NJPW KING OF PRO-WRESTLING

Ryogoku, Tokyo, Japan

EL DESPERADO & YOSHINOBU KANEMARU vs. ROPPONGI 3K (10:44): There was a super typhoon that hit Japan on Saturday, which meant changes to this show which was oddly not cancelled. Tokyo supposedly got hit with a lot of flooding but I guess the show must go on! Two wrestlers couldn't make the show, presumably because of flight cancellations. Zack Sabre, Jr. wasn't there but was only scheduled for a superfluous multi-man tag match. Jon Moxley, however, couldn't make it to Japan and was thus stripped of his coveted U.S. title. The Moxley/Juice no DQ match for the title probably would have been one of the better matches on the show, so that was a letdown. The show was a good one, though, save for most of these lame tag matches that New Japan fucking adores for some reason. There doing a Jr. tag tournament starting on Wednesday so I guess this was a preview. El Desperado is back after having his jaw broken in a match against Jun Kasai last Spring. That elusive mask vs. mask match between Dragon Lee and El Desperado certainly seems further away than ever thanks to CMLL firing Dragon Lee and New Japan pulling Dragon Lee out of the Jr. tournament. As for this match...Roppongi 3K is always entertaining so it was at least watchable. El Desperado came out wearing a blood stained shirt that he supposedly was wearing in the match he broke his jaw in. Does he even wear a white shirt in matches? No. So that confused me. Jun Kasai is nuts. Remember the infamous CZW Fans Bring the Weapons match with him like fifteen years ago in Delaware where he got his elbow cut open after being power bombed out of the ring through a stack of fluorescent light tubes? Yep. So it certainly doesn't surprise me that he broke someone's jaw. **1/2

HIROSHI TANAHASHI & TOMOAKI HONMA vs. TOGI MAKABE & TORU YANO (9:43): Tanahashi is in the second match of one of their biggest shows. My how the mighty have fallen. Well Naito was in the third match and Jay White in a nothing six man so I guess this show wasn't as "big" as some may thing. Usually this is there third biggest show after the Dome and Dominion, right? Although, the championship hasn't changed hands on this show in five years (when AJ Styles lost to Tanahashi) so it's been a little stale (and how can we forget last year's epic fail when Ibushi vs. Omega was ruined by inserting Cody into the match). And what's up with Honma? Dude was almost paralyzed with a neck injury and he's still doing twenty diving head butts every match. This wasn't terrible or anything, just forgettable. **

TETSUYA NAITO & SHINGO TAKAGI vs. TAICHI & DOUKI (9:00): Shingo should be battling for the title in the main event. What's wrong with this company? I guess he's still new and a Dragon Gate guy but still, c'mon, what's one of your best wrestlers doing in a lame match against the two stupidest wrestlers on the roster, Taichi and Douki? I will admit that Taichi's ultra stupid entrance always makes me laugh at how ridiculous it is. He's lip singing while holding a microphone obviously not plugged in and he looks like the Phantom of the Opera and he's supposed to be this tough, bad ass heel? Douki is worse. Guy wears a dress that's flapping around while he's trying to do dives and flips. And I can never get past his name. Shingo saved this, though, and Naito is always amusing. There was that. *1/2

MINORU SUZUKI vs. JYUSHIN THUNDER LIGER (17:38): This was a letdown. Liger didn't wear his whole costume, just a new mask and pants. They set this up by doing a ridiculous, hard core run in with a spike and a table so you figured this would be a hardcore match or something. Nope. It was boring. Liger didn't do any of his high flying. Eh. His retirement tour isn't going so well. *

WILL OSPREAY vs. EL PHANTASMO (27:58): The match of the night! Ospreay is just having one of those years. He's already the best wrestler of 2019 and he's still putting out unbelievably awesome matches. They did pretty much everything. Phantasmo did a dive off an entranceway amidst the crowd. The ref got knocked out and Ishimori interfered. They both kicked out of everything. Phantasmo jumped up from the top rope to give Ospreay a Hurricanrana off the top rope by Ospreay slammed him down in mid-air from like ten feet. This was just nuts. Great match. ***1/2

