New Japan Pro Wrestling’s (NJPW) annual junior heavyweight tornament continues, with four more matches from the A block of the Best of the Super Juniors 25. These matches are:
– Tiger Mask vs YOH
– Flip Gordon vs Yoshinobu Kanemaru
– BUSHI vs Taiji Ishimori
– ACH vs Will Ospreay
[Please note: to save myself a bit of time, I am only reviewing the tournament matches. There are potential spoilers here from the first round of A Block matches.]
+ ACH vs Will Ospreay (A Block Match): as an athletic showcase, this was really good, as you might expect from athletes of this calibre. However, it felt much too highly choreographed, where every ‘back-and-forth followed by a small staredown’ felt like it was planned down to the millisecond. If you can look past that, and turn off the ‘suspension of disbelief’ that all pro-wrestling entails anyway, then this was fantastic
+ BUSHI vs Taiji Ishimori (A Block Match): gosh Ishimori is good in that ring. I’m a fan of BUSHI, which I assume is obvious by now, but Ishimori is just on a whole different level, and damn he is ripped. Overall, this was really good but nothing overly special
+ Flip Gordon vs Yoshinobu Kanemaru (A Block Match): Flip still feels new to NJPW, but his natural babyface style worked well against Kanemaru’s organic dickhead-ish-ness. Like three of the four matches here, this was good, but nothing crazy good like the first night
+ Tiger Mask vs YOH (A Block Match): with a more flashy opponent, this was a better match for Tiger Mask. This was not quite as good as YOH’s first round match, but overall it was fine
[Sorry, no pictures for this review. All my screenshots are saved on my laptop which has decided to die, right as the tournament got going. They’ll be back, starting on Day 4.]
Should you watch this event: The second night of the A Block was overall an improvement, but still only the main event of ACH/Ospreay stands out as must-see.
MoshFish Reviews 