EVIL/SANADA vs. The Young Bucks, NJPW Dominion 6.9 (6/9/2018)

This was for EVIL and SANADA’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

Really and truly, I think this rules.

I have spent the majority of the time I have known about them (their PWG debut in 2007 to present day) as a Young Bucks hater. This is not to say I am some weirdo who thinks they have had five to ten good matches ever or something like that, but I mean that I have never once found them likeable. Even before the turn in 2009, I never found myself rooting for the success of these weird little psycho kids. I have been watching wrestling for nearly their entire careers as name wrestlers, and through all of it, I have constantly rooted for, and on occasion, been truly delighted to see them on occasion be brought low, punished, and absolutely beaten into dust.

I say all of that to say that, in this match, I found myself rooting for The Young Bucks.

Part of that, I would like to reassure myself, is because they were against SANADA and EVIL. For whatever flaws the Bucks have, they are energetic and present. The LIJ boys often are the opposite of that, wrestling for long stretches of time while seeming almost vacant at times in like ninety percent of their other matches, and that is a generous figure. Put against spiritual non-entities, the Bucks’ psychotic manic energy can become a virtue on occasion, and here, it does.

However, part of that is also because the entire package here — individual performances and broader narrative — genuinely does a spectacular job of putting them in that role in a way that actually works, and that allows all facets of the thing to work together like hand in glove like never before (aided strongly by their opposition being what it is, of course).

The usual thing in 2018 happens here in the first half, as Matt Jackson’s bad back becomes an issue. He is once again shockingly good at selling it, managing to be occasionally sympathetic, but never ever forgetting it. He always feels like someone in pain, even when the champions rarely work it over.

What really makes this interesting though is when Nick Jackson hurts his ankle off of an errant kick against the ringpost during his hot tag.

Like the work on Matt’s back and Matt’s selling of it for the last five months, Nick’s selling of the leg is this wonderful intersection between quality narrative and shockingly great mechanical strength.

Nick gets the selling just right, and conducts his offense as well as possible considering. He flies and on occasion runs, but there is always a cost to it, one paid in key moments when he tries more than he can handle, such as collapsing off the top rope when trying the springboard for the Meltzer Driver. It is never what a lot of matches like this threaten to devolve into, all the spots hitting and then lip service to selling, so much as it feels like Nick tempting fate and occasionally getting brought down to Earth very severely for his hubris. More importantly, it never feels as if he is trying to show off, so much as that this is simply what they do. This feeling is helped in large part by how SANADA and EVIL approach the injury, not doing a whole lot to it outside of it being an opening to unload their heavier artillery, and allowing it to exist as a hindrance, rather than a point of focus. Nick gets exactly what he can handle as a seller, and the match is so much better for it, whereas it might have been doomed if the champions really zeroed in on it.

The real kicker though is that after all these months of Nick having to carry the burden and showing signs of real frustration when Matt’s hurt back has cost them big important matches, everything gets reversed in their biggest career opportunity so far. It’s not something they go extremely far with, but for once, restraint is a friend to the Young Bucks. Even small moments of Matt now knowing how it feels adds so much to the match, especially in the later moments, where Nick is able to muster up some strength, and contribute in spite of it all.

Nick is able to summon it up for two (2) double superkicks at the end to first cut off EVIL and then SANADA, making them actually mean something and have some genuine weight for once, before the Bucks hit More Bang For Your Buck to capture their biggest singles prize yet.

Really and truly, an actual miracle.

If not the level of match as their best work of the year, the sort of deeply impressive and unbelievably surprising thing that makes it a near lock that the Young Bucks are the 2018 tag team of the year. It’s not to say nobody else could have gotten this out of guys like EVIL and SANADA, but only The Young Bucks ever did.

***1/4

The Briscoes vs. The Young Bucks, NJPW Destruction in Hiroshima (9/22/2016)

This was for Jay and Mark’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

For much of 2016 and some of the later months of 2015, I’ve made no secret that I haven’t enjoyed the Young Bucks in the way that I used to. More schtick, more reliance on easy and even more brainless stuff to pop crowds without quite the same thought and effort as in what I’d consider their prime, all of that. It’s not something they’ve lost, as great matches in 2017 and 2018 would show, but in 2016, they have what I would consider their only real down year during the nine or ten year span at which they were regularly one of the better tag teams in the world.

