[Results] New Japan, 3/8/09

The fifth annual New Japan Cup began today in Nagoya with 12 of the 14 participants in round one action - 2007 and 2008 winners, Giant Bernard and Yuji Nagata, getting passes to the second round with 2009 winner, Tanahashi, not in it as the idea of the tournament is to find a challenger for the winner of his match with Kurt Angle. It began with a battle of GBH as Tomoaki Honma got to face Takashi Iizuka after winning a participation match over young lion Hirasawa. Unfortunately for Honma there was to be no nice, clean fight today, as Iizuka ripped his head open and beat him to a bloody pulp before pinning him. The main midcard feud of the moment, Wataru Inoue vs. Tomohiro Ishii, saw little settled today as they first battled to a double countout, then in the restarted match, Ishii won by countout but this seemed to do little to settle their grudge.

After a career-boosting performance as part of one of the hottest matches of the year so far when he and Nakamura invaded NOAH recently, Milano Collection AT showed more signs of life after a long hibernation. He upset GBH's Toru Yano with his craftiness, beating the strong man with a cradle. Hirooki Goto, as expected, got the better of Karl Anderson with a modified armlock, leaving the two big matches of the first round left. On-again, off-again tag partners Nakanishi and Yoshie went to war in a hard-hitting 20 minute slugfest in which the returning Yoshie scored a big win over the ever underachieving Nakanishi, pinning him with a diving body press. Nakanishi took a nasty bump to the head in the match and there are fears of a concussion, so he may miss some upcoming dates. And finally RISE leader Shinsuke Nakamura revived his grudge series with GBH leader Togi Makabe and again got the better of Makabe, who himself has been somewhat underachieving lately. Nakamura pinned Makabe following his Landslide to set up a big round two match against RISE second-in-command Goto.

The only other match on the main card today saw the intergenerational ace team of Tanahashi & Nagata face Bernard and the debuting Val Venis. Bernard sent a severe warning to Tanahashi by pinning the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, a signal of his intent as he heads into his New Japan Cup campaign.