Tonight is New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s first show in the United States since May 2025 – The New Beginning USA, originating from the CURE Insurance Arena in beautiful(?) Trenton, New Jersey. There’s a heavy AEW/ROH presence on this show, but more than anything else, the quality of the card suggests that NJPW is continuing to put real effort into these U.S. shows in a way that isn’t as tethered to STRONG as past shows have been. Let’s take a look at how things shook out.

Fred Rosser vs. David Finlay [Unbound Co.]

The broadcast duo is Walker Stewart and Veda Scott, and boy does this look like an old-school ROH show. This was a physical match that Finlay won with Overkill. Rosser had a few less-than-crisp moments, which you’d expect from someone who wrestles as infrequently as he does, but the match was mostly pretty good. Afterwards, Finlay teased cutting a goodbye promo, but dropped the mic instead and celebrated on the stage with the Knockout Brothers.

The word going around about Finlay is that he wants to go to WWE to work with his brother and father, but he doesn’t want to go to NXT, because he (correctly) believes that there’s no upward mobility for veterans there, plus the money is nothing special. However, WWE has no interest in putting him on the main roster – WWE historically hates guys with his body type, and very few people who watch WWE know who he is. Unfortunately for him, AEW has shown very little interest, so WWE doesn’t feel inclined to go above and beyond to get him. I’d say it’s still more likely than not that he goes to WWE in some capacity, but it’s not entirely out of the question that he ends up back in NJPW.

STRONG Openweight Championship: Tomohiro Ishii (c) vs. Boltin Oleg

Now we’re talking. Both men have kinesio tape all over their right shoulders. The crowd was deeply into Ishii at the outset. ​​As you’d probably expect, this match was tremendously physical and a lot of fun – not on the level of Ishii’s best matches, but very much in the same mold. About midway through the match, they had a two-minute chop battle that brought the crowd to its feet. Boltin gave Ishii a lot – more than I expected – but he eventually won the match and the title with the Kamikaze. Boltin was loudly cheered after the match.

AEW National Championship: Ricochet (c) vs. Taiji Ishimori [Unbound Co.]

The crowd was very into Ricochet, chanting “bald” at him; it really is amazing how he discovered his charisma this deep in his career, after so many years of being a guy who did amazing things in the ring but had a reputation of not being able to talk and always looked like a deer in the headlights, including in his NJPW run in the ‘10s. Ishimori weirdly wrestled as a heel throughout and, unfortunately, blew a tope spot pretty spectacularly, though Ricochet was able to catch him and prevent him from landing on his head. Aside from that, this was a good junior-style match that Ricochet won with the Spirit Gun.

Jordan Oliver & Alex Price vs. El Desperado & KUSHIDA

It’s hard not to see this match as an audition of sorts for Oliver and Price, who recently signed with AEW and seem like a team that could be a good addition to the junior tag ranks. They have certain indy-riffic tendencies, such as going way too fast and not letting anything breathe, and there was one short segment in the middle of the match where Price and Desperado were on two very different pages, but they got a good reaction from the crowd, and this was largely a successful debut for them. Desperado pinned Price with the Pinche Loco, and the two teams shook hands afterward. During the promo segments backstage, Oliver and Price were given invites to Despy’s deathmatch show in Vegas in April.

NJPW World TV Championship: El Phantasmo (c) vs. Konosuke Takeshita

Takeshita was the first person on the show to get a real superstar reaction, because he is a real superstar. Rocky Romero was with Takeshita, and he wore a jacket with Don Callis’s face on the back, which eventually got the crowd chanting “Fuck Don Callis.” As is often the case with these TV title matches, this felt like a Reader’s Digest version of a really good match, but these two have very good chemistry, and by the end it was really good anyway. Of course, it went to a draw, and the crowd was super not into that finish. ELP challenged Takeshita to five more minutes, and Takeshita won the title in about three minutes with Raging Fire. The restart was a nice way to help ELP save some face, and both competitors saluted each other after the match.

IWGP Tag Team Championship: Knockout Brothers (OSKAR & Yuto-Ice) (c) [Unbound Co.] vs. Gates of Agony (Bishop Kaun & Toa Liona)

You can tell the degree to which this was an AEW crowd by the fact that maybe half of them were extremely into the Knockout Brothers during their entrance and the other half didn’t seem to know what was going on. This match took a little while to get going, and it felt like the crowd didn’t buy Gates of Agony as a real championship threat, but the match was good and extremely physical despite the lack of engagement. Yuto pinned Kaun after the champs hit the K.O.B.

IWGP Women’s Championship: Syuri (c) vs. Athena

This match had a real big match feel starting out. This match was a bit of a clash of styles, with Athena favoring hard-hitting physical attacks and Syuri favoring submissions, but each adapted to the other’s offensive preference, and they managed to have a really solid match. Syuri won with a move that didn’t look terribly unlike a One-Winged Angel. Afterward, Syuri seemed to indicate that she would challenge Athena for her ROH Women’s World Championship, and then Alex Windsor challenged Syuri via video for the STRONG Women’s Championship at Pro-Wrestling: EVE’s Wrestle Queendom show in London on March 8.

IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship: Yota Tsuji (c) [Unbound Co.] vs. Andrade el Idolo [United Empire]

Tsuji entered with slightly different entrance gear – he wore sunglasses and no goofy hat. It was a vast improvement. The crowd was into both guys, as you’d probably expect, with a dueling chant midway through the match suggesting that Andrade may have been the favorite. The match started slow, but the pace quickly picked up. Andrade kicked the offense into high gear about 15 minutes in, and it’s a good sign for NJPW that Tsuji was mostly able to keep up with Andrade’s lucha stuff late in the match (there was a double-underhook destroyer that was a bit iffy), because getting gassed was a big problem for him earlier in his career. Tsuji won in about 27 minutes with the Boston Crab. This was an excellent match, much better than the Jake Lee match. Afterward, Tsuji cut a promo in surprisingly good English, and he and Andrade thanked each other for the match.