NJPW New Japan Cup Night Two: Results and Analysis

Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, SANADA, & Tetsuya Naito vs. Suzuki-gun (Taka Michinoku, Zack Sabre Jr., & Minoru Suzuki)

Minoru Suzuki came out looking like a complete killer. I know this isn’t really newsworthy, but I love Suzuki so I want to draw attention to it. Suzuki is the man. Taka introduced ZSJ again, and it looks like he has become Sabre’s hype man. Naito got the biggest pop of the night thus far when he came out.

Suzuki stated the match with Naito, but both men tagged out to BUSHI and Taka. So it’s actually Taka and BUSHI that started the match. Nice little tease of a huge match right there. ZSJ is given a lot of opportunities to shine as he twisted BUSHI into a pretzel. Suzuki did the same, as he’s not one to be shown up. Naito broke the submission by walking casually into the ring, resting his foot on Suzuki’s face, and bailing when Suzuki got up. This got a big pop from the crowd. Very tranquilo.

The match eventually broke down to SANADA and Suzuki exchanging strikes. As you can imagine, this did not end well for SANADA. All three members of Suzuki-gun beat on SANADA for awhile. SANADA somehow eventually isolated Taka with the help of BUSHI and locked in Skull End. SANADA got the submission win.

Result: Los Ingobernables de Japon

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5.

This was a fantastic tag match. Lots of great action. It teased Naito/Suzuki very well, and I expect we’ll be seeing that match sooner rather than later. Definitely watch this one.

CHAOS (Chuck Taylor, YOSHI-HASHI, Hirooki Goto, & Kazuchika Okada) w/ Gedo vs. Bullet Club (Tanga Loa, Chase Owens, & Yujiro Takahashi) & Kota Ibushi

Chase Owens seemed to be trying to broker peace between Ibushi and the rest of the Bullet Club. This was quite interesting to watch. Owens was reassuring Loa that Ibushi was cool. I really liked this.

Okada made his entrance, and the crowd goes crazy. Okada is fired up here. He truly carries himself like he’s “The Man,” and goodness, do I believe it. Ibushi refused to too sweet the members of the Bullet Club, but he did shake their hands to a nice reaction from the crowd. Again, this is so subtle, but so awesome.

Tanga Loa embraced the insanity of Ibushi and his desire to moonsault of everything by holding YOSHI-HASHI and Chuck Taylor for Ibushi as he moonsaulted off a balcony onto them. Back in the ring, Chuck Taylor hit a killer knee on Yujiro and tagged out to Goto. Goto proceeded to run wild over everyone. Eventually Okada got the win with the cobra clutch over Chase Owens.

Result: CHAOS

Rating: 3.5 stars out of 5.

This was excellent with a ton of little hints about what’s going to happen in the future. Some really great stuff here.