This was for Tanahashi’s IWGP Intercontinental Championship.
NJPW is sometimes willing to surprise you by putting a fresh face in a big match. It’s one of the company’s better qualities.
Sometimes those decisions pay off handsomely (Kenny Omega in last year’s Wrestle Kingdom main event for instance). Sometimes those decisions lead to rather flat matches initially but work out in the long term (AJ Styles winning the belt in his first match back in 2014).
We’re going to have to hope that Jay White is a case of the latter because this definitely was not a case of the former.
That is not to say this was an aggressively bad or even boring match. It just was kind of there. Jay White worked over Tana’s leg. Tana came back in a similar fashion. There were several High Fly Flows. There just was not much of a spark or sense of urgency to anything happening between the ropes.
In a few years, history can hopefully see this as a great investment in a young performer at the expense of an immediately memorable match. Only time will be able to tell. [Tanahashi won cleanly after back-to-back High Fly Flows.] (**1/2)
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