NJPW The New Beginning In Sapporo Review

Kazuchika Okada followed what many already consider the greatest wrestling match in pro wrestling history by contesting a mere five star-level classic opposite Minoru Suzuki at The New Beginning In Sapporo on February 5 - a bout completely different to but no less gripping than “that” Wrestle Kingdom 11 affair with Kenny Omega. Given the scaled-back content, smaller setting and less-heralded opponent, it might even be more of an achievement.

The Suzuki-gun faction leader injured Okada’s right knee during the pre-show press conference, informing the narrative through line of the main event. Suzuki then compounded the agony in the opening stretch; decimating it with wincing chair shots and sickening, guardrail-assisted submissions, Suzuki, with expert body language, surveyed the destruction with a grin. To a cacophony of jeers, he received his own sadism with the fawning beam of a proud parent. It was bizarrely fitting. He had rendered Okada as defenceless as an infant.

There was, at least prior to it, little question that Suzuki was going to lose the match. His performance in it was so incredible, however, that he changed the scope; as he stretched and mangled Okada’s knee for an impossible duration, the Sapporo crowd were desperate for him to lose. A match with such narrowed focus required a believable sell-job from Okada to elevate it. Okada simply proceeded to enter one of the greatest sympathetic performances in history, generating an inconceivable degree of pathos for a man who built his now legendary aura with an aloof viciousness. At the midway point, Suzuki, who dominated for the duration, whipped Okada into the ropes. Okada, destroyed, did not make it. He crumpled to the floor in a heap.

Suzuki then ensnared him in a heel hook, transferring the torque from ankle to bum knee. Okada’s ringside second, Gedo, threatened to throw in the towel. It is a testament to both performances that such a histrionic gesture was entirely congruous and believable in the context of what was an ultra-serious match. That the referee threatened a stoppage finish added to the unbearable suspense.

Suzuki’s tactics annoyed Okada as much as they weakened him - to such an extent that he attempted to drill Suzuki with an ill-fated adoption of his Gotch-style piledriver, out of both desperation and fury. Responding to injury with insult popped the crowd, but failed to wrest the advantage. The match was only won when Okada, after an immaculately-timed comeback, drilled Suzuki with three of his own Rainmaker lariats. His knee had been so battered that he was twice unable to make the cover. Okada’s agonised crawl generated more drama than any near-fall would have. There’s a lesson in there.

In a 40:46 epic, there was not one cheap finisher kick-out. It did not need one; the match was as understated in ambition as it was perfect in execution. Kazuchika Okada, on the strength of this performance, occupies a stratosphere all of his own. Astonishingly, it is one that excludes even Kenny Omega.

In the semi-final, Okada’s CHAOS stablemates and champions Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano defeated Togi Makable and Tomoaki Honma and Davey Boy Smith Jr. and Lance Archer in the second successive big show Three-Way IWGP Tag Team Title bout. In one particularly choice sequence in a choice match, Smith walked Archer along the top rope before he crashed into a preoccupied Honma and Yano with a cross body block. Yano scored the pin with his ubiquitous roll-up - but it made sense on this occasion, at least. Ishii had walloped Makabe with a lariat for the assist.

Elsewhere, Hirooki Goto successfully defended his NEVER Openweight Championship in Juice Robinson’s best singles match to date. There was little in the way of crowd heat in the opening half. Robinson, on paper, was a curious filler opponent. He had been defeated convincingly by a debuting Cody at Wrestle Kingdom XI in what was among the weaker matches on the card. This match was astutely designed to enhance his stature - and he entered a stature-enhancing performance, seamlessly adapting to the ultra-stiff NEVER environment by careening into the guardrail with a missed cannonball. He had rendered the predictable outcome in doubt by the time of the rapturously-received finishing melee. It was so good at times that it is now equally inconceivable that he won’t win his next major singles match.

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Roppongi Vice also retained their gold in a 13:37 bout which was designed almost solely to generate heel heat with an over-the-top plethora of shortcuts - but that heat was not forthcoming from the subdued Sapporo crowd, which compromised the quality. It was, at least, very different to the usual head-spinning junior doubles fare. The four men - and the henchmen-and-women of Suzuki-gun - probably deserved better.

Ahead of the second New Beginning event - in Osaka on February 11 - Hiroshi Tanahashi, Dragon Lee, Manabu Nakanishi, Michael Elgin and Ryusuke Taguchi defeated the Los Ingobernables De Japon team of Tetsuya Naito, Hiromu Takahashi, SANADA, EVIL and BUSHI. It highlighted the advantages and disadvantages of New Japan’s decision to split its big shows in two. The exchanges between Naito and Elgin - and Lee and Takahashi - were excellent, and created the requisite anticipation ahead of their imminent singles encounters. And yet, both Elgin and Tanahashi adopted Taguchi’s disco dancing schtick in a comedic mid-match sequence which undermined its role as a teaser trailer for a high-stakes feature.

That risible stretch aside, the match was all-action, one which echoed the past as much as it looked to the immediate and longer term future. Tanahashi and EVIL telegraphed a potential big match with their standout exchanges, and Tanahashi and Naito didn’t simply forget that they purportedly loathe one another purely because they no longer have a match to promote. It’s this sort of sequential and shared storytelling with which New Japan has become the foremost critical darling.

In a paradoxically brutal and merciful ending to a maligned rivalry, YOSHI-HASHI just barely defeated Takashi Iizuka having been thoroughly destroyed with steel chairs and electronic cables. Will Ospreay and Katsuyori Shibata saved the best for their Osaka outing in a forgettable six-man teaser also involving Gedo and Jado and Justin Liger and Tiger Mask IV. The veteran triumvirate of Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima and Yuji Nagata rolled back the years in a short but sweet match opposite Henare, Tomoyuki Oka and Yoshitatsu. KUSHIDA and Young lion partner Hirai Kawato - an eleventh hour replacement for David Finlay - lost what was a very painful-looking initiation match opposite El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kenamaru. Like much of the first hour, it won’t live particularly long in the memory.

The New Beginning had an inauspicious one - but Kazuchika Okada elevated it to greatness with yet another seminal performance. If he continues in this incredible vein, his 2017 will be the greatest calendar year of any performer in history.