NJPW New Japan Cup Night One Results and Analysis

Night One of the NJPW New Japan Cup aired in the early hours of March 9th in North America. The show featured two first round matches. Juice Robinson vs. Yujiro Takhashi & Michael Elgin vs. Tomohiro Ishii.

NJPW looks to setup their spring and early summer with the matches here in the New Japan Cup, so lots of stories are going to develop here moving forward. The tag matches will supply little hints about what’s coming, and it’s always exciting to pay attention to those little details.

Shota Umino, Tomoyuki Oka, & Tetsuhiro Yagi vs. CHAOS (Chuck Taylor, Toru Yano, & Hirooki Goto)

Nice quick little opening match right here. Oka and Umino showed a lot of fire as the young lions. Chuck Taylor got the pinfall over Umino with the Awful Waffle. NJPW has a lot of young lions that are looking to step up. I expect Oka and Umino to both be major parts of NJPW for years to come.

Result: CHAOS

Rating: 2 stars out of 5.

This was simply average. Nice little tag match to get the crowd warmed up for the rest of the show. Nothing wrong with it, but nothing special at all.

Bullet Club (Tanga Loa & Bad Luck Fale) vs. Killer Elite Squad (Suzuki-gun) (Davey Boy Smith Jr. & Lance Archer)

Lance Archer came out and spit an ocean’s worth of water on the people in the building. Archer started the match with Loa. KES went for the Killer Bomb, but couldn’t hit it. The action spilled outside, and Davey Boy brawled with Fale into the crowd. KES brought it back to the ring and got the heat on Loa for a few minutes. Loa eventually managed to outwit KES and makes the hot tag. Fale got control for a little bit, but as soon as Loa is tagged back in, KES took control again. KES kept Fale at bay and hit the Killer Bomb on Loa for the pinfall.

Result: KES

Rating: 2 stars out of 5.

Solid tag match here. Nothing exciting, but if you want to watch the whole show, it’s not a bad watch either.