Written by Brandon Hoffman
After the exciting New Japan Cup earlier this year, we visit Ryogoku Sumo Hall to experience Sakura Genesis. This show housed title matches, returns, and hard-hitting action galore. Walker Stewart and Chris Charlton were your English commentators for the night. Let’s discuss how everything went down!
Togi Makabe & Master Wato v. TMDK (Hartley Jackson & Kosei Fujita) – Tag Team Match
The first few matches of the show were largely inconsequential and only served to preview the upcoming Best of the Super Juniors tournament along with Wrestling Dontaku in May. Although, Fujita acting like a cocky heel compared to Wato’s babyface fire was pretty funny. He even tried to square up to Makabe before immediately chickening out. Hartley and Makabe’s interactions involved much beef indeed, but otherwise it ended quickly with Hartley’s Jagged Edge pinning Makabe.
United Empire (Jake Lee, Francesco Akira, & Jakob Austin Young) v. Unbound Co. (Shingo Takagi, Taiji Ishimori, & Robbie X) – 6-Man Tag Team Match
I’m sorry, what is Jake Lee’s gimmick supposed to be? He’s a mentally insane clown? At least the crowd ate up everything by booing UE at every possible moment. NJPW’s junior tag division continued to be a raging fire with Ishimori, Akira, Young, and especially Robbie X going crazy in this match. Funnily, Ishimori didn’t get tagged in a single time, he just constantly ran in to do moves and nothing else. Shingo won this match for his Unbound brethren by hitting Young with the Last of the Dragon.
It was a pretty good preview to Best of Super Juniors 33, and Robbie X is such an MVP to me. How he’s not mentioned among Kosei Fujita, Ishimori, and El Desperado in the Junior GOAT conversation right now is beyond me.
Aaron Wolf, Tiger Mask, Toru Yano, & YOH v. House of Torture (Don Fale, DOUKI, SHO, & Yoshinobu Kanemaru) – 8-Man Tag Team Match
The focus on this one saw SHO heeling it up on Tiger Mask, because this version of Tiger Mask is gonna retire in July. That along with Aaron Wolf stuck in the House Vortex just made me sad watching this. I don’t even care that Wolf won, just please have him do something else.
Anyway, the Best of Super Junior 33 Blocks got announced alongside the final two entrants. Them being AEW’s Nick Wayne and deathmatch legend Jun Kasai! I’m so flippin’ excited for this year’s tourney. If anyone wants to watch day to day and keep up with the schedule, trust me, it’s going to be enjoyable. All from May 14th to June 7th.
United Empire (Will Ospreay, HENARE, & Great-O-Khan) v. Yuya Uemura, Taichi, & El Desperado – 6-Man Tag Team Match
The crowd got very conflicted with their mixed reactions, booing HENARE and O-Khan while cheering their hearts out for Ospreay. The Empire’s ultraheel bastardness mixed with Ospreay’s goody two-shoes mentality was an amazing storytelling aspect in this one. Along with the unraveling UE lore, the wrestling got everyone pumped. Uemura and Ospreay’s beginning sequences really make a campaign to see Ospreay back in the G1 Climax.
Also, Taichi remains an awesome old man. Most of the praise in this match from me goes to Ospreay and Taichi alone. Ospreay’s Stormbreaker finisher to Taichi finished this match and gave the Empire the win. However, HENARE and O-Khan continued to assault Uemura and Desperado after the bell. Ospreay didn’t want to follow in his teammates’ heelish footsteps, yet still raised their hands in victory anyway. Hmmm, interesting.
Bishamon (Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI) & Boltin Oleg (c) v. House of Torture (Ren Narita, Chase Owens, & Yujiro Takahashi) – NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship Match
The CHAOS faction is dead, but Goto and YOSHI-HASHI still refuse to drop this feud with the House. New Japan is great at a bunch of things, but they also made me slowly not give a damn about Goto because of this. Please don’t do my GOAT like that, Gedo. Slow moving Yujiro and Chase took up too many dominating portions of this match, and Dick Togo was in full House-mode tonight. The fake ringing the bell to make the Champions think the match was over, the Dick to Dick contact, the whole nine yards were on display.
This match mercifully came to an end with Bishamon hitting their Shoto finisher on Yujiro for the title retention. Narita tapped out to Oleg in a Lex Luger-styled Torture Rack in the background of the pinfall win. That most likely means we’re getting a New Japan Cup rematch between Oleg and Narita for Narita’s NEVER Title at Wrestling Dontaku. Flippin’ hell. I’m not sorry for being so vehemently against the House of Torture by the way. I want wrestling in my wrestling show.
