NJPW iPPV "The New Beginning" Analysis

New Japan’s next iPPV show, “The New Beginning,” will be airing in Japan on 2/10 from the Sun Plaza Arena in Hiroshima. Even though they get almost no significant business in North America, they’ve moved the starting time up from 5 p.m. on Sunday to 3 p.m. in Japan with the idea that it will help them on the U.S. West Coast. The show starts at 10 p.m. Saturday night Pacific time and 1 a.m. on the East Coast.

Judging from the show, it appears that Takaaki Kidani and New Japan have reconciled because Katsuyori Shibata and Kazushi Sakuraba are both on the show. Sakuraba was going to return on the 4/7 Sumo Hall PPV show, called Invasion. But Shibata was in KENTA’s corner last weekend when KENTA pinned Takeshi Morishima to win the GHC heavyweight title for Pro Wrestling NOAH. It was also announced Kidani would be at ringside for the entire show, which sounds like an angle alert. Both lost matches at the Tokyo Dome show that Kidani, the company Chairman, had pushed for them to win.

1) Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi & Tama Tonga & Jushin Liger & Tiger Mask vs. Takashi Iizuka & Toru Yano & Tomohiro Ishii & Yoshi-Hashi & Jado - This is your multiple person undercard match to get all the key people on the show. Notable seeing Nagata in the opener, as well as this is probably the match TV announcer Shinpei Nogami is involved.

2) Alex Shelley & Kushida defend the IWGP jr. tag titles against Rocky Romero & Alex Koslov. It’s the third match between these two teams. The first was good but the second was a quick match to teach people a finish could come at any second. Given that, I’d expect this match to get time and be very good.

3) Prince Devitt vs. Ryusuke Taguchi for the IWGP jr. title. Devitt and Taguchi had been the dominant jr. heavyweight tag team for years. Devitt looks like he’s being groomed for a heavyweight title shot at Hiroshi Tanahashi, which would be a great match. So you can take the idea he should drop the jr. title first, and he can always lose to his tag partner, or he should win since he’s got a main event upcoming. Either way this should be a great match.

4) Davey Boy Smith Jr. & Lance Archer vs. Satoshi Kojima & Hiroyoshi Tenzan for the IWGP tag team titles. These teams have had a number of PPV matches in the last few months with the Killer Elite Squad coming out on top.

5) Togi Makabe vs. Yujiro Takahashi. This match was just set up over the weekend and should be a good brawl.

6) Hirooki Goto & Wataru Inoue vs. Kazushi Sakuraba & Katsuyori Shibata. Inoue has been taking his beatings from Sakuraba & Shibata and that should continue to happen here. Goto is in Makabe’s spot in the feud. They are pushing that Shibata and Goto have actually been friends dating back to when both were teenagers before they got into wrestling. Goto wanted to be a wrestler and Shibata was the son of a New Japan wrestler. It appears the idea out of this is to end up with Goto vs. Shibata. Shibata returning is something of a surprise, particularly since last week he was at the NOAH big show in the corner of KENTA when he won the GHC heavyweight title from Takeshi Morishima, which seemed to signal he’d be moving to that group.

7) Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Kengo Mashimo. They’ve just started a CHAOS (New Japan heel group led by Nakamura, Kazuchika Okada and Gedo) vs. Suzuki-gun program. This is a non-title match. Mashimo was brought into Suzuki-gun a few months back for the tag team tournament.

8) Kazuchika Okada vs. Minoru Suzuki. This is the top star of CHAOS vs. top star of Suzuki-gun. Both of these guys have been having killer big show matches of late.

9) Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Karl Anderson for the IWGP heavyweight title. The two should have a great main event, but they are handicapped because it’s going to be hard to get people to believe Anderson has a chance to win the title. This match is built from Anderson beating Tanahashi in August at Sumo Hall to knock Tanahashi out of the chance of winning the G-1 tournament. Anderson went on to lose in the finals to Okada, but has lost nearly every PPV match the last several months.