And just like that, we’re looking ahead to March and the New Japan Cup. Time clearly flies when New Japan’s thrilling us with one exceptional event after the other, and while the many shows across the U.S.A., Sapporo and Osaka didn’t better Wrestle Kingdom 14 (not that they had to), they still gave us a bunch of surprising moments and fantastic wrestling matches.

Of the surprising moments, well we have to get straight to the biggest one of the entire tour: The return of Marty Scurll! That’s right, The Villain unexpectedly popped up at the Raleigh show and challenged ‘Switchblade” Jay White to a match at ROH’s Supercard of Honor on April 4th – a riveting match between a former member of Bullet Club and the faction’s current leader that is perfect for the occasion on WrestleMania weekend. Additionally on the tour we saw Tomohiro Ishii and EVIL add another very good match to their series of hoss fights. We’ve got new (old) champs in the tag division, as GoD regained the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championships from FinJuice in Atlanta, and there were also dream tag team matches galore as The Rock N Roll Express’ battles with Toru Yano and Colt Cabana were topped by the brawl that ensued when Kazuchika Okada teamed with Jon Moxley to face Minoru Suzuki and Taichi. Okada persevered despite the dastardly attempts of ZSJ and Taichi to injure to him, to go on and beat the latter the next night, though Taichi for all of his immorality showed just how good he is in the ring.

ZSJ’s retention of the RPW British Heavyweight Championship over Will Ospreay will be remembered as the second best title match in Sapporo, as Shingo Takagi won the the NEVER Openweight Championship from Hirooki Goto (in his first defence) and became a double champion in the process. It says a lot about how good this was that ZSJ vs Ospreay is only the second best title match. With Shingo, Goto, Ishii and EVIL in the picture, there’s surely good times ahead for the most overlooked singles title in the company. Who knows, Robbie Eagles might even get himself involved after standing tall on the second night in Sapporo’s six man tag.

All that before we even got to Osaka, which gifted a card that wouldn’t look out of place on an event such as Dominion, that’s how stacked it was. The final event of the tour opened with Manabu Nakanishi’s last ever match in Osaka, and with that and his final speech to the crowd, there was a theme of legacy set for the following matches on the night. The next match lived up to that theme as well, as Roppongi 3K retained their IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championships against Despy and Kanemaru even with SHO’s severely damaged knee. It was a good match and another instance of SHO and YOH proving exactly why they’re the future of Japanese wrestling. Matches like this will be important in years to come when they’re top stars (be it in the Heavyweight or Junior divisions) and newer fans are looking back at their early work. Up next for them though is an interesting defence against Taguchi and their cornerman Rocky Romero! You read that right, Taguchi entered the ring post-match and after gifting Rocky a co-coach headband, he reminded him that he’s also a wrestler. Rocky did say when he first introduced RPG 3K as a duo that he’d never wrestle in the junior tag team division again, so this is also a case of “never say never” and it says a lot about SHO and YOH that he’d go back on his words to give them some more credibility.

Up next we saw the return of Kota Ibushi from his illness that kept him the U.S.A. leg of the tour and it seems the scenario I expected in my preview of the tour will be coming to fruition after Hiroshi Tanahashi scored a roll-up victory over Tanga Loa in this eight man tag against Bullet Club alongside former champs FinJuice. It’s now looking like Tana and Ibushi will be facing GoD in the coming months, but I’m interested as to where Juice and Finlay are going to fit into this story now. Is there a triple threat match on the horizon? Or will the two Americans be getting a big match against two of New Japan’s top stars?

After we saw Kazuchika Okada pin Taichi the second show in a row in a tag team match also featuring ZSJ and Will Ospreay we got into our four mouthwatering singles matches. The first of them ended with SANADA falling to a Blade Runner from The Switchblade, who is a definitive favourite for the New Japan Cup. Jay White’s matches are very straightforward in how they’re never amazing, but always certainly an enjoyable and technical contest where he and his opponent deliver. And on this occasion Jay and SANADA definitely delivered. The LIJ man was mockingly asked “you think you belong?” and as he’s proved many times both in victory and defeat, he does. I’m still confident this will be a big year for the Cold Skull.

