NJPW World Tag League 2015 Day 10

News

AJ Styles was pulled from the event once again, giving EVIL and Tetsuya Naito a victory by forfeit. On the subject of Styles, news about his back injury isn’t good. As things stands now, he is still tentatively expected to be able to wrestle at ROH’s Final Battle and NJPW’s Wrestle Kingdom 10 but the general feeling is that, after that, he will have to take some time off in order to fully heal.

That leaves two matches for today and here they are:

A BLOCK: Toru Yano and Kazushi Sakuraba defeated Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian in 7:40 via pinfall:

Rather short match, this is what you would expect out of your average RAW tag team match. Nothing really bad, but instantly forgettable. Yano did his usual routine. The Addiction have mostly been just another team in this tournament. Not that they have been bad, but I just don’t feel that they have shown what we all know they can do until now. To be fair, the way they have been booked didn’t help. Low Blow shenanigans followed by a Yano roll-up on Daniels to wrap thing up.

B BLOCK: Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata defeated Matt Taven and Michael Bennett in 9:24 via pinfall:

Again, not bad, but, since The Kingdom have been mostly jobbed out during this tournament, this lacked any kind of heat. Some sloppy spots (most notably Bennett being late to break up a near fall) didn’t really help matters. The STO/Side Russian Legsweep combo on Taven to end the match came out of nowhere. And there is really not much else to write about except for the fact that Meiyu Tag and Los Ingobernables will likely determine who will win this block on the last day.

B BLOCK: Tetsuya Naito and EVIL defeated AJ Styles and Yujiro Takahashi via forfeit

I must say this tournament has been plodding along for the most part. Aside from the exiting first few days and some good matches here and there, most matches have just been kinda there. It feels like NJPW booker Gedo lost interest once the Nakamura/Styles and Okada/Tanahashi confrontations happened and that’s a shame.

Standings (number of matches/points):

A BLOCK
Hiroshi Tanahashi and Michael Elgin (4-6)
Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma (5-6)
Kazuchika Okada and YOSHI-HASHI (5-6)
Yuji Nagata and Manabu Nakanishi (5-4)
Toru Yano and Kazushi Sakuraba (4-4)
Christopher Daniels and Frankie Kazarian (5-4)
Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga (4-2)

B BLOCK
Hirooki Goto and Katsuyori Shibata (5-8)
Tetsuya Naito and EVIL (5-8)
Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima (4-4)
Shinsuke Nakamura and Tomohiro Ishii (4-4)
Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows (4-4)
AJ Styles and Yujiro Takahashi (4-2)
Matt Taven and Michael Bennett (5-2)

 

Matches scheduled for day 11:

A Block – Manabu Nakanishi and Yuji Nagata vs. Frankie Kazarian and Christopher Daniels

A Block – Michael Elgin and Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tama Tonga and Bad Luck Fale

B Block – Satoshi Kojima and Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs. Tomohiro Ishii and Shinsuke Nakamura

 

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