NJPW Dominion 2022 Post Examination
Oksaka, Japan—Osaka-jō Hall
June 12, 2022
SANADA and Will Ospreay (photo courtesy of njpw1972.com)
United Empire (Aaron Henare, Francesco Akira, and TJP) def. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Ryusuke Taguchi, and Master Wato
United Empire came to the ring with a new man in their corner, boxer Jessie Vargas, who was giving tips to UE big man Henare throughout the match on some striking blows. The team of Akira and TJP already had put down the IWGP Light Heavyweight Tag Champs last week on the BOSJ Finals show and that win boiled over to the start of the Dominion. A fun, faced-paced opener ended when Aaron Henare would lock in a full nelson choke on Tenzan and force the legend to tap but that did not stop the Kiwi wrestler from cinching in the hold. Henare got a nice fire lit under him and a submission style victory before his G1 debut later this summer while the tag of Akira/TJP notched another victory over the current tag champs. ★★
Bullet Club (Taiji Ishimori, Ace Austin, and El Phantasmo) def. LIJ (Hiromu Takahashi, BUSHI, and Tetsuya Naito)
Hiromu, BOSJ 2022 winner, will get the main event shine on the June 22nd show at Korakuen Hall instead of playing second fiddle to the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. So till then we are saddled with a 6 man tag of rival factions. Naito took the early beating from Bullet Club after being mesmerized by Ace Austin’s hidden staff trick, selling gallantly from a STRONG STYLE STIFF set of back rakes capped-off by a rake with another hidden staff from Ace. Hiromu final got his chance in the ring with his opponent for the IWGP Light Heavyweight Championship but as the match played out LIJ wasn’t a match for the BC man advantage. Austin performed a beauty of a spring board kick to BUSHI before taking out the other LIJ members outside of the ring with a transcendent tope. El-P nailed a CR2 finisher on BUSHI which lead to the first Bullet Club victory of the night. ★
Toru Yano def. Doc Gallows
Gallows wasn’t having Yano’s shenanigans from the beginning, swiping his bottle of disinfectant and dosing the jokester in it. This was Gallows’ first singles match in NJPW since 2015, before heading to back to WWE, and it didn’t go the way the big man would’ve wanted it to go. Yano created a ref distraction allowing him to hit a low blow on Gallows and cover him for the win. ★
BC House of Torture (EVIL, SHO, and Yujiro Takahashi) def. Suzuki Gun (ZSJ, El Desperado, and Yoshinobu Kanemaru for the NJPW NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship
House of Torture knew they wouldn’t hear a single clap if their music played and decided to jump Suzuki Gun on the ramp and take the early advantage. Kanemaru ended up in a 3 on 1 match, never getting a tag out to his stablemates but did a fantastic job in holding his own in a losing effort. HoT used all sorts of fuckery throughout the match, starting with a human chain to reinforce the side stretch lock EVIL applied to Kanemaru, and ending with the loaded kick pad of SHO with the wrench so commonly used by this awful faction. Despy and ZSJ attempted to turn the tables with run-ins but were never able to get the ball rolling for Suzuki Gun. Probably all for the best, this leading to a post-match press conference where ZSJ called out the best technical wrestler in AEW in Bryan Danielson for a match at Forbidden Door! Who the hell wouldn’t want to see these two go at it in an all-out technical battle?! ★
United Empire (Jeff Cobb and Great O-Khan) def. Bullet Club (Chase Owens and Bad Luck Fale) for the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Championship
The United Empire former tag champs looked to get back their titles against the worst of the worst Bullet Clubs members. O-Khan catches Owens in an early submission until Fale injected himself into the match and slowly stomped and dissects The Dominator and mocked Jeff Cobb by using Great O-Khan’s body as a surfboard. Mongolian Chops got O-Khan out of trouble and, with his partner involved, landed a gigantic body slam on the Tongan giant. Bullet Club did what they do best, separating one opponent from their partner and practically making it a handicap match throughout. Chase Owens escaped a first attempt at tour of the islands from Cobb and hit 2 c-triggers before setting up for his and Fale’s combination finisher. Great O-Khan was able to intervene and save his partner by a belly-to-belly suplex off the 2nd rope allowing Jeff Cobb to give Chase a tour of the Islands’ and win back their IWGP Heavyweight Tag Championships! After the match, Rocky Romero attacked the re-crowned champs for their previous attacks on AEW Dynamite and Rampage but quickly got outnumbered and put down. ★★
