Hiromu Takahashi, SANADA & Shingo Takagi vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kota Ibushi & SHO

[5.0] "I don? t think anybody would be gushing over this match if it hadn? t gone to the time limit draw. This was sort of the inverse of the typical New Japan main event, most of the exciting stuff happened towards the beginning of the match and the end got significantly slower. My major gripes with this match are that it went too long, meandered towards the end, and never felt like it was about anything other than advertising the upcoming title matches. This match was mainly about having a champion and a contender in the ring and doing an interesting sequence that excites the crowd, but leaves more to be desired until both tag out. This is essentially how all of the match was until around the 15 to 20 minute mark, fun but restrained sequences marred by copious amounts of posing to the crowd and taunting in between spots. After the 20 minute time call there was a very noticeable and jarring shift where Takahashi and SHO (the legal men at the time) decided the match needed to be wrestled as an epic now, and started moving significantly slower and selling injuries that had barely been worked over out of nowhere. At this point it became very obvious that they were filling time and it brought up two feelings in me: the realization that they were going to go to a time limit draw and the dread that they were going to go to a time limit draw at this case, and both of those feelings were justified by the end. After the 20 minute call, this match goes from pretty good and passively enjoyable to a slog with brief flashes of greatness before sinking back down into a meandering time filler. SHO and Takahashi? s strengths are wrestling high-speed, high-impact matches, so naturally them trying to cosplay an epic atmosphere causes this match to get boring fast. Tanahashi and Shingo are then tagged in and continue at this awful pace, keeping up the boring feel despite both men being better at this style than the previous two. As the 25 minute call is made, there is no sense of urgency, with incredibly long stretches of posturing and unearned selling hammering home that the match? s purpose at this point is to go to a draw to make headlines rather than make a good match. They don? t pick up the pace until around the time the 30 second call is made, making it feel out of nowhere when they finally do, considering neither man has hit any significantly big moves to this point so it? s obvious no man will be able to put the other away. I wouldn? t go as far as to say this match was fully bad, as it didn? t take a nosedive until about two-thirds of the way through, but it gets incredibly tedious in the ending minutes, and feels rather directionless even before then, despite having some very good sequences sprinkled throughout. **3/4"

[7.0] "Good main event, however the action was dragging. After 20 minutes I was already wondering if they're going for a draw. It was not a surprise."

[7.0] "Damn, that was good! Despite knowing that this would end in a thirty-minutes time limit draw, I was 100% excited throghout the match. SHO and Hiromu were obviously in the spotlight here and they did a great job! Although, I think that SHO could've sold the leg work better than he did, sometimes it looked like he didn't even got attacked on his own leg. Still, the match was fun and very energetic, those 30 minutes really flew by. ***3/4"

[6.0] "Final few minutes were fun and this served as a decent to very good showcase for upcoming matches but I felt it fell prey to the usual risks with this kind of booking. The point is to make you want to see more and deny you of satisfaction. They did accomplish that with me but I don't think it makes for a recommendable match in a vacuum. I didn't feel that this match was really worthy of that time other than as a means to sell the upcoming matches. In this instance, it's a case of good booking being detrimental to actual match quality, which I don't mean to imply is wrong. It takes both to make this thing work, but I'm here first and foremost to rate on match quality and this didn't do a whole lot for me in that regard when weighed up against its length."

[9.0] "Excellent main event for a Road To show. SHO & Hiromu were the highlight here as they continue to kill it every night in the build to their match, and packed in a bunch of great sequences and intense exchanges here. Ibushi & SANADA were very good here, easily the best interactions they've had on this tour, and Tanahashi and Shingo were also awesome with each other. Super well paced, and they did a great job with the draw as I kept thinking they were definitely just teasing and going to do a finish at 29 minutes or so. **** 1/4"