This match is something of an exception to that, as their best straight up two on two tag match of the year. It would be neat if there was some great new idea that they came up with here or if this was some major big match Young Bucks statement match like they’ve had before. It would also be tremendous if they somehow got dragged into a Briscoes brawl and the actual greatest tag team of the century got something really new and interesting out of them. None of that happened though and instead there is a far more simple explanation.

In this match, the Young Bucks simply cut the shit.

No schtick, no cutesy nonsense, and only one real egregious bit of no-selling (the Doomday Device backflip no-sell into a superkick spot that they just god damned LOVE doing in Briscoes matches), resulting in what’s essentially just a touring version of the YBs/Briscoes match of the past few years for a new audience.

You can read what I’ve written about this tag pairing in the past. For the most part, my feelings haven’t changed all much.

The two best tag teams of the past decade have their stock match, and it is a whole lot of fun.

A few things here aren’t perfect imports and could have used some tweaking, of course. The Bucks don’t control the match really at all and the match kind of gives them the hot tag, like it might in front of a Ring of Honor crowd that, for some reason, absolutely loves these little weirdos at this point. It’s like they forgot to 100% adjust it for a Japanese crowd, outside of that there was less nonsense and that it was conducted 100% clean. Mostly though, it works in the way it always does. Blue collar heroes get challenged by these hyperathletic Bible school dropouts and have to grit their teeth and run through it. A process that’s always very rewarding, mixed in with a lot of very very cool spots and sequences.

Jay and Mark keep the belts with the second try at the Doomsday Device, this time following a top rope Redneck Boogie and a Jay Driller, and it’s enough to keep the titles. They’ll lose them back to the shit ass Guerrillas of Destiny before too long, but a lovely little window at a world where the best tag team of the generation gets to wrestle in front of a huge crowd like this.

It just feels good.

Not the best they’ve done together up to this point, nor the best they’ll do this decade, but a great reminder of (a) just how great this match up is & (b) just how easy this whole thing can be when you put in the effort.

***

Guns & Gallows vs. Meiyu Tag, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom IX (1/4/2015)

This was for Gallows and Anderson’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

Is this a home run? No.

What it is is yet another real strong base hit on a show full of them, doubly impressive given the extraordinarily low hit rate you get out of Gallows and Anderson tag team matches.

It’s another delightfully efficient match on the show, and yet another success story on an all-time New Japan show. The match is not even ten minutes, and it’s an unbelievably satisfying match and a complete feeling story bell to bell. In fact, it’s the one match on this show that outright feels like it would have been a worse match with any more time. Karl’s great, but the length and pace is perfect for a real limited guy like Gallows, who’s motivated enough by the setting to really give a shit, but still clearly has a lower ceiling on him than the others.

To solve the problems you might encounter on paper, it’s just a pure sprint.

Gallows primarily just tosses out those great uppercut hell stabs, there’s a brief control segment, but otherwise it’s the three good to great wrestlers in the match absolutely going off. The champions cheat their butts off, lean entirely on size and how much of a loser Goto is, but fail to do 100% of the work and leave Shibata in the ring at the end as the legal man. As such, it’s 1000% harder to close out. Goto blows it in the big moment when he’s by himself or when he’s in there at the end and everyone is watching, but when the spotlight isn’t on him and he’s the support player, he’s beyond capable. Outside of being in a G1 spoiler position at the end of the tour, it’s where Goto’s talents really lie at this point in his career. They cut off the big man from Karl’s saves, never let them hit the big finish, and just pour it the hell on in the end. Shibata finally can’t be denied in a big spot any longer. As frustrating as it is that he has to share it, that it’s only the Tag Titles, and that it’s over in a month (yes, being frustrated about both is possible. Whole ass something.), it’s still SOMETHING for Shibata, and after a solid year and a half of him being a top five guy in the company and just treading water, it feels real good to finally get somewhere. Shibata finds land with the PK on Gallows and even briefly, our heroes (or our hero and his weird loser friend) do the thing.

