How is this tour still going? It feels like I’ve been reviewing these shows forever. Will it ever stop? Can it stop? Am I stuck in an infinite loop that will eventually see me drown in mediocre tag-team wrestling? Christ, what a shite way to go.
Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki and Lance Archer) () defeated Hirooki Goto and Karl Fredericks ()
I’m going to shock you all here by suggesting that Karl Fredericks did not enjoy this match. At one point, Archer threw him into a door. God bless him for trying to fight back, but he’d probably have been better curling up in a ball and hoping it ended quickly. The action was decent, but nothing we haven’t seen before. While Goto got a good reaction for his hot tag, he also wrestled in a t-shirt, which kind of summed it up.
Verdict: Three Stars
Dangerous Tekkers (Taichi and Zack Sabre Jr) (5-6) defeated The Bullet Club (Chase Owens and Bad Luck Fale) (3-7)
I can 100% guarantee that this was a match and it happened. Outside of that, I ain’t got much. Look, it wasn’t bad, but there wasn’t much to it and if you had to ask me to name one thing Fale did, I doubt I could do it. These four went out and had a standard three-star match that passed the time.
Verdict: Three Stars
Mad Muscle Men (Jeff Cobb and Mikey Nicholls) (7-5) defeated GBH (Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma) (3-9)
It amuses me that having worked with Henare in what was basically the Young Lion role for the last few years, Makabe has got back together with Honma and slipped him into the exact same spot. The guy has nailed doing as little work as possible. Thankfully, Honma is beloved, so it kind of works, but let’s not pretend this was a great match. It was fine.
Verdict: Two And A Half Stars
Colt Cabana and Toru Yano (8-3) defeated Double Rampage (Shingo Takagi and El Terrible) (5-6)
You can add Colt Cabana to the list of guys Shingo has exciting chemistry with. By my count, that means that list now includes every wrestler on the planet. And guess what? He was fantastic at the comedy shit too — what a man, what a man.
Verdict: Three And A Quarter Stars
Los Ingobernables de Japon (SANADA and EVIL) (9-1) defeated HenarAce (Hiroshi Tenahashi and Toa Henare) (2-9)
Tanahashi seemed to enjoy working with LIJ, as he put in a lot more effort than you’d expect. He even let SANADA put him in the Paradise Lock which will annoy some people, but made me smile. Throw in Henare and EVIL hitting each other, and this was easily the best thing on the show so far.
Verdict: Three And A Half Stars
CHAOS (Tomohiro Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI) (8-2) defeated The Bullet Club (KENTA and Yujiro Takahashi) (5-5)
The bulk of this match was worked with all the urgency of a stroll around the garden. KENTA has been less than complimentary about YOSHI-HASHI recently, and I was hoping we’d see him try to remove the wee prick’s head, but sadly it wasn’t to be. Ishii got things moving a towards the the end, dragging Yujiro to something good, but the rest is skippable.
Verdict: Two And Three Quarter Stars
Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa) (8-2) defeated FinJuice (Juice Robinson and David Finlay) (8-2)
I don’t like GOD, I’ve never liked GOD, why am I still reviewing GOD matches? Juice was pretty good, but this was a fourteen-minute match that felt like it went forty and had a screwy finish. Fuck it.
Verdict: Two Stars
Overall Show
At this point, I reckon I could write these reviews before watching the show, and I’d pretty much nail every single one. There might be one or two matches that surprise me, but most of these teams are putting in similar performances each night, and I don’t blame them for a second. Oh well, onto the next one.
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