HIROOKI GOTO, TOMOHIRO ISHII & YOSHI-HASHI vs. JAY WHITE, KENTA & YUJIRO TAKAHASHI (12:27): Ishii and Kenta are on a collision course that will probably end at Wrestle Kingdom even though they already wrestled in August in London when Kenta was legit knocked out. Besides the Kenta/Ishii stuff there wasn't much of anything else noteworthy. Kenta has yet to have a great match in New Japan so fingers crossed we'll get it someday. **1/2

LANCE ARCHER vs. JUICE ROBINSON "NO DQ" (14:58): Archer replaced Moxley and won the U.S. title. They broke a bunch of tables and used chairs. This never heated up into anything special or awesome or anything but it was at least semi-entertaining. Archer had a hell of a G1 but maybe he doesn't have anything left after that because this felt like the old, dull Archer. **

KOTA IBUSHI vs. EVIL (24:05): Ugh...a twenty five minute Evil match. What, are you trying to torture us? I can't wait for the day when Shingo takes Evil's spot up here in the prestigious matches. This was for Ibushi's Wrestle Kingdom title shot contract...which makes no sense because he won the whole fucking G1 to get it and all Evil has to do is win one match to get the same thing? Stupid. Has anyone ever won the contract this way? I'll have to investigate. But of course Ibushi won. If Evil ever main events a Dome then I'm done watching this company. I'm also trying to think of the last good Evil match. Has there ever been one? Maybe Ospreay got a good match out of him once. I'll have to do more investigating. Evil sucks. I will admit that the final flurry was entertaining. The problem was that Evil wasn't winning and that sucked any sort of drama out of this. The other problem is that as big as Okada vs. Ibushi is...the previous times they've wrestled it never turned out as epic and as awesome as you'd think. I hope it's not that they don't have chemistry together and I'm totally wrong and their Dome match is the greatest thing in the world ever. **

KAZUCHIKA OKADA vs. SANADA (36:21): Sanada loses to Okada all the time so why are they wrestling again? Oh, right, Sanada beat Okada in the G1 which, let's face it, was meaningless because it wasn't the final or semi-final. These two had a better match earlier in the year. It was either the New Japan Cup final or their match right before that. But this was still good, at least by the end when the crowd was into it and there were a bunch of near falls. One glaring issue with this match was that Sanada had his submission hold locked in for probably ten minutes total in this match...which made a lot of this boring. I can see Sanada winning the title but probably at the February show when it doesn't mean as much. **1/2

WWE HELL IN A CELL

Sacramento

NATALYA vs. LACEY EVANS (9:25): And so the greatest week in the history of wrestling has come to an end. Maybe not "greatest" but it certainly was a huge week. It all started with last Friday's Ring of Honor ppv where Rush beat Matt Taven for the title and afterwards Dragon Lee and Rush were fired from CMLL. There was also CMLL's biggest show of the year where Negro Casas lost his hair in a cage match (the show sucked btw). Then we had the big premiere of RAW which featured stars like Ric Flair and Hogan and a bunch of hot angles like Lesnar destroying Mysterio and his kid and Bobby Lashley making out with Rusev's wife Lana in front of him. Then on Wednesday we had a huge NXT episode that went head to head with the first ever episode of AEW's Dynamite on TNT. Adam Cole defended his NXT title against Matt Riddle in a great match and over on AEW Riho won the women's title and Jon Moxley gave Kenny Omega a DDT through a glass coffee table. Then it was the big Smackdown premiere on FOX on Friday. The Rock showed up to roast Baron Corbin, Kevin Owens retired Shane in a Ladder match, and Brock Lesnar beat Kofi Kingston for the title in five seconds then Cain Valasquez showed up to set up a Lesnar/Cain fight in Saudi Arabia. And now to end this insane week was the WWE ppv Hell in a Cell. Granted, that's more than seven days but you get the gist. It's been a crazy week. AEW also beat NXT in the ratings which was noteworthy. And this show ended with the fans booing. Literally it went off the air with everyone booing. Nice. This first match kind of sums up the WWE. They actually did a really good job this week with surprises and stories and good matches. Better than usual, anyway. But this show went off the rails after the Daniel Bryan match. And this show started off very poor with this awfully boring match. Lacey Evans sucks and Natalya is boring. What'd you expect? -No Stars-

