New Japan Pro Wrestling 2/16/2022 New Years Golden Series Day 12

New Japan Pro Wrestling 2/16/2022 New Years Golden Series Day 12

Kosei Fujita vs Great-O-Khan

Khan gets blasted with a dropkick as he enters and chopped. Khan comes back with a slam and hiptosses him for 2. Khan rubs his boot in his face and Fujita comes back with dropkicks.  Fujita hits some forearms then takes some back. Khan then puts him in the boston crab and wins it at about 7 minutes. This was a short rookie vs vet match and both did fine here with good looking offense.

Toru Yano and Yuji Nagata vs Suzuki-gun (Minoru Suzuki and Douki)

Yano and Suzuki bang each other off the dog cage that Yano brought in and both try to put the other in. Nagata hits some kicks on Douki. Suzuki grabs the ring bell hammer and stabs Yano with it. He then tries to pull him into the dog cage.

Suzuki chokes Nagata with the hammer and slaps him. They trade forearms and Suzuki gets an exploder. Yano and Suzuki both try to put each other into the exposed turnbuckle then Suzuki hard forearms Yano. Suzuki PK's Yano and goes for a piledriver but is backdropped.

Douki takes an overhead belly to belly from Nagata then is crossfaced. Douki top rope footstomps Nagata for 2. Yano rams Douki into Suzuki then double low blows them. Nagata then backdrops Douki for the win.  We then see that Minoru Suzuki was handcuffed to the rails near the end of this.

This wasn't bad with them continuing the Suzuki/Yano feud.

Suzuki stayed cuffed after this and had to be helped by the young lions. He then nailed them like he usually does.

Kazuchika Okada & Satoshi Kojima vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito)

Naito stared off into the abyss as this started. They didn't do much before Kojima and Shingo started trading forearms and shoulders. Shingo takes a double shoulder from Okada and Kojima. Kojima hit rare mongolian chops on Shingo then took a big lariat.

Okada hit a nice big boot on Naito that Naito flip sold for. Kojima hit a cutter on Shingo then they traded forearms. Shingo then hit a sliding lariat for 2. Okada hit his over the back neckbreaker on Naito then Shingo lariated him. Shingo and Koji then met each other with lariats and Shingo went down. Shingo then hit 2 big lariats on Koji for 2.

Shingo hit some botched made in Japan and won it. Aside from the finish, the Shingo/Koji sections were very fun and carried the match. The rest of it was slow and nowhere near anyone's best work.

Eight Man Tag Team Elimination Match - CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii, YOH & YOSHI-HASHI) vs. House Of Torture (Dick Togo, EVIL, SHO & Yujiro Takahashi)

Togo was the first out after Sho was pushed into him while he was on the apron. Ishii then went after Togo on the apron and was thrown over the top for the elimination. Sho and Yoh fought on the apron then Sho knocked Yoh off and Yoshi knocked Sho off. Yujiro faked that he got hit by a chair from Yoshi. The ref took the chair from Yoshi and Yujiro eliminated him.

Gotto had to fight off a 2v1 and pulled down the rope on a Yujiro charge, eliminating Yujiro. We then came down to Evil vs Goto. They fought for a little and Evil ended up lariating him over the top to win it.

I liked this one. It had a real fast pace to it, it went long enough and eliminations are always fun. It was also much better than a normal non-elimination tag would have been and was the most interesting the House of Torture has looked in months.

Overall thoughts: I did skip a few matches here, but what I saw was almost all good, minus the Okada/Naito tag battle which had to be carried by Kojima.