In short, this team of villains has had the titles for a year through their cheap shots and interference and this deep bag full of bullshit, and denied any of that, they finally get their asses kicked. Combine that with a long overdue moment in the sun, shared or not, and it’s another classic piece of simple pro wrestling on this show. If it’s executed this well and feels this good, the other stuff on the periphery of the moment doesn’t feel quite so important.

***

Guns & Gallows vs. The Briscoes, ROH War of the Worlds 2014 (5/17/2014)

This was for Karl and Doc’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

It’s the rare great IWGP Tag Title match and the even rarer great Guns & Gallows match.

A big chunk of that is down to the Briscoes. It’s not that Anderson and Gallows are bad, but it is that so often, they just never seem to care about whether or not their matches as a team are good. You can see it in the G1 or whatever, but rarely as a team. But the Briscoes are beyond motivated by the obvious opportunity that this show presents, and it brings something out of the champions for once. Nobody ever seems to think The Briscoes have a real chance, but the match doesn’t waste time trying to convince anyone of that. It instead succeeds because it seems to accept that as this unchanging fact and instead asks why it matters if a match is as fun as it possibly could be. Jay Briscoe even breaks out a flip dive for the first time in years and years.

It helps too that the match is only like ten minutes.

So all that Doc has to do is like five power moves, Karl can take care of the rest, and with a shorter runtime than most of their title matches and a team as motivated and energetic as Jay and Mark, it all takes care of itself. No need for a long and drawn out control segment, where they hold back on all the best stuff they can do. It’s ROH and this is a ten minute midcard sprint. Mark and Jay each have a big hot tag run, and each is real different from the other. Karate, ass kicking, sweet tag moves. The villains win with the Magic Killer, but that never matters when they have this much fun before that obvious end point.

A surprisingly fun match, even if Karl vs. Jay would have been far better. One of maybe five great Gallows/Anderson tag team matches ever.

***

Zack Sabre Jr./Taichi vs. Guerrillas of Destiny, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 15 Night One (1/4/2020)

This match sucked. Zack’s alright but nowhere near good enough to get a thing out of these two absolute NOTHING level failed prospects. Taichi is average to middling in some ninety percent of the matches he has, and obviously, this wasn’t a match worth showing up for. Hard to blame him.

Not a lot to say here, just some bad wrestling as a result of an endlessly unearned push and a horrible clash of styles.

So instead I’d like to once again remind the fine people reading this of one very important fact.

Zack Sabre Jr. has yet to tweet since June 15th, 2020 and has yet to even come close to addressing any of the allegations against numerous people he has appeared closely with and seems to have some sort of a friendship with, most interestingly his long term tag team partner and rival, who was accused of engaging in sexual relations with a fucking teenager. Complete radio silence. Can’t log in, can’t comment anywhere, even something so vague as “nonces are bad!”, can’t even follow through with a New Japan online Q&A because he’s afraid that hey yeah maybe he might actually be asked to follow through on all of the now completely hollow tripe he’s let spew out of his miserable fucking trap for years now to get himself over as One Of The Good Ones. Can’t even pretend he cares about it or cared about any of the bullshit he pretended to care about to sell t-shirts. Cares about solving all the ills of the world until the goddamned second one of his pals gets called to account for taking advantage of a child and all of a sudden he just can’t find the password anymore.

Thanks for reading!

 

Killer Elite Squad vs. Sword & Gun (Hirooki Goto & Karl Anderson), NJPW Wrestle Kingdom VII (1/4/2013)

This was for the Squad’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

More like Sword & FUN!

Sword & Gun was such a tremendously fun tag team. Not much more to it than upper mid-tier babyfaces teaming up so that they would have something to do in the Tag League, on house shows, and on the biggest show of the year, but there was a real chemistry there. It’s another one of these things that, like the entire idea of Karl Anderson as a blue collar babyface, just WORKS.

