NJPW Wrestle Dynasty 1/5/25

 

Athena vs. Persephone vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Momo Watanabe 

ER: I'm kind of shocked by how good this was and how well they kept up a certain energy for 10+ minutes. But I also think a lot of it just might have been Athena. I think this was 10 minutes of waiting for what Athena was going to do next. She is pure lighting and can go go go. She leaps into everything at a doggish pace. She hits the mat and people hard. She gets thrown into a fast tope a minute in and I'm not sure it's the 4th coolest thing she did all match. I thought Persephone really shined in a match where they all got time to shine (and did). She had some big bumps and lands with good weight, real good babyface energy and a unique strength spot approach. Willow got the attention of a big crowd multiple times, and Watanabe was fine fourth wheel. But every great moment led to Athena making it greater. She worked into and out of sequences with everyone so well. She's like if Low Ki really loved Manami Toyota. It's electric. She chokeslams Persephone on the apron like a small Taue demon. When she hits the Eclipse on Willow it's like the finisher 2 Cold Scorpio was jealous he didn't invent. 

Willow makes the Eclipse even better by taking her straps down in power before turning into it. You know I am a big fan of Lawler strap lowering and lowering the straps before taking the final shot is arguably the best use of the straps. I love Willow. But Athena is as must watch in a match like this as prime Juvy. The opening 3 minutes was so hot and as well timed as the greatest 4 ways, and I didn't think the energy level could be maintained. Because of Athena, it was. She ran everything together and there were a lot of strong timing peaks from the other three. The finish was kind of silly, with Thekla not committing on interference enough for what should have been the finish and then Momo hitting Athena across the head with A FUCKING BASEBALL BAT as hard as she can, it comes off a bit ridiculous. Like your scoop suplex was cool, do a few of those and give your opponent something to actually sell. What's Athena supposed to do with a baseball bat shot to the head, work a brain damage angle for 10 months?  

Dustin Rhodes/Sammy Guevara vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru/SHO

ER: Man this was good. This was most likely Dustin's last ever match in Japan. Maybe not. I wouldn't bet against him. But this was the first match he'd wrestled in Japan since 2010. The thing is, Dustin was never a Japan guy. You'd never know it from watching this match. This was a great performance that connected with a crowd that was seated far away from him, in a way where they seemed familiar with him just because his wrestling style is That Good. He's a man with an improbably long and impressively durable high end career and he's wrestling his first match in the Tokyo Dome in 30 years. It's an amazing return. He shows out for it. 

Dustin working against these two guys is weird and fun. The size difference between he and SHO is insane and SHO sells it as such all match. Dustin is tireless when he needs to be and makes the most out of a total name grab bag random set of career opponents. Do a fucking shining wizard thing that looks awesome, fuck yeah! Dustin's hot tag where he just wastes both of them is the best. SHO is taking Dustin clotheslines aimed at the jaw they both get powerslams he can still somehow give in the same twisting form. SHO takes almost all of Dustin's shit and he takes it so well. Once he bounced across the ring for a 55 year old code red, Dustin obviously knew this guy knew the deal and knew the Man. 

I never got the hate for Sammy. I think he's pretty great. I like a kid who's not a bad kid but also a little shit. A nice guy who is capable of saying something pretty mean to your sister. He does moonsaults with wild abandon and takes the farthest back body drop bumps of anyone on any of these rosters. Does a Good Superkick still matter in 2025? I think it can. If it can, then Sammy has some of the consistently best. Not just in execution, but in placement within a match. He has this way of milking goodwill out of every indie spot that's ever been overused: superkicks, back crackers, cutters, but maintains the timing to make all of them feed well into a legend like Dustin's offense. Kanemaru's moonsault across Dustin's knees looked pretty bad, but I guess if you were in a fight with Dustin the smartest thing you could do is target his knees so let's give Kanemaru Body Part Specific Moonsault Credit here. He still gets docked for not holding up his end of the match with his shtick. Dustin rules. 

