New Japan Pro Wrestling 1/20/2022 New Years Golden Series 2022 Day 1

New Japan Pro Wrestling 1/20/2022 New Years Golden Series 2022 Day 1

There's a whole lot of people missing from this show like Cobb, Osperay, Ibushi and every other foreigner. I skipped 3 of the matches.

Great-O-Khan vs Yuto Nakashima

Khan jumped him before the bell. Yuto came back with some nice forearms and a double leg take down and they scrambled on the mat in a nice section. Khan was down on the mat and Yuto got some nice leg kicks in. They traded some very basic holds on the mat and rolled around a little more. Khan then caught him with a cross armbreaker and won it. The last minute wasn't too good but they did well otherwise with the mat wrestling and trading simple holds. Yuto got a lot in for a young lion.

Ryohei Oiwa vs Hiromu Takahashi

Oiwa rushed him with forearms and stomps, then was thrown hard into the rails outside. Oiwa came back with a shoulder block and ripped off Hiromu's mask just to reveal another underneath. Hiromu tee'd off on him with chest slaps in the corner and they exchanged some hard slaps. Oiwa got a decent dropkick in and a nice Karelin's lift.

Hiromu came back with a crab. Oiwa tried to rip his mask off again and nailed him with a good dropkick. He ran the ropes an ate a lariat and was submitted to the boston crab. Oiwa looked fine here with some decent dropkicks and some hard chest slaps.

CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii, YOH & YOSHI-HASHI) vs House Of Torture (Dick Togo, EVIL, SHO & Yujiro Takahashi)

They brawled and went right outside. Sho got the group beat down by Chaos and Hashi got a real good chop on him. Hashi was whipped into the exposed buckles and Togo hit a nice fist drop on him. Goto nailed Yujiro with a hard shoulder block. Yujiro gave him a boot to the face and they took back over.

Things broke down from there with Yoh hitting a dropkick on Evil into a german then Yoh hitting a plancha on Sho. Evil put the sharpshooter on Ishii and Togo stomped Ishii while he was in it. Togo choked Ishii with a weapon then Hashi and  the faces 3v1'd Togo. Togo took double superkicks into a sliding D from Ishii and Ishii won it with a brainbuster. It moved fast for the 2nd half so it wasn't too bad but it wasn't great or anything too special.

Los Ingobernables de Japon (SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito) vs Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada & Yuji Nagata

Sanada and Tana did a bunch of takedowns and armdrags to start and traded headscissors by 5 minutes into it. Okada and Naito really felt each other out during their section and both tagged out before much happened. Nagata got a bunch of kicks on Shingo but Nagata got triple dropkicked before he could capitalize any further at around 10 minutes in.

Nagata and Shingo traded forearms and Nagata exploder suplexed him.  Sanada dropped Tana over his knee then plancha'd him outside. Tana and Sanada fought over the dragon sleeper and Tana did a twisting neckbreaker to him.

Naito and Okada went at it with Naito hitting an outside to inside dropkick and hitting a hurricanrana off the top. Okada came back with a neckbreaker on the knee. Okada hit his big dropkick and Naito hit a botched rope assisted tornado ddt. Okada tagged out and Nagata hit a butterfly suplex on Naito then hit triple suplexes for 2.

Shingo broke up a Nagata lock on Naito and hit a sliding D to Tana but Shingo stopped him. Naito took some kicks but hit destino on Nagata and won it as Okada watched on.

It was an okay match but nothing too special and nothing you'd really want to watch again like most NJPW house show main events.