Unfortunately, Killer Elite Squad was also in this match and save for the sort of heroic effort that this match simply doesn’t have the time to accommodate, nobody is getting a great match out of them for another few years. So this isn’t a great match and this superteam is little more than fodder to try and make the Killer Elite Squad happen.

I mostly wanted to try and increase Sword & Gun awareness.

Bad Intentions (Giant Bernard & Karl Anderson) vs. TenKoji, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom VI (1/4/2012)

This was for Bernard and Karl’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

Bernard’s on his way out for his WWE retirement tour, but in spite of this being a foregone conclusion, it genuinely whips ass. Somehow, after two to three years of teaming, it’s here that Bad Intentions has almost definitely the best match of their entire run. And it isn’t at all that Bernard is suddenly spry and motivated like he was in 2006 again or anything, it just all works. Sometimes things come together. Everyone has as much of a skip to their step as possible though, and even being the clear lesser members of their teams, Bernard and Tenzan have a few fun little moments too, and a surprisingly great run against each other at the end.

Bernard is on his way out though, and the most impressive part of the match was the way they handled his looming departure.

The feeling I left the match with was not anything about Bernard, but instead about how good Karl Anderson is now. He’s been quietly improving for years, this is the first time he’s really been unleashed against actual opponents on a major stage, and the Anderson vs. Kojima segments in this are really tremendous, Satoshi Kojima main evented this show a year ago, he’ll still be in IWGP Title matches for another two years or so, and Karl doesn’t look at all out of place fighting him evenly, maybe even looking better than him. It’s Karl who always bails out, Karl who gets to do everything important, and Karl who gets to look like a million bucks. Giant Bernard blows it at the end, when he’s ganged up on. Kojima bowls him over with a Lariat and Tenzan breaks out the big match Moonsault to regain the titles for the first time in a decade or something. The end result is as much the thought that Karl was let down by Bernard as it is about how fun the TenKoji Reunion Tour is.

An exceptionally fun match. Not only does it deliver from bell to bell, but it’s a remarkable example of how to handle someone leaving and how to elevate someone in a tag team loss. A real hoot that I’m absolutely overrating.

***1/4

Hiroshi Tanahashi/Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Scott Norton/Manabu Nakanishi, NJPW (3/13/2005)

This was for Tanahashi and Nakamura’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

FINALLY, A TAG TITLE MATCH THAT ONLY GOES FIFTEEN MINUTES (AIRED). It’s so nice to get back to this project and have an actual great match to review instead of another match that’s good but not great. Really simple story helps out here as, they actually bother telling one. It’s two hulking beasts against the dream team, with each man trying to push through it in their own ways. Even when they’re together, they can’t stop competing with each other. This is a match based around fighting back against very obvious odds, so you bet Tanahashi overshadows Nakamura. He gets slammed on the exposed floor outside by my guy Scotty and comes back in with his ribs taped up. Really tremendous basic power guy control work from both Norton and Nakanishi. Nakamura’s hot tag is unfortunately on par with the rest of his work, but also suffers from real weird execution. He gets pretty immediately stuffed by Norton, but then grabs a Triangle Choke out of nowhere. He doesn’t give up, and Tanahashi finally does some actual teamwork here and hits Norton with a Shining Wizard while he’s stuck there. Nakamura rolls on top with the Triangle and gets the pin.

The victory over the two top guys in Tenzan and Nagata in January was promising, but New Japan isn’t exactly consistent about anything at this point. Instead, this was a return to form and an unfortunate relapse, where a Tanahashi/Nakamura tag title match victory feels real shaky at a point when they should definitely be able to get past old ass Scott Norton a little more assertively. Still, a tight trimming job and a clear focus helps this out a whole lot, and it’s their only great match as a team, before they drift apart after the spring and only team up again in the fall to lose the titles.

From there, it’s over, because there is no actual bond here, as these matches have more than illustrated. They could have been the most dominant tag team of their time, like TenKoji or a handful of the classic All Japan teams, but they never actually liked each other. 

***

Hiroshi Tanahashi/Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Yuji Nagata/Hiroyoshi Tenzan, NJPW (1/30/2005)

This was for Tanahashi and Nakamura’s IWGP Tag Team Titles.