Lucha Gauntlet

ER: Good lucha highspot showcase except it kept getting interrupted by less talented New Japan guys who threw the rhythm off. Mascara Dorada and Hechicero were standouts. Hechicero doing his thing within a growing throng of competitors was cool every time he was the focus, but I especially liked him tying up Fujita in knots when they were the only two. Dorada kept finding new ways to deliver and take offense, always throwing in something extra. He kept finding a new way to flip for a kick, and the key to Dorada at his best is he has this way of adding an extra flip or twist but making it look like it wasn't mapped way out ahead of time. His tope into Soberano was awesome, and Soberano was the best at catching everyone's dives during the big dive train. After he hit a tornillo with a million twists, they had him out front and center saving everyone's bacon.   

Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Katsuyori Shibata

ER: This was an "Exhibition Match" but I am unclear on what was being exhibited. We know that Tanahashi has bad leg injuries and cannot move, but he has also had many other matches this year which were not just him exchanging chops with someone for 4 minutes before time expired. The one minute of collar and elbow lock up was much more engaging than the 4 minutes of chopping that followed. Meltzer went ***1/4 on this which might honestly be his most ridiculous rating ever. Calling a match 7 stars, we all know that's stupid, but he rated this higher than the Dustin tag and the women's 4 way, which were actual GOOD matches! Nobody could squint their eyes and even call this a match. It would be like giving Inoki ***1/4 for people lining up to take his bom-ba-ye slaps. What exactly was Meltzer rating here? What subtext am I missing that made it Good, Actually, that Tanahashi is incapable of throwing chops with any strength? 

Mercedes Mone vs. Mina Shirakawa

ER: I thought this was a really good Mina performance - one of her best long singles match showings I've seen - but I couldn't get into what Mercedes was doing. She had this weird way of silently emoting to the crowd, a PC thing that doesn't play at all in a gigantic dome. She would silently sell through her teeth as Mina was working over her leg, then sell her leg by doing a bunch of offense that required her to slam her knee into things. I don't think her teeth selling played in the large venue and I think she went to wordless crying faces too soon. Meanwhile, Mina was savagely going after her leg in ways she doesn't do in AEW. I loved all her knee breakers and the way she'd kick the inside of Mone's knee, slamming her knee into the mat and maneuvering into figure 4 leg locks (quicker than I thought she was capable of doing). Mone scrambling for the ropes was one of her only bits of selling I liked. Mina was working over Mone's knee not to soften her up for some submission, but to leave her prone for her impact DDTs, and I loved all of Mina's impact DDTs. But Mone was working this more like a "Things I Wanted To Do in the Tokyo Dome" so she was bridging up to hit the three amigos (feeling way out of place in this match) and then doing offense based entirely around fucking up her own knees: several different codebreaker/back crackers, a gutbuster, the meteora, just a total disconnect from the great match Mina was working. 

Brody King vs. David Finlay

ER: I don't know if I bought Finlay's offense against King, but I bought the way King took Finlay's offense and the way they made the most out of their misses. Finlay got sidestepped early on a charge into the guardrail, a great last second feint by King that sends Finlay into a gross full speed miss...but then Finlay hits that same flying body attack into King later in the match, delivered at the exact same speed and impacting King the way his body impacted the railing. I like that kind of commitment to not just a miss, but to show your delivery and execution is consistent and real. King is great at misses too, with a great miss very early on a charge into the corner. I love the specific way he hit the turnbuckle pad, like a dog who ran full speed into a sliding glass door. When this settled into Monster vs. Man it was at its best. Finlay's strikes look terrible so it made sense when King was knocking him around with his actual good elbow strikes, and Finlay does Staggered By Strikes selling better than I thought. The finish felt too abrupt for a match that had a good pace, but I kind of liked Finlay being unable to hit a sunset flip powerbomb out of the corner...only to just lift and hit a regular powerbomb right after. King made the Overkill look like a finish, dropping down fast face first into Finlay's knee. 

