA, the lowest ranked member of the opposing team, but Watanabe doesn’t have enough in his tank to get the job done yet, and when he’s on his own, KUSHIDA easily finishes him off with the Midnight Express, a corkscrew moonsault. The move itself didn’t look all that good, but at least KUSHIDA knows good tag teams.

TOMOHIRO ISHII/YOSHI-HASHI vs. TOMOAKI HONMA/CAPTAIN NEW JAPAN

Matches like this are something of a necessary evil. YOSHI-HASHI is still more attitude than substance, but he’ll never develop the substance without practice in the ring, which is what this match pretty much is. Honma and Cap don’t have a prayer, and Ishii more or less stays in the background and lets YOSHI-HASHI get the experience, which means that the results aren’t exactly stellar on the eyes. They build to a hot tag to Cap, who cleans house for a minute, but then Ishii hits him low and lets YOSHI-HASHI pick up the pieces with his swanton bomb. If nothing else, the swanton looked really good.

JYUSHIN LYGER/TIGER MASK vs. GEDO/JADO

These four have worked together enough times that they shouldn’t be having bad matches. And, while this isn’t bad, it still should be better than this. It just feels like same old, same old. Lyger proves he can still go, Gedo and Jado show that they can still heel things up and get the crowd behind the babyfaces, and Tiger Mask doesn’t do anything to tank it, which is all that you can expect from him. The finish is odd. It starts off fine with Lyger breaking up the superbomb and sending Jado to the floor. But, then Gedo doesn’t try to dispatch Lyger to level the playing field, he just tries a backdrop suplex to Tiger with Lyger being four feet away. Tiger escapes the suplex and Lyger does a shotei into a Tiger suplex that pins Gedo. The shotei into suplex itself looks OK, but the exposing moment before took away from it.

YUJI NAGATA/TOGI MAKABE/WATARU INOUE vs. MINORU SUZUKI/TAKA MICHINOKU/TAICHI

The hatred that these two teams show for each other makes this fun, but the match doesn’t come together well enough to make this any more than a fun trios match. Suzuki Gun heels things up every way they possibly can, and when the Sekigun team starts making a comeback, they cheat to keep their momentum going. There’s an awesome moment when Nagata is teeing off on Suzuki and gears up for the final blow, but Suzuki ducks and catches Nagata in the sleeper. But good things like that are counterbalanced with moments like Inoue setting up a German and Taichi being too late to make the save, which causes Inoue to stand there holding TAKA in a dead lift position waiting for Taichi. Taichi signs his own death warrant by mocking Nagata early on, and taking cheap shots throughout the match. But, one chair shot to Suzuki, and a chain lariat to TAKA later and Taichi is on his own with Nagata. At least it’s a quick kill, one big backdrop suplex is all it takes to finish him off.

HIROYOSHI TENZAN/SATOSHI KOJIMA vs. TAKASHI IIZUKA/TORU YANO

I cared about this Tenzan/Iizuka feud in 2008, but, by 2012 I’m wondering if there isn’t anything else for either of them to do by now. What they do here is well done (as it should be after four years), but everyone has seen it already. Iizuka and Yano cheat and use weapons, Tenzan and Kojima get angry and brawl, and Tenzan makes sure to nail Iizuka with the Grave digger complete with a sick bump from Iizuka. But, we’ve seen it all before. The only real highlight is Kojima doing a Kobashi-like chop flurry to Yano, and Yano’s reaction is hilarious. Kojima gears up for the lariat, and Yano catches him with a shot to the grapefruits to steal the win. Everyone freaks out over Yano getting the pin on Kojima, but Yano is established enough that he should be able to beat Kojima by now. Pretty much all there is to take away from this is the fact that Iizuka and Yano beat the IWGP tag champs, which led to a rematch in May where CHAOS lifted the titles.

SHINSUKE NAKAMURA/MASATO TANAKA/YUJIRO TAKAHASHI vs. HIROSHI TANAHASHI/HIROOKI GOTO/KARL ANDERSON

The action here is solid, but lacks anything outstanding, and with Tanahashi and Tanaka involved, and to a lesser extent, Nakamura and Goto, it should be a hell of a lot better. They seem to be too concerned with keeping the match moving along, there’s no real sense of a story that sinks in, and nobody comes across as an especially strong or weak link to their teams. The best moment of the match is Nakamura hitting a running knee to Tanahashi and sending him out of the ring where Tanaka parts Tanahashi’s hair with a kendo stick shot. But, instead of leading to a fun heel control segment, it just leads to mediocre one, with only Tanaka doing anything interesting, and it doesn’t last especially long. The big surprise of the match was Anderson countering the Boma Yes and getting a nice stretch of offense on Nakamura, but even that disappoints by the end. Instead of coming up with a surprise counter or even cheating to turns the tide, Nakamura just sucks up what Anderson throws at him, and hits a couple of forearms, throws a punch, and then the Boma Ye to give the heels the match. I would have expected Tanahashi and Nakamura to step things up a notch, or five, after their respective losses the month before, to prove they’re still worthy of their spots, but neither seemed to be up to task.

While Nakamura and Tanahashi sleepwalked through the prior match, Okada and Naito make the most of the chance to headline an important show, that spotlights a big accomplishment for the company. Okada performs more or less the same way he did in his big win the month before. He singles out Naito’s neck to soften him up for the Rainmaker, including some really dickish spots, tricked out submissions, and a few bigger bombs for good near falls. After Naito shows how well he’s prepared for the match, by having all sorts of counters ready for the Rainmaker, Okada outsmarts him into the Rainmaker to retain the title. When he’s the one in trouble, first his arm and later his knee, Okada’s selling is better than everyone else on the card, and he doesn’t forget to sell when he’s back in control.

Naito is no Tanahashi (although he smoked Tanahashi’s performance on this night), but he brought his own share of good moments to the match. He didn’t look all that far removed from Tanahashi the way he started sharking on Okada’s leg, even if the work wasn’t always great, such as his ugly figure four spot. But Naito’s better stuff, like the Rainmaker counter into the rolling kneebar, was refreshing to watch after so many years of Tanahashi’s endless Dragon screws. The problem is that Naito’s leg work really only comes across as filler work for him, despite the great selling from Okada. The leg work doesn’t seem to have a clear purpose the way it did for Tanahashi with the Cloverleaf, and the neck work does for Okada with the Rainmaker. One could argue that it keeps Okada at bay for the Stardust press, but the Stardust fails because Okada rolls out of the way, so if the idea was to keep Okada in place, it didn’t work. Naito also brings the flashiness he’s known for with a Jon Woo into the guardrail, and even tries to get one up on Okada’s heeling by using the guardrail to help him torque the knee. The only area Naito doesn’t completely come through with is consistent selling. Okada sets the bar when he catches Naito with the Tombstone on the floor to regain control, and sells just as great as he had been. Naito doesn’t follow suit, as shown by several near falls from bridging suplexes, and not selling his neck in the least.

Considering the experience level of these two, not number of years in the ring, but experience in big matches like this, this performance is nothing short of amazing. Okada brought another excellent performance, and Naito stepped up his game for the occasion, but, with how similar this looks to the Tanahashi/Okada match from February, I’m wondering if Okada didn’t just try plug in Naito in place of Tanahashi and work the same match. This is only the second major Okada match I’ve seen, so it’s too soon to make that sort of distinction, but after such an unspectacular undercard, it’s great to see that both Okada and Naito brought the goods, when they could have easily choked under the pressure. ***3/4

Conclusion: The main event is definitely worth a look, but there’s nothing on the undercard that anyone needs to take the time to watch. Download the title match or pick it up on some sort of compilation.