NJPW Wrestle Dontaku 2018 Night One (4/3/18) Review:
Chase Owens and Yujiro Takahashi vs Yota Tsuji and Shota Umino: ** Average Young Lions vs full time wrestlers match really nothing special. However I will say if you like hot scantily clad women with a big ass Yujiro and Owens valet makes this match worth it
Ryusuke Taguchi, Jushin "Thunder" Liger and Tiger Mask vs Ren Narita, Tomoyuki Oka and Yuji Nagata: **1/2 A little bit better than the first match but really nothing special
Roppongi 3K (Sho, Yoh and Rocky Romero) vs Suzuki-Gun (Takashi Iizuka, Davey Boy Smith Jr and Lance Archer): DUD Suzuki-Gun beat up RPG 3K for 2 minutes and then Iizuka got rolled up and pinned after threatening the referee. Really nothing else besides that
CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Jay White, Yoshi-Hashi, Toru Yano and Tomohiro Ishii) vs Toa Henare, Juice Robinson, Michael Elgin, David Finlay and Togi Makabe: ***1/4 This was 10 minutes that was just all action. I always love it anytime Makabe and Ishii go at it with this being no exception as well as this also got me excited for the upcoming NEVER Title Match between Goto vs Elgin. This was a success
NEVER Openweight 6 Man Tag Team Championship Villain Club (Marty Scurll and The Young Bucks) vs The Tongans (Bad Luck Fale, Tama Tonga and Tonga Loa): *** Both teams are members of the Bullet Club so it started off friendly. This was decent but nothing blow away like we've gotten many times in the past whenever The Young Bucks are involved. Afterwards they were all friends again with The Tongans presenting the belts to The Villain Club in defeat
Los Ingobernables De Japon(Tetsuya Naito, Sanada, Hiromu Takahashi, Bushi and EVIL) vs Suzuki-Gun (Minoru Suzuki, Zack Sabre Jr, El Desperado, Taichi and Kanemaru) *** This was again decent but nothing special.
Post Match: Young Bucks come out and challenge Sanada and EVIL for the IWGP Tag Team Titles and then superkick them immediately after. I'm a fan of EVIL and Sanada and I love the Young Bucks, so clearly I'm definitely looking forward to that
Will Ospreay and Kazuchika Okada vs Hiroshi Tanahashi and Kushida: ***1/2 This was a precursor to the 2 big title matches for tomorrow's show (Kushida vs Ospreay and Okada vs Tanahashi) and this match has me excited for both so that's a win for this for that. Plus on its own this was a pretty good match which while not something you need to see you won't feel like you wasted your time watching it either
Cody vs Kota Ibushi: ***3/4 These 2 had an awesome match back at Wrestle Kingdom earlier this year and while this match was not as good as that match I would definitely call this a worthy follow up to that match. The table spot in the middle was especially brutal I'll be surprised in Cody doesn't have bruised ribs after this match. Also noteworthy Cody now has a new finisher which he calls Din's Fire which is a back to back piledriver
Kenny vs Hangman Page: *** Kenny gets jumped by Cody and Hangman Page before the match, but manages to fight them both off and get the match down to one on one. From there this match was pretty underwhelming it was not a bad match but it certainly was not at the level people have come to expect from a Kenny Omega match. Now I will give Hangman some slack given that he was hurt going in but even so this was not a good showing for Hangman Page and it was definitely not a satisfying main event for an NJPW show
Overall thoughts: This was a pretty underwhelming show. If you have NJPW World the only reason I'd suggest you watch this show is if you want to see every NJPW show they produce otherwise you'd probably be better off skipping this show and just watching the 2nd night of Wrestle Dontaku 2018. While the show hasn't happened yet I guarantee you with Okada vs Tanahashi for the IWGP Title and Will Ospreay vs Kushida for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title as the 2 top matches I guarantee you that show will be superior to this one