Claudio Castagnoli vs. Shota Umino 

ER: There aren't actually people out there who hype up Umino as some kind of good wrestler, right? I sure don't see that kind of praise, and I see no reason for that praise. This guy brings very little to the table. His strikes would not break through a spiderweb, and his selling is nonexistent. The first three minutes is just Claudio running him ribs first into the ringpost and a half dozen guardrails and I was looking forward to a match where Claudio beats the hell out of this man who could only exist in a post-Marufuji Japanese wrestling landscape. But this guy really has nothing once the actual moves are delivered. He is not bad at taking and selling a move itself, but once the moment has passed he is onto his bullshit. He fights this too often as Claudio's equal, but none of his offense makes him look equal to anyone. He is a less effective Kentaro Shiga, and lucky for him Claudio is good at taking all of his overly complicated DDTs. The one time Umino's damaged ribs came back into play was the only real compelling part of the match: Claudio's scorpion deathlock. This hold won me over the longer Claudio had it locked it. At first I thought it was for a pointless build to a bad Umino comeback, but the longer Claudio had it applied and the harder Umino fought for the ropes, the more I thought it could actually finish the match. The more I wanted it to finish the match, because I didn't want to see what kind of do-si-do reversal of a reversal nonsense Umino broke out for the home stretch. He made the ropes, he do-si-do'd, he somehow won without ever looking convincing in any way. 

Although he did do one thing well, and I couldn't believe it. HOW is Umino the guy who can throw good looking downward strike elbows to the head and neck?! Nobody makes those look good! Here's the lightest elbow striker on the card and he's lighting Claudio up while balancing on the ropes? What is the deal with this guy. 

Konosuke Takeshita vs. Tomohiro Ishii

ER: This was the match I was expecting them to have and was a good version of that match, which is a match that I don't much care for. There are a lot of parts of an Ishii match that won't make sense when applied to most other wrestlers, because he is going to take punishment until he cannot. So it annoys me when Takeshita acts shocked at Ishii absorbing punishment. When Takeshita hits the Raging Fire falcon arrow off the buckles and Ishii kicks out, he sits there on his but in disbelief for an entire 30 seconds (!), filming an extended Performance Center tryout reaction because the guy who absorbs punishment kicked out of something like 7 minutes into a match. I hate this shit. Like man if I know he's going to get up and start exchanging elbows then you should clearly know this man will kick out of things and get up to fire off some elbows. 

Ishii will take plenty of punishment and I only find that so entertaining in 2025. He's a nut, this is what he does. He will get dropped on the top of his head on a German suplex, Takeshita trying to compress any more vertebrae that haven't been compressed yet, and Ishii will take a big clothesline bump on the back of his head. As tired as I am of stand and trade showdown wrestling, I did actually like them holding waistbands and throwing their hardest shots of the match, and how Takeshita levels him with one of his hardest elbows after they let go of the waistbands. I hate how we seemingly have to sit through a lot of bad stand and trade to get to the part where "this time we really mean it" but they did a good job of making the shots mean something more down the stretch. Ishii's popped me with a frankensteiner that I through looked great, and was a nice payoff to Takeshita taking an eternity to set up a powerslam off the top rope. I bought into Ishii's lariats down the stretch. Takeshita threw some of his best strikes and Ishii built up to his biggest lariats, but even though the shots landed harder in the last half, I still never truly feel a sense of escalation as a lot of the selling is the same in the first few minutes as it is in the last few minutes. I guess we are supposed to be surprised that it is Still Going On but that sounds like a terrible way to structure a wrestling match. Can you still believe we're doing this shit? 

My favorite little moment was Ishii's lunging back elbow after absorbing lots of elbows and kicks in the corner. Takeshita held his chin afterward in a way that made it feel like an actual real moment, like he got popped and knew this was going to be the first of many. He recognized Ishii's fight, and Ishii made a single shot resonate more than a dozen Takeshita had just thrown. But the longer these things go the longer those shots all blend together. 

