The junior heavyweight tournament continues, as New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW) presents the Best of the Super Juniors 25. The second round of matches from the B Block are set to take place, and they are:
– Chris Sabin vs SHO
– Ryusuke Taguchi vs Dragon Lee
– KUSHIDA vs Marty Scurll
– Hiromu Takahashi vs El Desperado
[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 B Block matches.]
+ Hiromu Takahashi vs El Desperado (B Block Match): this was fantastic. Hiromu was punished, but he brought it all on himself. It was interesing to see Hiromu work as a the bad guy, but it was more interesing to see my boy Despy with that babyface fire, despite the crowd still being heavily behind Takahashi (I guess that means Despy is only the good guy to me, he is stilla jerk to everyone else?). No matter the character alignments, this was simply fantastic
+ KUSHIDA vs Marty Scurll (B Block Match): this was great, made even moreso by the fact that some of the offense actually made sense in the outcome. It is hard to make sense without spoilers, so I’ll just say that as much as I love one of these twos’ signature spots, it often gets ignored by the time the match is over, but that was not the case here. I also really like that Scurll is still talking shit to Jushin Liger after their confrontation during the Strong Style Evolved events from March
+ Ryusuke Taguchi vs Dragon Lee (B Block Match): for a match between not just two good guys, but two team mates on Taguchi Japan, this was fine. The only downside to me was the amount of comedy, but considering the fantastic atches each man had come off just one day earlier, perhaps they needed to break up their showings a bit? Nonetheless, while the comedy was sort-of, sometimes funny, but the wrestling was good
– Chris Sabin vs SHO (B Block Match): this was fine, but something about Sabin in the BOSJ still is not clicking with me. The commentators put over his experience edge, and hiw near retirements, so mabe he just needs a short alliance with Suzuki-gun as a ‘take no shit’ veteran or something. SHO was good, again showing off impressive power, but it was Sabin who just nudged this into the negative for me
> the undercard of this show had at leat two great moments, one in a match and the other afterwards: the first was the interactions between BOSJ competitor ACH and personal favourite Minoru Suzuki in a tag match (the two teaming with Shota Umino and Yoshinobu Kanemaru, respectvely). The other was a video to Tetsuya Naito from an upcoming opponent, follow Naito’s tag match. Both segments are well worth checking out
Should you watch this event: As metioned above, aside from just the final three BOSJ matches, there are two segments from the undercard worth seeing. Naito’s Dominion match should be really good after all this build-up, and everything Suzuki does is great, so check out those two parts, as well as at least KUSHIDA/Scurll and Takahashi/Desperado from the tournament.
MoshFish Reviews 