Date: 09/10	9:00 AM
Views: 355

I woke up before 3am for this???? Seriously???? Worst main event in NJPW for 2017.

Hirai Kawato & Yuji Nagata vs. Shota Umino & Manabu Nakanishi

Nagata taps out Umino with a crossface.

My Take:

Nagata and Nakanishi continue their feud. Another spot in this match where Nakanishi slaps the shit out of Nagata. For a match involving old guys and young lions, this was, well it was just ok. it’s an opening match and I wasn’t expecting much anyway.

Katsuya Kitamura & Tomoyuki Oka vs. Yoshi-Hashi & Hirooki Goto

Goto pins Oka with a roundhouse kick to the chest.

My Take:

Oka had an impressive sequence with Goto that had the crowd gasp as he downed Goto with a chop. I was expecting more from the finish though I can’t really complain. Seeing a different finisher is a bit refreshing, even if it was just a kick to the chest.

Jado & Baretta vs. Chase Owens & Yujiro Takahashi

Yujiro pins Jado with Pimp Juice.

My Take:

Jado came to the ring in a bright yellow Chaos skort. Baretta continues his transition to heavyweight by hitting insane tope con giros. Other than Baretta’s dive and Jado’s opening comedy antics, this was just a “meh” kinda match.

David Finlay & Juice Robinson vs. Leo Tonga & Bad Luck Fale

Finlay hits Leo Tonga with a stunner, and Juice finishes him off with Pulp Friction.

My Take:

Finlay & Robinson hit a double dropkick in the match that would make The Rock & Roll Express proud.

Ricochet / Ryusuke Taguchi / Kushida / Hiroshi Tanahashi / Togi Makabe vs. Taichi / Yoshinobu Kanemaru / El Desperado / TAKA Michinoku / Takashi Iizuka

Taguchi pins TAKA

My Take:

Typical shenanigans from Suzuki-gun. Tana’s hair continues to be impressively stupid.

Hanson (c) & Raymond Rowe (c) vs. Tanga Roa & Tama Tonga vs. Davy Boy Smith & Lance Archer – 3 team tag match for the IWGP Tag Team Championship

Raymond Rowe pins Tanga Roa

Match Highlight:

Rowe takes out both members of Guerrillas of Destiny and gets a 2 count on Tanga Roa.

My Take:

I really struggled to find highlights from this match. While it wasn’t the clusterfuck I expected it t be it wasn’t by any means interesting or entertaining either. It didn’t even come close to approaching good. It was … a match and that’s the most positive thing I can say about it.

Will Ospreay & Tomohiro Ishii vs. Hiromu Takahashi & Tetsuya Naito

Naito pins Ospreay with Destino.

My Take:

Ospreay continues to don his poor-man’s Peter Criss cat makeup. Nonetheless, a great match put on by these four, and you’d expect nothing less from them. After the match Naito attacks Ishii after Ishii refuses to shake Naito’s hand.

Bushi (c) / Sanada (c) / EVIL (c) vs. Rocky Romero / Toru Yano / Kazuchika Okada – NEVER Openweight 6-Man Title match

Bushi pins Romero with a Codebreaker off the top turnbuckle.

Match Highlights:

• Bushi kicks out at 2 from Sliced bread by Romero.

• Romero gets triple team kicked, and eats a Codebreaker from Bushi, but still manages to kick out at 2.

• EVIL reserves a Rainmaker from Okada into an STO!

My Take:

We all knew Chaos wasn’t going to win this match. Not with the cohesive unit the LIJ champs are. The match started to get good at the end, and I wish these teams had brought that kind of intensity from the get-go. This really didn’t feel like a title match until the last 5 minutes of the mach. And as if I needed any more reason to hate Toru Yano, he gets tied in the paradise lock to the ring rope halfway through the match, and sells it like he can’t get out long after the match is over. While I applaud the selling effort, the reasoning behind it is stupid, selling the unbelievable is just crap, plain and simple.

Minoru Suzuki (c) vs. Michael Elgin – Lumberjack Match for the NEVER Openweight Championship

Iizuka nails Elgin with the iron claw and Suzuki finishes off Elgin with the Gotch-style piledriver. Fuck this abortion of a match. This was a godddamned clusterfuck. Let Suzuki beat Elgin on his own fucking merit damnit.

Match Highlights:

• Suzuki kicks out of a slingshot body-press at 2

• Elgin flips off the Suzuki-gun lumberjacks at ringside as he has Suzuki up for a delayed vertical suplex.

• An all-out brawl ensues when both men spill out of the ring and the lumberjacks from both sides start brawling with one another.

• Elgin hits a slingshot neckbreaker on Suzuki and follows up with a German Suplex Pin, but Suzuki kicks out at 2

• Elgin kicks out of a penalty kick at 2.5

• El Desperado distracts the ref, and the rest of Suzuki-gun comes in and wails on Elgin. Maybe his teammates forgot this was a lumberjack match.

• Suzuki kicks out of a Falcon Arrow at 2

• Finally, the SECOND time Suzuki-gun gets in the ring to bat down Elgin, his Taguchi Japan teammates come in to help him out.

• Elgin throws TAKA over the top rope onto everybody, and Ricochet follows up with a Sasuke special dive

• Elgin has Suzuki beat with the Elgin bomb, but Suzuki-gun pulls the ref out of the ring. Then Killer Elite squad hits the ring, followed by War machine, and this match is officially a clusterfuck. I know this is a useless title and all, but fuck this shit TRY to take a title match seriously!

My Take:

Fuck this goddamn match. Fuck the NEVER Openweight title. I got up before 3am to watch this shitfest of a main event? I may just skip the rest of the road-to and Destruction shows if this is how NJPW is gonna handle the month of September. This is THE worst main event at a major show NJPW has put on in 2017. Yes worse than Cody vs. Okada.

Overall Take:

There are 3 “Destruction” shows NJPW, and that’s what this show felt like. It felt like one-third of a typical NJPW PPV. Certainly not worth getting up to watch at 3am, that’s for sure. The main event being the perfect shit icing on the fecal cake that was Destruction in Fukushima. I haven’t felt this close to canceling njpwworld since Cody got a title shot against Okada.