Exhibition: Boltin Oleg vs. Ryohei Oiwa 3:00
NJPW King Of Pro-Wrestling Title 2023 Right To Challenge / New Japan Rambo: Great-O-Khan vs. Shingo Takagi vs. SHO vs. Toru Yano vs. Aaron Henare vs. DOUKI vs. El Phantasmo vs. EVIL vs. Hikuleo vs. Jeff Cobb vs. KENTA vs. Mikey Nicholls vs. Rocky Romero vs. Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Shane Haste vs. Taichi vs. Tomohiro Ishii vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Yujiro Takahashi 30:37
Satoshi Kojima & Togi Makabe & Yuji Nagata vs. Minoru Suzuki & Tatsumi Fujinami & Tiger Mask 9:10
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Title: Francesco Akira & TJP vs. Lio Rush & YOH 10:29
IWGP Women's Title: KAIRI vs. Tam Nakano 5:47
IWGP Tag Title: Cash Wheeler & Dax Harwood vs. Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI 10:10
NJPW World Television Title Tournament Final: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ren Narita 10:32
NEVER Openweight Title: Karl Anderson vs. Tama Tonga 9:36
Hiroshi Tanahashi & Keiji Muto & Shota Umino vs. BUSHI & SANADA & Tetsuya Naito 9:20
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Title: Taiji Ishimori vs. Hiromu Takahashi vs. El Desperado vs. Master Wato 16:43
IWGP United States Heavyweight Title: Will Ospreay vs. Kenny Omega 34:38. Excluding an AEW Dark match against the artist formerly known as Mr. X3, this was Kenny Omega's first singles match since losing the AEW World Title to Hangman Page on 11/13/21. Omega was on top at the height of 21st century New Japan, managing to pull memorable matches out of both the overrated and over the hill, including corporate robot Okada, the staller Naito, and repetitive Tanahashi, as well as guys like Goto & Ishii that actually put forth the effort and are quite good, deserving of far better than whatever few scraps they got from Gedo. This was Omega's first match back since losing the IWGP Heavyweight Title to Tanahashi on 1/4/19, and boy has New Japan missed him, as their roster had no hope to recover once they lost so many of their top performers at the start of 2019, including their best singles wrestler in Omega, best tag team in the Young Bucks, and best junior KUSHIDA to WWE because they wouldn't give him any possibility of advancement despite the majority of their heavyweights having started off as juniors, including his former rivals Omega, Ibushi, Ospreay, & Prince Devitt. There wasn't much new of interest in NJPW since the formation of AEW other than Shingo Takagi getting a run and the promotion of Ospreay & Ibushi. Most of the foreigners were gone during COVID other than the great Zack Sabre Jr., who was mostly wasted teaming with awful Taichi, and all the natives in this aging company of 40+ year olds are just four years older and more broken down now, with the youngest native in the 2022 G1 Climax being SANADA, who was born in 1988, but there are still some dream matches for Omega in New Japan, and one that everyone has wanted to see was against Will Ospreay, who hadn't yet been shifted to heavyweight during the time he & Omega were in the promotion together. This was the best sort of high profile New Japan match, as when every big match is going 30-35 minutes, what becomes really important is consistency. This is also the thing that's most lacking, generally, as the length just puts guys, especially when they're old and broken, into time shaving mode, and for the most part at least half the match has technically passed before it really gets started. Omega vs. Ospreay didn't quite feel like a junior match in the sense of it being fast paced and explosive, it was more dramatic and hard hitting despite having all those moves, which were just spaced out more and done at a more moderate pace. Omega always felt like the favorite, and while Ospreay was the more spectacular of the two when he was on offense, unlike the AEW Vikingo match where Omega mostly was the rudo base, Omega got the majority of the offense here, and thus brought plenty of big, hard hitting power offense and athletic moves, whether it be the poisonrana or the avalanche style Dragon suplex that Ospreay landed on his feet to avoid. Omega's big show table was used, of course, with Omega putting a hole through it with a double footstomp