It’s finally time for the first NJPW tournament of the year: the single-elimination New Japan Cup. I’m going to mostly skip the prelim matches when it comes to this coverage, but if anything important happens in the preview tags or elsewhere, I’ll pop in and let you know. To wit…

Taisei Nakahara vs. Tatsuya Matsumoto

This was Nakahara’s debut, and it went pretty well. He’s 25 and is 5’7” and 182 pounds, so he’s very much a junior; according to Chris Charlton (who did this show solo, as Walker Stewart is dealing with a “family emergency” – best wishes to him), he’s been in the dojo since 2023. He moved around in the ring pretty well, and he was in the right place at the right time without exception, although he’s still got a bit of that looseness that trainees tend to have. Matsumoto, who finally got his Cagematch profile this week, has been in actual matches for only about eight months, but looked much more refined than Nakahara, although that is to be expected. Matsumoto is also getting very good, it should be noted, as he seems to get it in the same way as other Young Lions who’ve recently been fast-tracked. Matsumoto won with the Boston Crab; this was his first singles win.

New Japan Cup: Don Fale [House of Torture] vs. Aaron Wolf

Wolf got jumped by SHO, Yoshinobu Kanemaru and Chase Owens during his entrance. Shortly after the match started, Fale threw Wolf outside and Wolf got stomped by the entire House. Interestingly, Charlton suggests that the fact that Wolf has no backup is perhaps the rest of Hontai telling him he was getting too big for his britches. The only one who seems to care at all is Toru Yano, who is at ringside on commentary. Thankfully, the crowd still seems to be into Wolf, as they were very into his comeback, but then the ref got bumped and the whole House ran in to beat up Wolf. Wolf came back from this, foiled a splash through a table, and actually hit the Angle Slam on Fale (on the second attempt – Fale didn’t jump high enough on the first), but then the House pulled the ref out, Ren Narita hit Wolf with the NEVER belt and Fale hit the Grenade for the win. This was no bueno. Fale’s next match will be against Shingo Takagi on March 10 in Okayama. I’m guessing Unbound Co. will not be as laissez-faire about the House’s antics as Hontai was.

New Japan Cup: Great-O-Khan [United Empire] vs. Yuya Uemura

Uemura said in an interview earlier this week that his team with Shota Umino is finished, which stands to reason, both because it’s the start of singles tournament season and because they lost to the Knockout Brothers three times in a row. Regardless, it seems that most people think that the New Japan Cup final will be Uemura vs. Umino; we’ll see how that goes.

This was a very good match, and the Korakuen Hall crowd was into both guys, despite Great-O-Khan using old-school heel tactics throughout; honestly, the biting, hair-pulling and even non-match-deciding chair shots seemed downright quaint compared to the House of Torture’s eight-on-one nonsense. As the match progressed, the crowd got very behind Uemura, and after some really good back-and-forth action – including a pretty convincing near-fall for Great-O-Khan with a TTD – Uemura won with the High Fly Flow cross-body, which honestly didn’t seem impactful enough to finish a main event match, but I understand that it’s a work in progress and more symbolic than anything else. Uemura’s mic skills are also a work in progress, but the crowd loves him, so he was given some grace during his post-match promo. Uemura’s next match will be against Drilla Moloney on March 10 in Okayama.

Tomorrow’s show will also be at Korakuen Hall, and will feature two more New Japan Cup matches – Taichi vs. Ren Narita and Boltin Oleg vs. El Phantasmo. One of those should be good!