After the best show of the tour, New Japan returned to Korakuen for more Super Junior Tag League action (there is other stuff going on, but as usual, I’m choosing to ignore it). The Super Coaches brought the house down in the previous main event with Roppongi 3K, and had a chance to do so again (on Rocky’s birthday) against Birds of Prey.
After a couple of rough nights attendance-wise for New Japan in Korakuen, they returned after a trip around Japan and, from what I could see, had managed to plug the gaps (although I am an awful judge of these things, so don’t take my word for it). So far the Super Junior Tag League has been a lot of fun, and a night in Korakuen was unlikely to be the place where that changed.
The easiest ‘what happened next’ ever. Credit: NJPW
Our one match shows continued in Saitama and Gunma. Well, they weren’t one match shows, that would be very weird. There were multiple matches, but I only care about one of them. Make sense? No? Fuck it.
With the opening brace of Korakuens out of the way, New Japan has taken the Road to Power Struggle on the, well, road, which means our Junior Tag League have been stripped down to a single camera and minimum production. We shall not complain, though! We shall battle gainfully on and hope there is gold in these here hills. Yea, I don’t know what I’m talking about either.
For the second night in a row, there were a plethora of empty seats in Korakuen Hall which has been a rare sight at New Japan shows in recent years. It’s not a great sign for the Super Junior Tag League as it’s clearly not proving strong enough to draw fans on its own, and it will be interesting to see if New Japan react to that issue in the future.
It feels only right to start this review with a shout out to those in Japan who were affected by the typhoon over the weekend, and I hope everyone looks after themselves. It feels a bit cheap to go from that to talk of card changes, as in the grand scheme of things it’s not that big a deal, but it did leave Jon Moxley and Zack Sabre Jr unable to travel. Mox was the bigger loss of the two as his absence forced New Japan to strip the US Title from him and give the match to Lance Archer instead. Amazingly, that’s caused some conspiracy chat, which seems oblivious to the actual typhoon which makes cancelled flights seem perfectly reasonable. Anyway, that silliness aside, this was a hella stacked card, so let’s see what went down.
The hype around this six-man chaos led to many people checking out the high-octane style of PWG for the first time. Whether you love it or hate it, it’s fair to say that it’s been incredibly influential on how wrestling has gone in the last few years and matches like this helped push it to a wider audience.
My review of the tournament that everyone forgot trundles into the final station as we blast through the semis and the final on one show. If you’ve seen any New Japan programming since this happened then you know who won, but let’s pretend we don’t for the fun of it. Who are you betting on? I reckon Caristico is going to take it home.
I’m plunging ahead with these J-Cup reviews in the hope that someone still cares about this rather lost tournament. The Quarter Final took place in San Francisco and was filmed with a single static camera which is great for a show that features a shitload of dives… Oh well, shouldn’t complain.
Does anyone still care about the Super J-Cup? It’s took ages for New Japan to get these up on World and then it’s taken even longer for me to get around to reviewing them. It makes it hard to imagine anyone is clamouring for my opinion (please don’t point out that no-one has ever clamoured for my opinion on anything). Oh well, I’m going to give it anyway. These shows took place in America last month, so let’s see what went down.