United Empire over Rocky Romero (photo courtesy of njpw1972.com)
We hit intermission but not before NJPW gave us some announcements of upcoming events and some major news shaking up the G1 Climax Tournament! 28 men (4, 7 man brackets) will be in this years’ G1 opposed to the normal 20 man (2, 10 man brackets) tourney. The entrants include:
NJPW – Hiroshi Tanahashi – David Finlay – Tama Tonga
NJPW Strong – Tom Lawlor – JONAH
CHAOS – Kazuchika Okada – Yoshi Hashi – Hirooki Goto – Toru Yano – Tomohiro Ishii
United Empire – Will Ospreay – Great O-Khan – Jeff Cobb – Aaron Henare
Los Ingobernables De Japon – Tetsuya Naito – Shingo Takagi – SANADA
Bullet Club – Jay White – KENTA – Fale – Chase Owens – Juice Robinson – El Phantasmo
House of Torture – EVIL – Yujiro Takahashi
AEW – Lance Archer
Hiroshi Tanahashi def. Hirooki Goto in the AEW Interim World Heavyweight Championship eliminator match
I’m sure Goto had no idea that we would be facing Tanahashi with the highest evolved form of a Karen haircut, as the stakes were as high as the Aces’s hair was feathered. These 2 haven’t wrestled in a non-G1 singles match in over 10 years, but a shot at the interim AEW Title and chance to take on the healing champ, CM Punk, gave this slugfest deeper meaning. Unfortunately for Tanahashi, his direct bid for the title got railroaded when Punk announced his injury but little would stand in his way. Goto was able to get in an ushigoroshi and nearly set up his finishing GTR before Tana would escape and avoid a near-fall. Two, high fly flows sealed the deal for The Ace and his main event match is set for Forbidden Door with the man who has been knocking on that door and shouting his name, Jon Moxley! ★★
Shingo Takagi def. Taichi For the Provisional KOPW 2022 Trophy
Differing from all other matches on the card, this 10 minute scramble saw both competitors trying to rack up as many pin counts as possible within the timeframe, opposed to their last battle of first to 30 counts. No time to waste, the slugfest started and quickly broke into rollup attempts after some knock-out blows. Shingo took an early lead and forced Taichi to use his barrage of lethal kicks to play from behind but just like their previous meeting for the KOPW trophy when Taichi fell just 1 point shy of champion Shingo. Crawling on the ring mat to get last second points, the ring bell rang and the younger competitor was once again bested by The Dragon. This was a fun little breakup of the title matches, the formatting allowing for a more satisfying end to a time limit draw as opposed to opening the bout with a 10 minute, feeling-each-other-out-extended snoozer to put you to sleep. ★★
Karl Anderson def. Tama Tonga for the NEVER Openweight Championship
Once OG Core 4 members of the Bullet Club found themselves in a heated feud for the NEVER Openweight title. Tama Tonga didn’t waste a second in unleashing his anger on Hot Karl, hitting him with a dropkick before taking off his title and letting the action spill outside. Once again, Bullet Club outnumbered their opponents with Gallows seconding his tag partner, while Tango Loa was at home healing, allowing Gallows to grab Tama’s attention for Anderson to hit a gun stun on the ropes. Tama Tonga gained momentum back with fiery clotheslines and dropkicks along with his former finisher, the wraparound DDT. Karl Anderson harkened back to another former friend/tag partner in Giant Bernard and hit Tama Tonga with a Bernard driver and with the distraction from Gallows, is able to nail another gun stun and pin the champ for his 1st reign with the NEVER Openweight Championship. ★★
Karl Anderson and Tama Tonga (photo courtesy of njpw1972.com)
Will Ospreay def. SANADA for the vacant IWGP US Heavyweight Championship