off the apron then Ospreay suplexing Omega onto it to set up his sky twister press to the floor. The first half was all very good, useful, and interesting stuff, but the crux of the match came when when Ospreay tried to set up an avalanche style move of his own, but bladed when Omega countered it by DDTing him on the exposed top turnbuckle. This really slowed the match down, as Ospreay sold huge for several minutes, but it slowed it down in a very dramatic and effective manner, with a sadistic Kenny Omega essentially just beating him when he was down & out, but somehow never quite being able to finish the wounded but determined warrior. Although Will barely did anything for a lengthy stretch beyond show a ton of heart and fighting spirit in refusing to quit, the selling during this portion was quite good, as rather than Ospreay just laying around endlessly, Omega stayed on him, and thus the ref and officials looked good playing up the idea that they were contemplating stopping the match rather than ridiculous because they allowed a guy who was KO'd for 2 minutes to continue. They did a great job of building up to Ospreay finally coming back, only to fantastically fool us by having Omega counter the avalanche style Frankensteiner by dropping poor Ospreay headfirst onto the exposed turnbuckle again! This was such a great ironic spot, and after several more minutes of Ospreay getting beat within an inch of life, he finally got backflipped taking a clothesline, but in landing on his feet, he was able to come back with a Ligerbomb. My biggest criticism of this match, and this shows how amazing it was, is that they did such a great job of putting over near dead Ospreay that it was hard to buy his huge fast comeback without something equally massive as the big turnbuckle spot to slow Omega down. Ospreay threw all he had at Omega during this brief stretch, but was too far gone, and even though they were mostly exchanging big shots in the final few minutes, Omega just had too much more left in the tank for him. Although it shows how badly Tony Khan owns Gedo that Omega, coming off nearly a 14 month singles layoff, still takes the New Japan title on New Japan's biggest show of the year, with Gedo getting nothing comparable or even useful in return, the Ospreay underdog storyline was done so well by the wrestlers themselves that the loss still helped Ospreay, though obviously not as much as the win should have. ****1/2
IWGP World Heavyweight Title: Jay White vs. Kazuchika Okada 33:03
Kosei Fujita & Ryohei Oiwa vs. Taishi Ozawa & Yasutaka Yano 12:12
Daiki Inaba & Masa Kitamiya vs. Oskar Leube & Tomohiro Ishii 10:28
Hiroshi Tanahashi & Satoshi Kojima & Takashi Sugiura & Toru Yano vs. El Phantasmo & Gedo & KENTA & Naomichi Marufuji 12:20
El Desperado vs. YO-HEY 10:57
Alejandro & AMAKUSA & Junta Miyawaki vs. Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi & Tiger Mask 9:37
Kaito Kiyomiya & Yoshiki Inamura vs. Kazuchika Okada & Togi Makabe 6:35
Kongo vs. LIJ Best Of Five Series Match #1: Tadasuke [Kongo] vs. BUSHI [LIJ] 11:09
Kongo vs. LIJ Best Of Five Series Match #2: Hiromu Takahashi [LIJ] vs. Hajime Ohara [Kongo] 13:05
Kongo vs. LIJ Best Of Five Series Match #3: Manabu Soya [Kongo] vs. SANADA [LIJ] 13:57
Kongo vs. LIJ Best Of Five Series Match #4: Shingo Takagi [LIJ] vs. Katsuhiko Nakajima [Kongo] 18:28
Kongo vs. LIJ Best Of Five Series Match #5: Tetsuya Naito [LIJ] vs. Keno [Kongo] 26:57
Toru Yano & YOH vs. Oleg Boltin & Ryusuke Taguchi 3:45
Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI vs. Callum Newman & Great-O-Khan 7:37
EVIL & Ren Narita & SHO & Yujiro Takahashi vs. El Desperado & Shota Umino & Tiger Mask & Tomoaki Honma 8:43
DOUKI & SANADA & Taichi & TAKA Michinoku & Yuya Uemura vs. BUSHI & Hiromu Takahashi & Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito & Yota Tsuji 11:05
Kazuchika Okada vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi 16:50
IWGP Tag Title: El Phantasmo & Hikuleo vs. Chase Owens & KENTA 13:11
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Bryan Danielson 32:46. Watch Review. *****
War Games Steel Cage: David Finlay & Alex Coughlin & Clark Connors & Drilla Moloney & Gabe Kidd vs. Will Ospreay & Francesco Akira & HENARE & Jeff Cobb & TJP 64:05