[Please note: to save us all some time, I’ll only review the tournament matches themselves. There may be incidental spoilers for previous nights, but I won’t go out of my way to spoil things.]
New Japan Pro Wrestling’s (NJPW) annual junior heavyweight round-robin tournament, the Best of the Super Juniors 26 continues. It is the second night of action for the B Block, the fourth night overall, and will see a main event of Taichi’s newcomer, DOUKI, facing off against Ryusuke Taguchi. Will Ospreay and Rocky Romero do battle in the semi-main, whilst El PHantasmo, Robbie Eagles and Bandido are all also in action throughout the show.
+ DOUKI vs Ryusuke Taguchi (BOSJ B Block Match): a very good main event style match, with all the shenanigans that implies, but frankly the “unknown factor” for DOUKI works against him, for my money. In my mind, having an unknown guy win the tournament would not be fun or compelling at all, especially when I already have favourites in the blocks. Taguchi was in his serious mode here, though, so you can be sure the match itself was damn good
+ Rocky Romero vs Will Ospreay (BOSJ B Block Match): holy smokes, this was absolutely fantastic, and definitely the best B Block match so far. I can’t say I was expecting something like this form these two (honestly, moreso from Rocky) but I was enthralled in this from the opening moments. Every move made sense, there was nothing done unnecessarily to please the flip-lovers, and the ending certainly made both guys look really good. I don’t know what else you could want from a wrestling match
+ El Phantasmo vs BUSHI (BOSJ B Block Match): this was really good, with BUSHI again playing the defacto babyface against Phantasmo, simply because Phantasmo is such a huge jerk. Phantasmo crying ‘Bushi!’ to mock the female audience members was a highlight for me (perhaps because I like to do it too, especially when Omega was in NJPW). This was a good match, though, and sets up some interesting meeting on night 6 for both guys
+ Robbie Eagles vs Ren Narita (BOSJ B Block Match): pretty damn good, considering what I said about each guy from day 2. Narita still has that background thought of, either, ‘why doesn’t he win after all of his offense’, or ‘why does it take the veteran so long to put away the rookie’, but for the most part this match managed to hide that thought. I enjoyed this more than I thought I would
– Bandido vs YOH (BOSJ B Block Match): this was a really good back and forth match, but frankly, I still feel that irrelevance factor for these two. If we will indeed get SHO vs YOH in the final, or Bandido doing something as gratitude for not signing with WWE or AEW, then it may change my opinion retroactively, but for the moment, this was good but unimportant
> You may have noticed I am not posting images anymore. They were just taking too long to find good screenshots to take, and honestly, my WordPress storage is getting king of full. I’ll bring them back for the finals, or if some great cinematography catches my eye
Should you watch this event: Go out of your way to see the Romero/Ospreay match, but truthfully none of the matches are ones that need to be actively avoided.
MoshFish Reviews 