New Japan Pro Wrestling on AXS TV 7/31/15 Review

1. Bad Luck Fale vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (8/8/14)

I liked Nakamura in this, though the match was kinda junk. We had lazy move set ups like Fale going up top for the sole purpose of setting up a Nak superplex. But Nakamura took Fale's Grenade nicely, and dished out a bunch of big knees, scrambling knees to the ribs, wild running knees to the face, big kicks to cut down Fale. But the laziness in the transitions pretty much killed this one for me.

2. AJ Styles vs. Togi Makabe (8/8/14)

Fun match (though the version shown on TV was clipped down to nothing), which I wasn't really expecting as Makabe doesn't do much for me. Styles really uses that Styles Clash top rope set up a lot, where he Pele kicks his opponent up top then lifts him down into the Clash. I don't really know that I would have noticed it if they hadn't been showing weekly Styles matches. But I liked a lot of his other stuff here and the G1 was quite a nice little tear for him. Really liked his forearm into the crowd.

3. Davey Boy Smith Jr. vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi (8/8/14)

Mauro says that DBS is as agile as a cruiserweight but man this guy always seems like a really uncoordinated lummox to me. I genuinely can't think of any moments of him moving around like a lithe little cruiser. He just looks like a slightly more in shape version of Alison Hendrix's husband on Orphan Black. In showing a lot of G1 matches, they did a strange thing, in that they showed every major upset during the whole tournament. But since there is only so much TV time, 1-2 matches a week were "monumental upsets", so you constantly had Mauro screaming about how this is one of the biggest upsets he's ever seen and the biggest win of so and so's career, and it just starts to lose something week after week and becomes more of a "Greatest Night in the History of our Sport" kind of thing. Tanahashi didn't look very good in this one, his stuff was reallll loose, and you know that's saying something if Tanahashi's stuff looks notably looser than normal. Smith has some nice power offense, a good powerslam and great capture suplex, but he's a guy I'm entirely uninterested in so this win didn't matter a whole lot to me.

4. Minoru Suzuki vs. Kazuchika Okada (8/8/14)

Okada's pre-match promos are one of the better utilized things about this program, as he regularly does some high end kayfabe sit downs about why his opponent is going to be tough, why the match is important, and does so much better than Mauro has ever been able to get across during his actual matches. Here he says that Suzuki is a difficult opponent because he always ends up being tricked into playing Suzuki's game, tricked into working at Suzuki's pace instead of his own pace. I liked that little touch a lot and is really something an announcer should pick up on (especially recording these things long after they happen). This was a good match although some segments could have been reordered to more success. At one point Okada hit a big clutch piledriver after working over Suzuki's neck, but due to the structure Suzuki had to basically get up right after taking it because the match called for him reversing Okada's next run of offense. Poor placement. Suzuki's neck selling was really great (except for the unfortunate piledriver placement), throwing in nice details he doesn't always bother with, sometimes with a neat twist on his own style. At one point he gets tossed into the ropes, and Suzuki is a guy who always no sells rope running, usually by just holding onto the ropes. Here he crumbles before reaching the ropes, holding onto the back of his neck and just falling into the ropes. At times he was really vicious with Okada. His knees right to Okada's jaw after a blocked Gotch piledriver was tooth rattling, and his running dropkick put every Okada dropkick I've ever seen to absolute shame. And damn did he put over the Rainmaker huge, landing in an impossibly painful position right on his head; but his neck didn't really bend so it looked like a grotesque drawing they used to have on the side of diving boards, with a cartoon diving into an empty pool. So yeah, some problematic placement of some big spots, but all in all a good performance by both.