That match then led into the nineteenth singles (and ninetieth in all competitions) match between IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Hiromu Takahashi and Ryu Lee. To describe this in a word? Brutal. In a few more? At times horrifying to watch. It’s one that, in a way, I hate how I loved it because of how much Hiromu and Lee tried to shorten each other’s careers – and after their match in July 2018 we know what lengths they’re willing to go to. I can’t recall ever watching a match where the two wrestlers dedicated so much time to chopping each other in the chest with open palm strikes and I doubt I’ll see it again until these two next face off. Until then though Hiromu will hold the bragging rights in this rivalry, retaining his title with two Timebombs, and also managing to come out of it without serious injury (though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a concussion after his head smashed against the concrete following Ryu Lee’s suicide dive). To go back to the theme of legacy mentioned earlier on, these two’s should be that they were nutcases who would do anything to win, and that’s what makes them so compelling to watch.

From two maniacs to another duo, as the dream match between IWGP United States Heavyweight Champion Jon Moxley and Minoru Suzuki didn’t disappoint. It was different to Hiromu/Lee as while they focused on hurting each other with their bodies, these two utilised every weapon in Osaka, whether it was duelling with chairs or attacking one another with guardrails, this was an immense brawl. There were fantastic moments in this, with most of them I felt coming from Suzuki who mocked Moxley’s swagger after taking the Death Rider’s hardest hit, and also laughed after being put through a table and getting a chair smashed off his skull. This was a great example of Suzuki being the real life Michael Myers for those who were unaware, and once again Jon Moxley showed how tremendous he is at taking punishment and he sold the effects of an almost broken arm excellently. Even though Moxley won this match, it’s that damaged arm that Zack Sabre Jr. will have a field day with in their eventual meeting, as the British Heavyweight Champion made his intentions very clear afterwards. Moxley has survived the brutality of Archer and Suzuki but make no mistake, ZSJ may not be as vicious as his two Suzuki-gun faction mates, but he’s just as capable of hurting his opponent.

Our main event was next and for a good couple of minutes it seemed like was once again going to be Naito against the world when KENTA arrived with all of Bullet Club behind him. Fortunately for the defending IWGP Heavyweight and Intercontinental Champion they were quickly thrown out by Red Shoes after Tama Tonga pushed the referee to the ground, immediately squashing KENTA and Jay White’s plan. In a venue where Naito has seen some bad defeats and a lot of disdain from the crowds, the idea of a new beginning was very evident as this Osaka audience were all for the champion and completely against KENTA. KENTA did his best to keep it that way throughout as well courtesy of mockery and by starting the match off slowly by rolling outside the ring and walking around for a few minutes – Naito did was Naito does by eventually doing the same to wind his opponent up when KENTA was ready to fight.

When the match got going it failed to reach the heights the two previous matches raised the bar to, but that’s not to say this was poor. It’s definitely worth watching if you haven’t seen it yet, it just didn’t meet my expectations given the way it was built as a blood feud following KENTA’s actions at Wrestle Kingdom. Mind, we did see a lot of blood towards the end when Naito went head first into the exposed turnbuckle and that created an excellent visual at a point when the match was picking up towards the finish. It was around the moment Jay White, BUSHI and Hiromu appeared that the match began to go from basic to exciting. Ultimately a bloody Naito retained his title with a Destino and while we’ll have to wait until the New Japan Cup to find out the next challenger for his titles, we did get confirmation of Naito vs Hiromu, the Heavyweight and Intercontinental Champion vs Junior Heavyweight Champion for the upcoming Anniversary show. That will be a first ever meeting between the two and Naito isn’t the only one who’s been wanting it to happen for a while. I can’t wait!

I think this year’s New Beginning Tour was a lot better than last year’s. In 2019 there was a weird aura of transition about the company following The Elite’s leaving, but this year we’ve got a company settled with a ton of stars built and because of that the year ahead is much more thrilling at this point.

I’ll be back with a preview for the New Japan Cup as soon as the first round matches are revealed. In the meantime I’ve got a lot of NJPW content already written that may interest you, as well as a lot of non-wrestling posts you may want to check out on the site.