BECKY LYNCH vs. SASHA BANKS "HELL IN A CELL" (21:50): Banks is back after being pissed off and wanting out of her contract. So what happened? She signed a new contract! Or is rumored to. I guess money talks or the WWE was just going to keep her sidelined forever so she was a trapped animal. Either way, she's been the WWE's most entertaining women's wrestler forever and she proved it here. This was the match of the night. They didn't do any high dives off the cage or anything, they just used canes and chairs and a table but it was brutal and wild and a hell of match. I suppose they couldn't have ended the show with this because all of the promotion has been about Bray Wyatt but still, this should've closed the show. Lynch kept her title when she submitted Banks. ***

DANIEL BRYAN & ROMAN REIGNS vs. ERICK ROWAN & LUKE HARPER (16:45): This was a wild brawl and very entertaining. Reigns ended up spearing Rowan through one of the announce tables which was cool. A lot of action and the crowd popped big for all of Reigns' spots and did the Yes! chant when Bryan wanted to hug Reigns at the end. Entertaining stuff. **1/2

RANDY ORTON vs. ALI (12:10): Ali lost and didn't look as good as he usually does against 205Live dudes. Ali is awesome, though, so it's kind of sad seeing him in a dull match like this. At least put him in there with someone he can work with doing the high flying style like Ricochet or Mysterio. 1/2*

ASUKA & KAIRI SANE vs. ALEXA BLISS & NIKKI CROSS (10:25): Ugh. Asuka and Kairi Sane's tag team name is The Kabuki Warriors. Isn't that racist? Maybe it's not but it sounds racist. It also sounds fucking stupid. Well they won the "coveted" women's tag team titles which have become a joke and, let's face it, were never really turned into anything worthwhile in their short existence so far. I'd have rather seen Sane vs. Asuka. 1/2*

THE VIKING RAIDERS & BRAUN STROWMAN vs. THE O.C. (8:15): Remember how entertaining The War Raiders were in New Japan and Ring of Honor only a year ago? Fuck me but they suck now. What happened? Even The O.C. (which...no, doesn't have anything to do with the great FOX teenage show from years ago) is pretty monotonous these days even though AJ was one of the best wrestlers in the world not too long ago. I'm still not entirely sure why Braun Strowman was in this match and teaming with The Viking Raiders. *

CHAD GABLE vs. KING CORBIN (12:40): There were a bunch of unannounced matches on this show because the WWE spent so much time hyping up Smackdown that they forgot they had a ppv. This was one of them. Or was it? There were four unannounced matches and I'm not even sure which ones they were. Baron Corbin beat Gable on RAW two weeks ago to win the King of the Ring. So this was their third match. Gable beat Corbin after Corbin won the KOTR so I guess this was a rubber match. I will admit that Corbin can be pretty funny when he does heel stuff on the mic but he's never been a good wrestler. Gable tried hard as usual but even he couldn't put together a quality match with Corbin. 1/2*

CHARLOTTE FLAIR vs. BAYLEY (10:15): Flair won the title in another yawn inducing match. I can see why the WWE's ratings have plummeted in the last year and a lot of people are dying for an alternative like AEW. Flair is a great wrestler. And Bayley had some great matches on NXT. So why is their title match so lame? Give me strength. 1/2*

SETH ROLLINS vs. THE FIEND "HELL IN A CELL" (17:30): I already noted that the show ended with the entire arena booing. I didn't mention that this match was held under red lights that were so stupid and awful looking that it boggles my mind that they decided to go with that bad idea. It looked terrible! And ridiculous! So if the regular lights were on we'd see that Bray Wyatt is just a dude in a clown mask and not scary? We kind of already know that, idiots. They really didn't do much of anything interesting in this match. Rollins finally put a ladder on Bray's head when Bray was lying on the mat and then Seth threw a tool box at the ladder. Okay. Then Seth got a sledgehammer and hit the ladder with it so the ref called for the bell. Yep, a no contest in a Hell in a Cell match. But Mick Foley falling off the top of the cage twice wasn't a no contest? Or Shane jumping off the top of the cell in two different matches wasn't a no contest? Or Dean Ambrose and Rollins falling off the side of the cell through the announce table wasn't a no contest? Or Rikishi falling off the top of the cell onto a truck filled with sawdust wasn't a no contest? Okay, that last one was super dumb and obviously didn't deserve to have a ref stoppage. So the ref stopping this was lame but I guess it was because they didn't want either guy to lose. The Fiend got up anyway and attacked Rollins after the ref stopped it so that was stupid. Someone online posted a shot of the crowd chanting, "Refund," after the match. Nice end to the show! -No Stars-