Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White
Jay White's attack on Tana's elbow & the arm as a whole is quite possibly the best heat segment he has worked in his young career so far. Very compelling & some neat stuff there like him putting the bad arm in a hammerlock before suplexing Tana + the shaking of Tana's hand & arm he did while in full control, mocking the shaking people/wrestlers do when trying to get feeling back into hurt bodyparts. Pretty terrific asshole move there. Things didn't remain as interesting when Tana got back into things, but it was still interesting & good enough to keep me hooked - I did like how some of the brief work on the leg came to play when Tana was trying to do something to White from a waistlock, but wasn't able to until White's briefly worked over knee buckled a bit, which gave Tana the opening to bust out a big straight jacket German Suplex. Definitely their best match against each other yet & a great showing by Switchblade. ***3/4
Jon Moxley vs. Juice Robinson
As far as his punches & general offense go, I don't think Moxley looked THAT much better than he did as Dean Ambrose in his last few years in the WWE, but what I do think is that the match was A LOT more creative AND interesting than anything & everything he did there in the past few years. At first his forearms, knees & that suicide dive all looked pretty bad and super weak, but Juice Robinson sold his motherfucking ass off to make all of them look impactful, to say the least. Bless that man. Moxley's stuff thankfully got better looking as the match went on - he started putting more stank to them forearms once they started brawling in the crowd, and Juice continued to sell like a boss for him. I liked the brief legwork too w/ Mox working over it against the ringpost, and then slapping on a half crab & STF for good measure. It came more into play later on in the match when Juice sold the leg once he hit Mox with a gutbuster. Once again, bless that man. What a badass performance all around. Really liked the classic Bret Hart Figure-4 ringpost spot as well - definitely added to the leg psychology of the thing, and it's an awesome spot anyways. Another good leg psychology bit came in the finishing stretch as Juice was all fired up looking to deliver a big left hand to Mox, but Mox stops him by kicking him right into the worked over knee. Good stuff there & talking bout the finishing stretch, I absolutely LOVED the Dirty Deeds kickout. The way it was followed by a sick smile on Mox's face, which was then followed by him essentially '91ing the move was SO GREAT. Absolutely lovely stuff there, and all in all, I thought the match was pretty damn great. Positively unique for a big NJPW match. You couldn't have asked for a better guy to go against Jon Moxley in his first post-WWE match - Juice put on a tremendous performance, bumping & selling his ass off
for everything Moxley did, including his shitty looking offense at the
beginning + he sure delivered when it came time to kick some ass on the
offense himself. Moxley, as mentioned, looked rough in the beginning, but once their fight got to the crowd, everything he did looked great & did so till the end. Definitely a pretty damn fantastic way to start his post-WWE career. ****
Shingo Takagi vs. Will Ospreay
I didn't even watch like half of the tournament matches from this years BOSJ, but it feels like I saw this exact same match at least 10 times. Yawn. Just another super generic & dull, overly long bombfest that I feel like I've seen a million times in the past few years. Not interesting in the slightest. *
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