Onward to Obliteration Again // NJPW The New Beginning Dog Pound Cage Match Feb. 11, 2024
Line up the bad takes! Gather the cartoon-dog-in-a-burning-house style declarations that Will Ospreay leaving to join the Best Friends or feud with a Canadian sex pest for a year or two is NOT A PROBLEM. Because there are various young prospects with varying levels of overness and charisma that just needed this flippy lightweight turned heavy-weight ticket seller out of the way to really shine in a white hot feud with David fucking Finley. So with two all time greats at the height of their power and popularity leaving back to back—a severity of one-two punch I’d argue modern New Japan has never had to tank before—you have to ask hard questions about the strength of that upper mid card.
Sure yes there is always a steady supply of new blood in New Japan. Their Dojo system is unmatched for consistently churning out freakishly durable (for a while) five+ star machines that with a wink or a sneer can sell a thousand t-shirts, tote bags and terry cotton towels. The question that comes to my mind is can anyone realistically slot in Ospreay’s (and Okada’s) place or are we entering a rebuilding phase of some kind. Naito is obviously a transitional champ but for whom and for how long? The obvious front runner (if you don’t think Sanada AGAIN is possible—HOHOHO it very much is!) is Shota Umino who in lore is the lineal spiritual progeny of John Moxley somehow, but is mostly just a (groans, barfs) “white meat” baby face of the beloved local politician varietal—which is distinct in flavor and nose from the Spike Spiegel/Jin Kazama type that makes me sit up straight at 4am.
Some r/squaredcircle refreshing non-Japanese wrestling enjoyer might quip to a fellow online-slob about New Japan matches all being 10 man tags that last over an hour and THIS TIME FUCK SHIT THEY’RE RIGHT?!?! Most wrestlers go out on their back after a heel turn or very fast fall from grace putting over some waiting in the wings future star (hopefully). Ospreay is such a gent he’s putting over four good guys and 5 bad guys in one miserable match.
That’s unfair—it’s not completely a misery. In it’s sixty four minute run time there are around 30 minutes of excellent hardcore wrestling and in ring storytelling. If you were to watch a highlight reel you’d think I was being contrarian, but when experienced at 1x speed in all it’s fumbly start/stop glory it’s a little more clear we were going for quantity not quality here and maybe someone forgot to write the parts in between each spot/storybeat. This point is driven home even more clearly when you compare this directly to the big-league hard core master class that was Shingo V Moxely at Battle in the Valley last month.
The cage has to be touched upon. And yes, I know New Japan has a checkered past when it comes to cage quality—mainly, they always seem to be missing their fucking roofs—but this cage is distinct from—lets say the Takayama V Chono 2003 cage in a few ways worth numerating:
It’s a fence. And a fucking big one too. Basically smashed against the crowd barriers leaving the wrestlers almost exactly the amount of room they’d have to work in a regular ass hard core match.
It’s structurally questionable. The wobble on this sad fucker whenever anyone smacks it with force actually shocks the crowd into reaching out to protect themselves from it in the event it collapsed at least once.
It’s very short. At one point Henare is standing in the middle of the ring and we can clearly see that he can clearly see over the top of it. It’s just a head or two taller than the top rope which doesn’t exactly add to the gravitas of the match.
It’s door is left open for most(? I don’t know and I’m not checking) of the match. It’s only after the last man Royal Rumbles his way down to the ring on a timer for some reason that it’s finally closed and locked, but it having a shut door doeesn’t really matter because—
right away we learn that the cage is simple to scale and easy to jump off of unscathed. Because it’s how Akira makes his surprise entrance into the match.
Anyway who cares, right? None of these guys are established hardcore wrestlers with an expectation of a certain quality level when it comes to a match like this. The point of this is it’s Ospreay’s good bye. It’s the final period on the final sentence in the story of his first New Japan run. From that standpoint it’s also ridiculous.
I’m not sure if Tony Khan made a midnight phone call to Osaka and told Tana/Gedo or Gedo/Tana that Ospreay’s working Texas Wednesday and he better not have much more than a gingerly slice along on his hairline—but our indestructable high-flying hero spends most of this match getting his shit stomped flat by a gang of angry for no reason nice guys led by a heel turned Poochie the dog.
Why are you so bent out of shape David? Is it because there’s no room at the top for a gaijin in New Japan? No, most definitely not. Ospreay is leaving a once title holding, Wrestler of The Year winning world beater booked like a covid era white savior. Is it because you’ve never been given a shot? Your multiple tag championships and tournament wins would beg to differ. I need just a little pathos here if I’m to believe the motivation exists for you to not only beat and pin Ospreay but overpower him so completely that he spends the majority of an entire hour gasping for air glassy eyed and gushing blood. Finley—right now—is an unconvincing evil, but that’s not too much of a problem in a promotion lousy with paper thin bad guys. Modern day new japan is all about it’s heroes. The villains are mostly there to win by cheating until you can’t stand it anymore and they lose spectacularly when it really counts.
Back to the match itself. It’s slow and long. The hour feels like it takes twice that to happen. There is one maddeningly protracted War-Dogs-Dismantle-the-Ring spot which happens for minutes in almost total silence. It goes on so long I was sure Shota or some Shota-class hero was about to run out to stop it, but no they were just trying to expose the boards so they could smack people’s heads on them. Which they promptly do with only minimal effort required. Finley gets the pin on Ospreay and the War Dogs dance away. Promptly the United Empire pick themselves up and and Will cuts a goddamned good goodbye promo fittingly covered in his own blood.
The United Empire winning here would have made no sense (especially a few hours after Okada pinned the New Japan president clean), but Ospreay taking the pin didn’t quite sit right in my head either. Finley doesn’t feel any more like a serious threat with this victory. Even if you think he is—he’s a serious threat to whom? This doesn’t set up the next feud or even quietly hint at the next branch of the story. Wouldn’t it have made more sense to pin the guy with the cracked skull (Henare) while Ospreay looks on helplessly handcuffed (they had handcuffs) to the cage? I’m left wondering as the credits rolled if this match was always intended to be an hour long epic main event—because it seems fit for purpose as a 30 minute co-main without lasting implications.