Young Bucks vs. Great-O-Khan/Jeff Cobb vs. Hiromu Takahashi/Tetsuya Naito

ER: Man I don't know. Maybe this would have been better if it were a simple tag match instead of this three way tag, because this three way tornado tag format stinks. Shoot maybe even with the three way format but guys actually waiting to tag in on the apron it would have worked, but this does not. Guys appear and disappear at will, and the longer guys disappear the more reminder that it's all about blatantly setting up a bunch of spots that never add up to much. There's plenty of superkick spamming, plenty of suplex spamming, plenty of dives that nobody seems to have any idea how to catch. There were plenty of spots that looked good. I like the way Cobb throws a German suplex, I liked when Matt was struggling in the tree of woe and all his strands of pearls were hanging in his face as he sputtered, and I thought the Bucks staying vocal throughout (including telling the ringside cameras they were going to go make love to their wives) brought something. But the disappearances were too frequent for chained spots that didn't land so hot, and the glue joining those spots was awful. Naito looks completely lost at times waiting for what to do next, and the only way he and Takahashi know how to interject into a spot is with bad kicks to the stomach. O-Khan was gone far too much to make an impression and the Bucks conveniently sold based on when they needed to be in position, with no regard to what move they were selling. That's the worst, and that's what kept happening all match. 

Jack Perry vs. Yota Tsuji

ER: One of those matches where nobody really looked good but one guy looked better, and it went longer than you'd want but only because it wasn't that good. They didn't do much wrong, besides not wrestling a compelling or good or watchable match. Perry has good DDTs and a couple better suplexes than you'd think but Tsuji is a real zero. What's the entry point with Tsuji? What is the draw? How does the Raymond Chandler's Carmen San Diego Zoo Suit entrance gear tie into a guy who is so on the nose The Worst Influences of Edge that he even has a Spear finisher and makes spooky faces? Perry was good at cutting off several Tsuji charges/spears, catching one in a well timed DDT and stopping another with a sly kick. I like Perry as a heel more than I did as a babyface and I think he's closer to being a good wrestler now. His personality is much more natural. I would have probably liked Edge more if he tried doing a Spanish Fly in 2002. After Perry takes the spear for the loss, he exits the arena holding a hot water bottle to his tummy and maybe Perry is actually a good wrestler. 

Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd

ER: I typically do not connect with big match Kenny Omega, and I don't believe I have ever connected with a single thing that Gabe Kidd has done, but I think I loved this. This was a 12 match show and I'm not sure there was a match I was looking forward to less. Well, I knew the Yota Tsuji match would be worse, but I knew this would be twice as long and I knew the show was already five hours long. I mentally wrote this one off, and yet I found myself hooked from the start. Kenny works this like he actually cannot stand Kidd, which is something I never get from Omega matches. I always get "he is trying to have an EPIC match with X" but I never get "he is extremely annoyed by this guy and wants to hurt him" and that makes me enjoy this Kenny Omega match so much more than his usual 6+ star affairs. I also think it's fantastic that Omega is hellbent on not adjusting his ring style to account for his exploding insides and deteriorating body so now his biggest matches have this extra layer of deep pain and human stupidity that finally adds Consequence to his work. 

He bounces Kidd's body on the apron and ringside like he has no regard for his safety, bouncing him off the ropes to the floor, a snap dragon on the floor, and a big powerbomb onto a table in the announcer's area. It's one thing for him to have little regard for his opponent's body, but it's key to his character (and his character is clearly just himself) that he also has little regard for his own body. I got actually invested into him being unable to stop himself from flinging his body into dives and stupid bumps all match while his innards are screaming and his legs and hips cry out for some goddamn mercy. That disregard for self and opponent only gets cooler when disgusting suplexes into edges of chairs turn into unprotected chairshots in the year 2025. Real 1999 Chairshots taking place at a Tokyo Dome show so sparsely attended that the reactions may as well have been piped in. Kidd takes the nastiest chairshot after braining Omega with a couple. He felt that fucking swing bad too, because he sure gets his hands up quick when Omega comes swinging again. 