Fast-paced, counter after counter, till SANADA tossed out Ospreay, hit a leaping tope and locking Will in the paradise lock to cool off. Ospreay continued to dazzle with his aerial assaults, nailing SANADA with an outstanding twirling backflip moonsault OUTSIDE THE RING! I never was really much of a Will Ospreay fan, but with his leap to the heavyweight division, a new cocky demeanor, and appropriately heelish moveset, I am starting to buy-in to his hype. Ospreay and Jay White are the future of NJPW and wrestling in general, so luckily for New Japan they are under contract. Will decimated SANADA with a perfect-looking hook kick to the eye, followed by the Os-cutter, only before countering a Muta moonsault and landing his first hidden blade only to earn a 2 count! The only thing left for Ospreay to do was ditch the elbow pad, hit SANADA with a bare elbow hidden blade and secure the stormbreaker for the 1..2..3! Will Ospreay claimed victory and is the rightful owner of the IWGP US Heavyweight Championship…which, unfortunately for him, that title is still in Juice Robinson’s possession. Possibly a setup for Forbidden Door but in due time the champ will have his title. ★★★
Jay White def. Kazuchika Okada for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship
The Main Event! The Switchblade has made his way back to the mountaintop of NJPW, this time with a new championship and a different standard bearer to beat for the top designation in the company. Not new foes, Jay and Okada, previously main-eventing the G1 Supercard show for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, now found roles reversed in the main event here of Dominion 2022. Jay White was seconded only by Gedo, and kept his normal fuckery to a minimum this night by his standards, yet couldn’t help himself from baiting the crowd into breaking covid-19 restrictions and cheer for their champion, “O-KA-DA.” Every time the Switchblade took control by breaking down Okada, he let the crowd hear it, their response rang in the cadence of, “O-KA-DA” clapping and stomping, letting Jay know where their allegiance lay.
The action went to the outside early where The Switchblade would pummel The Rainmaker down, only to find himself nearly taking a tombstone piledriver. After dodging an early rainmaker, Jay started poking at The Ace on Japanese commentary, the same man he beat for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, by hitting 2 dragon screws and turned a reverse figure 4 into the Texas cloverleaf, both as we know, Tanahashi staples. After withstanding some “Too Sweet" chops, Okada was able to land one of his magnificent dropkicks and lock-in the money clip. Red Shoes was bumped, opening the door for Gedo to interfere and toss in a chair, only to be stifled as Okada quickly disposed of the plunder and got back to a fair match. Fairness only lasted so long, as eventually the Bullet Club members positioned themselves for another distraction that led to landing a low blow on the champ. After admonishing Okada with his pathetic attempts of retaining his title, Jay ate an ugly elbow before we they got into the dramatic, blow for blow exchange. Jay, being the smaller competitor, took the brunt of the damage, but was able to land a spear to Okada’s previously targeted ribs, opening him up to take a sleeper suplex and Regal-flex. White was really feeling it on this night, so much so that he exclaimed to Gedo, “He’s feeling it!” and landed the former Bullet Club founder, Prince Devitt’s finisher, a bloody Sunday on Okada. Jay gained wrist control and attempted some Rainmaker-like clotheslines, which only pissed off the reigning champ. Nailing Jay with a corkscrew tombstone and spinning rainmaker, Okada had his sights set on finishing this with one final rainmaker. From there, it was counter after counter, each competitor finding themselves on the wrong end of each others finishers, but it would be Jay White who landed his last. And shockingly, after the 1…2…3…from only one blade runner, Jay White was crowned the new IWGP World Heavyweight Champion! This was first reign with this new version of the championship, but not his first time sitting atop the throne of New Japan. “This is the Switchblade Era.” ★★★
Post Examination:
Overall, a good show, setting up plenty for the future involvement with AEW at Forbidden Door, but like we’ve mentioned on the Podcast a plethora of times, NJPW is desperate for more top talent. With some major belts on hot talent, the Forbidden Door, and the new G1 format, we can clearly see some steps in the right direction for New Japan, as we’ll hope they get back to excellent showings at all their major shows.
Bullet Club (photo courtesy of njpw1972.com)
