The Best And Worst Of NJPW: World Tag League 2019 Final

Previously on NJPW: World Tag League was very long but at least it looks like people made friends.

You can watch New Japan Pro Wrestling shows on their streaming service, NJPW World, which costs 999 yen (about 9 USD.) You can also watch certain NJPW matches on Saturdays on AXS TV.

You can keep up with With Spandex on Twitter and Facebook, follow our home site Uproxx on Twitter, and even follow me on Twitter @emilyofpratt. Don’t forget to share this column on Facebook, Twitter, or whatever social media you use! Also, leave a comment with your thoughts on the show and/or article! All feedback is appreciated and will help us keep up the NJPW coverage.

And now, the Best and Worst of the final show of this year’s World Tag League from December 8, 2019, in Hiroshima.

By December 8, after about five years of round robin competition, World Tag League has three possible winners left, and they’re booked on the final show of the tour in such a way that makes you really start to question the legitimacy of this whole pro wrestling thing. There’s no true Final for World Tag League this year, but fortunately, NJPW just happened to book the top two teams against each other on the last day of competition, just like every G1 block and every BOSJ block. Maybe, in kayfabe, there’s some kind of Freakonomics thing going on where seeing that on the schedule motivates these guys to get the most points.

Evil and Sanada could still pull off their three-peat, having dominated the tournament with a record of 13-1 to become the only team with 26 points. The Guerillas of Destiny are also still in the running at 24 points, but with a catch. They have to beat Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi, then hope FinJuice beats Evil and Sanada, in which case they would win the league by tiebreaker. And Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi might still seem like an easy stepping stone to some, but they were one of the top teams in the tournament for a long time and have extra motivation to beat G.o.D. after their feud with them this fall.

Meanwhile, FinJuice goes into December 8 after a tournament in which it didn’t always look like they were going to end up functionally finalists, but it also never looked like that wasn’t something they deserved. Their matches in December are all against other strong teams, and though their loss to G.o.D. on December 1 could have been the start of a losing streak, they went on to beat Ishii and Yoshi-Hashi, Yano and Cabana, and Suzuki and Archer. And with 24 points, it just so happens that their one match left is against the top team in the league, Evil and Sanada, who they need to beat to just barely win World Tag League with 26 points and a tiebreaker (and a loss by the Guerillas that’s out of their control.)

So while a lot of World Tag League was made up of filler and felt very skippable (don’t sleep on that Yano-Cabana vs. ZSJ-Taichi match from December 6 though, because it’s hilarious), it brings us to a final with compelling stakes and promising final match-ups.

— njpwworld (@njpwworld) December 8, 2019

While the World Tag League final is very eventful in terms of setting things up for Wrestle Kingdom (and concluding the tag league), most of its matches didn’t have any immediate consequences in themselves. This is something that makes it a weaker big New Japan show than, like, Dominion, but it doesn’t prevent it from being entertaining overall.

The old man opener wasn’t great, but Yano and Cabana’s well-executed shenanigans in the second match warmed the crowd up more. The fact that the stakes in most of these matches were “let’s try not to go out on a loss!” felt more apparent in the third and fourth matches, but at least Shingo and Terrible consummated their rampage-based friendship by wearing each other’s shirts and everyone in the LA Dojo vs. HenarACE match brought some good intensity.

— njpwworld (@njpwworld) December 8, 2019

The show picks up when Kenta and Yujiro take on Suzuki and Archer, mostly because Kenta and Suzuki decide to try and kill each other. At least fifty percent because the floors of the Hiroshima venue are green, it brings to mind their match in NOAH back when Kenta was a little prodigy baby and Suzuki was pretty fresh off his MMA career. One hundred percent because of the stuff they do in this match, it makes me want to see Suzuki vs. Kenta one-on-one in 2019 or 2020, which is not something I would have expected to want a few months ago.