Drilla Moloney and Clark Connors unexpectedly added to this match without ever getting involved. Kidd's crew of ringside fuck boys yelling around the ring made the side of an idiot getting destroyed even better, and it seemingly made Omega wreck Kidd even harder with suplexes. There's just no good way to take a snap dragon off the top rope. Kidd's knees get smashed straight into the mat and that might be even more disgusting than the neck damage. 

The early shift to Kidd is great, culminating in Kidd kicking out of a double underhook piledriver, with Omega pulling back on that leg the same way he does when he knows he's getting a 3 count, comes off more obnoxious than "first in a series of moves that shouldn't be kicked out of" and I loved the juxtaposition of him kicking out of a dangerous looking piledriver that should have finished most matches, into making Omega scream with an abdominal stretch. Gabe Kidd slips out of a One Winged Angel into a Desperation Abdominal Stretch, elbow dug deep into Omega's inflamed intestines, and it is one of the all time best uses for an abdominal stretch in wrestling history. Kidd going into Payback Mode ruled. His knee to Omega's guts landed harder than Omega's V-Triggers and contributed led to a future where Omega has a few feet of intestine being removed. Not satisfied with damaging Omega's insides, he always wants him concussed. He spikes Kenny on his head with a short piledriver, and when Omega reverses a powerbomb with a rana, Kidd does not accept that reversal and just drops to his knees with a ganso bomb. There's not attempted lift into a convoluted spot, he just drops Kenny onto the back of his head. I'm laughing my ass off about it when Kidd piledrives him again. 

But if Omega can keep his guts in his body he isn't going to be slowed by head trauma. He has been through fights that Gabe Kidd hasn't yet imagined, and before long he is kneeing this man in the face repeatedly. A double middle fingers spot is something that comes off hack in 2025, but Gabe Kidd possesses the exact correct dumb guy energy to make a last gasp double bird from the knees feel exactly like something he would do when he's about to lose a fight. Kenny grabbing those middle fingers like handlebars to drive the final V-Trigger home was the best. Kidd played the best version of his character and I don't think any of this felt like Great Match mode, it felt like dangerous escalation with great big match selling. Maybe the match didn't need to be a half hour, but I thought it was a rare case where the extra time made the match better. They didn't use the extra time on more kickouts from bigger moves, it was almost always spent letting in pain. The way they sold the big move punishment and exhaustion made it all resonate, made it feel real. Kenny wrestles like a guy who is in pain and Kidd wrestles like a guy too dumb to stop taking damage. Ospreay wouldn't have the guts to sell offense as long as Omega and Kidd did, and that made me feel their story.  

Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ricochet

ER: I loved Ricochet for the first 30 seconds, and thought he was good enough for the next 20 minutes as an overwhelmed guy whose offense keeps getting lighter and lighter in the face of an unflappable champ who hits much harder. But those first 30 seconds, man. It's always great when a heel jumps somebody at the bell. When I think of a heel team rushing some babyfaces, it's almost always with punches and clubbing arms, almost always as just another way to get into the action. No different than a collar and elbow start. When it's used to debilitate an opponent, it can approach brilliance. Think Tenryu blindsiding Giant Baba with a suicide dive into Giant Baba in the 1989 Tag League. Ricochet doesn't have debilitating weapons, but he uses speed and heel flying to throw Sabre off and I loved it. A heel ambushing their opponent with a suicide dive, springboard dropkick, Sasuke Special, and springboard 450 splash before they can get their ring jacket off, is fantastic. A hot 30 second Jersey All Pro match-finishing stretch as a heel ambush.  