Another longer one at some 33~ minutes. Like the previous two very long Tag Title matches, this is a match that barely even had the material to go half that time. It has the same flaws as the match a month and a half prior, where they never really pick up the pace from a half speed approach, and where Nakamura isn’t good enough to be in matches this long yet and where he and Tanahashi have no chemistry, so it feels like a series of disjointed and poorly clipped apart segments from singles matches instead of a tag team match. There’s no compelling work on Tanahashi’s knee this time, but we get a lot of Tanahashi vs. Nagata, and that’s wonderful. Easily the best chemistry of any combination in the match. Nagata outstrikes him and keeps punishing Tanahashi for not being a good enough striker. Tanahashi uses the Sling Blade here for the first time ever to stop him, and follows that up with the Dragon Suplex. He pins Nagata for the first time ever in a huge step forward, and now knowing that it’s the Sling Blade’s debut that gets it done adds a little something to that. Nagata having a history as a combination of a sometimes mentor and also a measuring stick for Tanahashi to try and surpass also means that this accomplishes what the previous tag completely failed to do, and that’s to give him an actual big pinfall victory over someone that matters. I wish the match was as good as the moment, but it’s still a much needed step forward.

**1/2

Minoru Suzuki/Kensuke Sasaki vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi/Shinsuke Nakamura, NJPW (12/11/2004)

This was for the vacant IWGP Tag Team Titles.

With Yoshihiro Takayama on the shelf, the titles were vacated. Takayama nominated Kensuke to be his replacement, both as he was part of their unofficial group in 2004 with Genichiro Tenryu, but also because a maniac like Takayama is gonna earn respect for the guy who beat him into having a stroke following the match. They then all assembled for one of the raddest group photos in the history of professional wrestling, shown in the pre-match video. 

In response to the supergroup, a new generation superteam has finally been put together, and it’s a big deal. The match itself is thirty five minutes, so stunningly, I don’t think it’s great. This is still a match with a lot of positives though, so I’ll go into those first. My favorite thing about it is that they didn’t immediately make Tanahashi and Nakamura this fast-gelling superteam. They have no chemistry together at all. Tanahashi doesn’t tag out early on and gets isolated for it when Suzuki works on his leg. Nakamura then has to bear a lot of the load and also gets worked on. Later on, he keeps tagging Tanahashi in to get out of there when he’s limping and hurt. It makes sense, and it’s an interesting part of their history. They’ve been opposed since Nakamura came into the company and before this, they didn’t really come together in any big angle, it just got booked. They’re being professionals, but there’s no love here. The control work from Suzuki and Kensuke is also great. Kensuke isn’t as mean as Minoru, but he’s punishing in a cold and dismissive kind of way that really works. Tanahashi’s leg selling is also something he carried with him for the duration of the match and never forgot about, always keeping him sympathetic.

As for the negatives, it’s far too long. It has the same flaw as the Tanahashi/Yoshie vs. Tenzan/Nishimura match about a year before this in that regard, it’s just that Tanahashi was better now and had a slightly better partner. The control work on Nakamura was entirely unnecessary and grinded this thing down to a halt. Nakamura’s aloofness can be great, and he had some terrific individual moments in the match, but I needed more from him to justify that length. The idea is clearly that they’re both equally tough or something, but in reality, it forces a comparison between them and it wasn’t a favorable one for Nakamura. They go back to Suzuki vs. Tanahashi at the end, and Tanahashi finds a way out of the Saka Otoshi into a cradle for two and then gets the Bridging Dragon Suplex to win.

Kensuke and Suzuki ate them up for some 95% of the match only for that to happen at the last second. It’s hard to say it does nothing for them, unlike the previous match where Kensuke also ate up Tanahashi for 95% of the match and then beat him anyways, but once again, it doesn’t do nearly as much for them as a more even match (or a better one) could. A very good match in a lot of ways, naturally impeded by its major structural flaws. It’s a New Japan main event that goes too long and tries to do too much. Lessons are never actually learned. 

**3/4