While it may seem like it's taking me forever to write this review, it is seemingly also taking me forever to watch this event on the whole. It's a lot of wrestling to process and as I didn't wish to stay up and watch it when I would otherwise be sleeping (aka on EST) I decided to break it down into different pieces and different matches at a time. I don't feel at all as if this has ruined this experience for me because if anything I think that sitting through nearly four hours of anything at one time might sour my experience of it. So let's go right into the first match, shall we?
Match 1: reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly) (Champions) vs. Forever Hooligans (Alex Koslov and Rocky Romero) vs. The Young Bucks vs. Time Splitters (Alex Shelley and Kushida) *IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship*
New Japan comes right out of the gate as to showing you why they are different than other promotions with this being their set of Jr. Tag Team Champions which means that, yes, the promotion has two sets of champions. Did you hear that, WWE? New Japan has so many amazing tag teams that they have to have TWO sets of titles. Anyway, reDRagon is the best tag team in the world today (and also the current ROH Tag Team Champions). Rocky Romero was sporting an eye patch and he is best known as one half of the Havana Pitbulls with Ricky Reyes who is now in Lucha Underground as "Cortez Castro". Alex Koslov used to be in TNA for a little bit, WWE for a second and then mostly I know him from being in Mexico after that. Alex Shelley was rumored to have been signing with WWE after leaving TNA but he's been in this tag team in both ROH and Japan. Kushida is the only Japanese wrestler in this match. And the Young Bucks just suck. This was a match with perhaps too many tag teams in it and as I follow ROH TV on their website as it is available for free, I know that the finals of Tag Wars 2014 is available for a few more days but I watched this match before it and am just not feeling all of these four team matches. I'm glad to see reDRagon retain and the Young Bucks look like fools here, but this whole match really felt like it could have been reduced to only two tag teams. It might not have been the best way to open the show, and maybe I'm just not as big of a fan of tag team wrestling as I thought I was, but this was just kind of okay to me but nothing huge.
Match 2: Jeff Jarrett, Yojiro Takahashi and Bad Luck Fale vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima and Tomoaki Honma.
This was just sort of billed as a Bullet Club vs. New Japan match. There wasn't anything special about it, sadly, and the thing I will forever remember most about it was the lousy guitar shot that set off the ending. Jeff Jarrett was going to hit Honma over the head with his famous guitar as I believe it was Bad Luck Fale that held him in place (but it could have been Takahashi, I really don't recall) and it just took waaaaaaaaaaayyyyyyy too long for the sequence to unfold. Sometimes you know these things aren't going to work, but based upon the amount of time that passed even a blind man could have seen this miss and accidental hit of the partner coming. Such a bad spot and such a forgettable match. Why was this on the show again? Are we supposed to be cooling down from the "hot opening"?
Match 3: Naomichi Marufuji, Mikey Nicholls, Shane Haste and Toru Yano vs. Davey Boy Smith, Lance Archer, Shelton Benjamin and Takashi Iizuka
The son of the late British Bulldog and Lance Archer (Lance Hoyt in TNA, Vance Archer in WWE) are the Killer Elite Squad and they deserved better than this. I feel like this really is Wrestlemania and we're having these multi-person matches just to kind of get everybody on the show. If only they could have reserved it all for one single match and then gave other matches more time to shine. This was another easily forgettable match and all I remember is that the team with KES and Shelton Benjamin on it did not win. There were hints of this leading to a feud between the KES and Mikey Nicholls & Shane Haste but then they also said that most these guys on the non-KES side were from NOAH, another Japanese promotion, so I'm not sure how that would work exactly. If you need to note the overloaded card at any time, you can do so by realizing that not only is basically the entire NJPW roster on this show but it's seemingly so overbooked so far that they're bringing in outside talent to help.
Match 4: Minoru Suzuki vs. Kazushi Sakuraba
This match was contested under MMA rules in the sense that the winner had to submit his opponent or knock him out. There was a lot of talk of how both of these guys have MMA backgrounds and their records in it and all. They made it a point to note that professional wrestlers in Japan move more freely back and forth between wrestling and MMA than they seemingly do in the United States, which was perhaps a dig at CM Punk or perhaps just a take on that whole situation unfolding with him and UFC. This match just made me feel like if NJPW wants to come to the U.S. and be bigger than WWE, this kind of made it feel like they also wanted to be bigger than UFC for that matter. This was a stiff, rough fight and I kind of liked it but the slower pace made it feel as if it went on for too long. No one really lost here either, as Sakuraba simply fell asleep... or passed out.
It's great to hear Jim Ross on commentary again and I'd love for him to come back to a professional wrestling promotion full time. Somehow, Matt Striker is also not quite as annoying as he tends to be in Lucha Underground.
Match 5: Tomohiro Ishii vs. Togi Makabe *NEVER Openweight Championship*
From my best understanding of what Matt Striker and Jim Ross tried to tell us, the NEVER championship here is kind of like an Extreme Title or Hardcore Championship in the U.S., which I felt was going to be a throwback to the days of FMW and so I expected a lot of weapons to come into play but they did not. It was just another really stiff, strong style match. Makabe was compared to Bruiser Brody a lot but I just didn't see it except for the slight gimmick infringement. I wasn't really too far invested in either of these characters but this somehow won me over as the first match of the card with believeable near falls. I wasn't cheering for one person over the other, but there were times when either man would kick out and I'd had felt like that was the end of it. That fact alone has made this my favorite match thus far and seems to be turning a corner for the better for this show which is finally finding its pace with me. Makabe won the title in what should have felt like a bigger deal, but I was mostly just impressed with the match and its competitors-- titles be damned.