Konosuke Takeshita (c) v. Shota Umino – World TV Championship Match
Takeshita randomly waltzed into the end of NJPW’s Sakura Genesis tour just to put on a banger with Shota Umino. Domestic audiences don’t like the inconsistency of Takeshita’s schedule, but his wrestling ability was just undeniable out there. Umino was a great dance partner to The Alpha especially during the last few minutes of this match. Only one singular criticism of Takeshita’s TV Title matches, he takes his time. Why would the energy ever dampen and slow down the pacing when he knows there’s a time limit? If the answer is because he’s a heel, then it’s a boring reason.
Still though, what a hard-hitting spectacle that got Umino some room to show off his violent side. The time limit draw reached to end this one with an inconclusive winner. Although, knowing that was only 15 minutes of what these two had to offer against each other satisfies me greatly. Imagine what they can do with 15 extra minutes. Also, a post-match masked man appeared to distract Takeshita and allowed Chase Owens (of all people) to attack the TV Champion. What is this, Monday Night Raw? Many people speculate this masked man to be SANADA. Perhaps you can be the judge of who this could be in this screenshot below.
Knock Out Brothers (OSKAR & Yuto-Ice) (c) v. TMDK (Zack Sabre Jr. & Ryohei Oiwa) – IWGP Tag Team Championship Match
Holy moly. New Japan might have just had their newest Match of the Year with this one. Ryohei Oiwa and Yuto-Ice cemented their legacies with this match, as they are now arch enemies. There’s no turning back, this is professional f’n wrestling. Even OSKAR and Zack, which I initially thought was a weird pairing, worked absolutely brilliantly together. This match had a lot of individual wrestler work compared to the tag double-teaming, but it still ran like a freight train.
Oiwa’s dissection of Yuto’s arm and the subsequent jamming of Yuto’s arm into the buckles to stop the pain was incredible. The action just kept ramping up right from the match’s beginning and it didn’t stop. Truly, it made twenty plus minutes feel like a breeze. Dare I say, the best Knock Out Brothers match to date? The trio of OSKAR, Yuto, and Oiwa all bumped up their stock alone by kicking the hell out of each other unapologetically. Twas beautiful.
This insane tag match ended with Yuto’s Cruella Kick to Oiwa for the pinfall win, extending KOB’s number of Tag Title defenses to five. KOB continued their generational tag reign, TMDK dominated like always, and the Oiwa/Yuto sequences felt world-ending. We got high with this one, Big Up!
Yota Tsuji (c) v. Callum Newman – IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match
That stomp on Newman from the apron to the floor looked nasty in the best way possible. This match had all the drama in the world courtesy of United Empire (mostly Will Ospreay) at ringside stirring the pot. At one point, Zane Jay tried to help Newman by handing him a chair after referee Red Shoes got stomped to death by accident. Ospreay intercepted the chair and talked Newman out of it though, how noble. That honor got thrown out the window at the very end thanks to dick kick city, with mayor Newman and population Tsuji.
The match itself got boosted due to the Champion and Challenger’s great chemistry. They both moved with such heavy tenacity and every move connection felt crisp. Tsuji actually busted out some moves he’s never done before, making for a great addition to the unpredictability this match brought. Newman still tried to steal moves from Ospreay like the OsCutter, even though he doesn’t wanna be Ospreay Lite, remember that.
Move after move and kick out after kick out led to the aforementioned low blow by Newman, followed by the Make Way for the win. We have a NEWWW IWGP Heavyweight Champion, and he’s the same age as me. Wow, I can’t believe they pulled the trigger this early in his career.
But before we celebrate, there were some important things that happened after the main event match. First off, Gabe Kidd appeared in an AEW shirt and attacked Yota Tsuji while holding Tsuji’s IWGP Global Title. The crowd popped when they saw Kidd, but immediately booed once they saw him with the AEW shirt, haha. After this, Shingo Takagi came down to the ring to dictate a challenge to the newly crowned Callum Newman. Those two pairings of Shingo v. Newman and Tsuji v. Kidd most likely could be wrestling at Wrestling Dontaku coming up.
Overall Thoughts:
This show had a strong second half with lots to set up for the future. The United Empire appeared all over this show, trying their best to explain everyone’s stance on the face/heel spectrum. Basically, Ospreay is good, everyone else is evil. Both Wrestling Dontaku and Best of Super Juniors are coming up, and the multi-person tags that showcased the Juniors involved made me super excited for both.
The beginning of Callum Newman’s World Title reign is going to have a ton of eyes on NJPW now, curious to see how the company handles a 23-year-old World Champion. Even when it seems guys like Uemura and Umino are directionless currently, they at least knock it out of the park when they wrestle in big-time matches.
Quite the enjoyable show all things considered, especially that IWGP Tag Title match, bah gawd almighty.
