NJPW The Story So Far This Year Part 4 A Wrestling Fan's Cup of Tea

The New Japan Cup would continue on May 8 with second round matches of the tournament and a few multi-man tagteam matches to break up the tension of the tournament.

There were less surprises and more of a steady build toward some compelling matches in the semifinals, which would shape the tournament in a direction of pitting the speed and agility of relative newcomers against a powerhouse veteran.

In the opening match, YOSHI-HASHI defeated the gaijin 'young boy' Jay White. A huge mishmash of talent would come next in the form of Kojima, Tiger mask, Nakanishi, Taguchi, and Mascara Dorada taking on Tenzan, Captain New Japan, Liger, Honma, and KUSHIDA. The match ended with Kojima pinning Captain New Japan to pick up the win for his team. After the match, Kojima and NWA World Heavyweight champion Tenzan exchanged words and came to blows. This is significant considering their long running history as a tag team.

Yohei Komatsu and Hiroshi Tanahashi teamed up against Sho Tanaka and Yuji Nagata. This time, the fledgling Yohei Komatsu would get the win for his team by causing rival Tanaka to submit to a single leg Boston Crab. Team CHAOS would defeat Team Bullet Club but not before Cody Hall, who did not take long to get added to a match, showed off his size and an impressive lariat. Nakamura got the pin on the Bullet Club's newest member.

All of the tournament matches would ensue during the remainder of the show. These matches also went by in relatively quick fashion. Makabe powered through Yujiro, eliminating one of the two Bullet Club members from the tournament. Ibushi beat Yano, avoiding the sneaky near fall attempts that held that much more legitimacy after the surprise elimination of Tanahashi in the first round. In a match that would be crucial in defining the tournament, Naito secured a surprise reversal to get by Fale, thus eliminating the Bullet Club from the tournament and making it clear that while 'Bad Luck' is being made to look strong, he is not quite at main event level.  This also set up an excellent semi-final match between two of the younger and speedier talents, Naito and Ibushi, which put a forward thinking spin on the tournament.

In the main event, tag team partners Goto and Shibata faced off. These two have amazing chemistry, knowing each other well as both teammates and opponents. Here is where I personally would have liked to see different results, feeling that Shibata advancing to the finals would make for an excellent showcase of NJPW's smaller, faster wrestlers. Experience would prevail though, with Goto winning after hitting his Shouten Kai finisher, a move I described in the previous post as a holding up the opponent for a suplex, than quickly bringing him down and towards oneself  into a neckbreaker-like snap and slam into the mat.

Next up: The New Japan Cup Finals

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