Match 6: Tyusuke Taguchi vs. Kenny Omega *IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship*
While I am somewhat familiar with Kenny Omega I'm not sure I've ever actually seen one of his matches. His hair is long and curly and Jim Ross said that Omega reminded him of Brian Pillman, but I think he might have just meant by his look and not his overall presentation and take at wrestling. Matt Striker made a note during this match that he spoke to Kenny Omega earlier and Omega said that he shaves his arms a little while before a match, a few weeks or so, as then the stubble has enough time to grow back and really hurt someone if he rakes it across their faces. I did enjoy that aspect of the match, and as Kenny Omega revved up the chainsaw that did come into play by the end in terms of Kenny Omega winning the match and becoming the new IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion. This match was innovative and I'd only ever heard of Kenny Omega before so seeing these two for the first time and yet thinking that this was by far the match of the night so far really says something about it. I feel like this card is now in a battle of one-upping itself with every match and that is, in some ways, the way that it should be.
Match 7: Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson vs. Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata *IWGP Tag Team Championship*
I have to say that I'm a fan of Karl Anderson from back when he was in a tag team with Joey Ryan. I've watched some New Japan matches before and among them were the Killer Elite Squad, who we saw earlier, losing these very titles to Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson. I like the team of Gallows and Gun, so I was really hoping for a victory by them here, but much like that earlier match featuring KES, my favorites lost again. My only solace is that reDRagon at least retained and that's better than all of the other losses I will inevitably complain about for the rest of the year. This match was a nice way to kind of come down after the previous match, so I like that it was sort of filler and now it has something to fill unlike some of the earlier matches in the card. If you were never impressed by "D.O.C." in TNA / "Luke Gallows" aka "Festus" in WWE then do yourself a favor an watch Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson in a match in Japan. It's worth it.
Match 8: A.J. Styles vs. Tetsuya Naito
Admittedly, no, I'd never even heard of Naito going into this match but I am a huge fan of A.J. Styles and love the fact that he's this guy who was always so loyal to TNA- a company that helped build him and he helped build as well... and then they sort of turned their back on him and for whatever reason he didn't re-sign with them. Yet, he didn't go to WWE but rather back to ROH and Japan. The reason why I started watching ROH TV on their website is because of that "I just left TNA" A.J. Styles vs. "WWE was dumb to fire me" Matt Sydal match. This was a great match I'm glad that A.J. Styles won and it was on par with the Kenny Omega match if not a little bit better than it because of the star-power of A.J. I feel like in many other promotions or just your random independent wrestling show this could have been an amazing main event, but yet there are still two big matches to go so I'm interested to see how they can top this. I felt like, yeah, that Kenny Omega match could have been topped, sure, but this is going to be a really hard one to top right now for me.
Match 9: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kota Ibushi *IWGP Intercontinental Championship*
Well, ask and you shall receive. This match was just so much better than I ever thought could be done after that A.J. Styles match and wow is Shinsuke Nakamura the man. Nakamura has all of the show side, the "entertainment" if you will, of someone who could dominate in WWE or anywhere else in the United States for that matter (TNA would be lucky to have him as well), and yet here he is in New Japan as just the complete package. Arguably one of the best and most well rounded wrestlers currently wrestling and also just one of the best in all of Japan. This was one of those matches where they just did things you couldn't describe. This was one of those matches that made you want to go, "Forget this show so far, but you HAVE to see this" (and I have mostly enjoyed this show thus far). This is my first contender for Match of the Year in 2015 and these two have set the bar very, very high. It reminded me a lot of the Shawn Michaels vs. Razor Ramon Ladder Match for some reason but there weren't any wrestlers. Truly one you need to see to believe, but this was just one of the single best professional wrestling matches I have ever seen in my twenty plus years of watching wrestling. Shinsuke Nakamura is the real deal and you need to keep your eyes on Kota Ibushi also. Wow. I've said it and thought it before on this card and it seems to be the theme now after a somewhat blah opening, but how in the world are they going to top that one??
Match 10: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada *IWGP Heavyweight Championship*
As the main event, you expected this match to deliver and it really did. I can't say enough good things about this match as it did much more than just the normal champion gets beat down only to fight back and win tired cliche. Both men were made out by announcers to be popular with the crowd, and with that I wasn't really cheering on either and just wanted to see a good fight, which is exactly what we got. Through a number of believable near falls this held my attention once it really got going and I was on the edge of my seat. Matt Striker made a point before the match though that Okada has a finisher called the Rain Maker clothesline that no one has kicked out of and I could only feel as if his need to point that out meant it was going to be kicked out of tonight-- it was the way in which he delivered the line, as if he felt the need to point that out more for the spoiler than because it flowed with the conversation. I really liked the idea behind this match though that Tanahashi couldn't beat Okada when Okada was champion so he vowed not to challenge him again. So Tanahashi became champion by defeating A.J. Styles and now Okada was challenging him.
Overall, this was a show of ten matches, which might seem like a lot but there are four very solid matches on here which make this entire event worth watching. (Kenny Omega and the last three) Far too often in wrestling (WWE) the main event is a title match that ends in shenanigans and as such the "match of the night" usually comes at some earlier point in the card. Wrestle Kingdom 9 managed to build with each match, especially the last three, and just get better as they went on. There were times (especially in the Nakamura match) where I thought there was no way they'd be able to top themselves but wow, New Japan went above and beyond the call of duty. This might have been the first big event of 2015, but it is definitely also setting the standard by which all other events throughout the year should be set.
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