Katsuyori Shibata vs. Ren Narita
THE KING IS BACK. Man what a beautiful surprise it was to see this turned into a full-on no gimmicks pro-wrestling match. A true feel good moment. Narita was a good first opponent back for Shibata, as he matched his intensity & aggression very nicely in this cool little return bout. Shibata played his old Shibata hits & looked as sharp as he always did. So fucking awesome to see him back. Hell of a moment & a good match. ***
Kazuchika Okada vs. Shingo Takagi
Off the top of my head I can't think of a Tokyo Dome main event that has felt less like a Tokyo Dome Main Event Match than this one between Okada & Shingo right here. Wow this shit was empty. Of course it was super long; 35+ minutes (which felt like an hour) where at least 25 of it was slow-paced wrestling that said absolutely NOTHING. No interesting narrative being told whatsoever-- okay, I'll give them the moment of Okada getting angry at Shingo mocking his signature taunt, because that was pretty neat, but other than that, what was there? Absolutely nothing. Usually when I don't like these generic New Japan house-style main events, there is still usually at least _a FEW_ things that I liked or found interesting in them, but here? Nothing. Noooothing. Sure they kicked it up to the "epic" gear in the last 5-10 minutes, but I've seen both of them, in particular Okada, do that a million times before & it offered nothing new + to be honest, it didn't even feel that epic by the standards of the wrestlers or the company. And of course more importantly, the build to that section of the match was so boring that it didn't provoke much of any feelings in me. Look, I can sum this up by saying that I have seen a LOT of NJPW main events that I didn't like, but I don't remember any of them being so absolutely-nothing like this one was. *1/4
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