I don't think he kept up that attitude or energy or idea execution the rest of the match, but I also don't think it mattered because him flying into Sabre's buzzsaw was entertaining because he couldn't keep it up. The first 30 seconds worked so well because it could only work for so long. While Sabre's full body European uppercuts to take control felt plan in comparison, that was something that could be kept up for 20 minutes. Sabre hits hard early and keeps it up all match long, and once he started hitting Ricochet I don't think anything else Ricochet hit had the same immediacy. Like he ran and ran until he got a wake up call and then lightened up, hoping it would make Sabre lighten up. Sabre's shots all look dangerous, but Ricochet is still hanging onto a light springboard clothesline, chops that hit lighter the longer the match goes, arms that barely club back. His combos are also too slow, and there are almost a half dozen times where he leaves Sabre waving in the breeze like an idiot so he can do another spin. Had the story of the match actually been "Sabre endures punishment and Ricochet slows the more punishment Sabre takes" then this could have been incredible. Sometimes I think they were working that story, and those were the best parts. Other times I think Ricochet's offense just didn't work because it didn't work, and it would have been hit that way regardless. I didn't buy Ricochet as a worthy Sabre challenger, but I liked when the match was structured around not buying Ricochet as a Sabre challenger. 

Sabre's dedication to believing that being the IWGP Champ means hitting hard and trying to get guys to hit hard is what made this good, and Ricochet did well at not understanding that this was not a battle he was going to overcome and Sabre was not going to be moved off that hill. Sabre was good at reacting to a lot of Ricochet's stuff that didn't belong in the match and turning it into something painful. Sabre catching an Asai moonsault with a cravat feels like something Chris Hero had to have done in Chikara at least once. It's fun, and then everything else is very mean. Ricochet's rolling vertical suplexes going from the ring to the apron to the floor was a lot of painful bumps for a dumb spot. Sabre's selling is almost enough to make it work, especially the way he got up at 18 but lost his balance and slipped back into the guardrail before making it in. Ricochet calls him a motherfucker and Sabre laughs at the idea. I'm a motherfucker? Ricochet, a man who doesn't slap very hard, is dumb enough to challenge a guy who can slap very hard to a kneeling slap fight. It only takes two exchanges for him to get to his feet. Sabre even tells him, "You're back in Japan now, mate." Is this match about how Ricochet has Dragons Gate Mindset and isn't catching on that Sabre fancies himself as submission wrestling Scott Norton? I like that. 

So, there can't be any complaints against Sabre's submissions anymore, correct? I always felt they were hilariously wrong, but if those opinions persist anywhere they only look more wrong now. His execution is fast and it always looks extremely painful. The way he bent back Ricochet's legs for a bridged figure 4 variation, the limb wrenching llave he pretzeled him into, the neck snapping ankle cranks he kept doing. Every strike and every twist looked painful and every sub he trapped Ricochet in looked potentially match finishing. The problem might have been that everything Sabre did looked so effective, that very little Ricochet did looked as effective. Ricochet's worked punches to drop Sabre at the end of the match were good worked punches...but the spot in question didn't call for well-worked punches, they were supposed to be KO shots that each dropped Sabre to his knees. I love a good worked punch, but they don't "work" when they're the only worked looking strikes in a match, and now they are supposed to be dropping the champ. Ricochet's mid-match slow down does set up the finish nicely, as he throws his sliding clothesline so slow that Sabre just snatches his arm out of the air and maneuvers him disgustingly into a modified Rings of Saturn. I kept going back and forth on this. I liked Ricochet, and I liked the story of his bullshit not standing up to Sabre's strong style...but the match story was inconsistent because sometimes his bullshit would stand up to Sabre and then a minute later it would be clear that his bullshit was supposedly equal to Sabre...

 

Well, the opening women's match was so good that I got lured into watching and writing about an entire show from a fed I don't love...and while there were some more rewards there was also way more stuff I didn't like. The Omega/Kidd match was great, the women's match was great, Mina was great in her match, the luchadors showed out in their gauntlet, the Dustin tag was incredibly fun, and most of the people I dislike wrestled expectedly bad. Two great matches on a 5 hour card isn't much of a success rate, but I'm glad I took the time to watch them. 

2025 MOTY MASTER LIST