With loses to Nakamura and Naito earlier in the night, whomever won here advanced to the finals. Given that, I expected more urgency or just something in this match. Someone could hypothesize that this didn't get much more of a chance to build into something worthwhile, but it did have nearly 9 minutes. At the end of those, this neither felt like a well executed sprint or a 20 minute main event condensed by half. Makabe is a worker I eternally struggle with and some of his punches here were awful. Okada in turn didn't seem to know what to do with him throughout the match or in a storyline sense. The general arch of the match was him standing up to Makabe and showing his toughness but that fell flat for me. This was another one of those blemishes for Okada as a worker in that the match is fine but this is a big stage and having a match that feels like a throwaway main event isn't the best way to project yourself as a performer. **1/2

Similar to Chad, my main takeaway was that Okada had little idea how to make anything compelling with someone like Makabe. The dead lift into the inverted neckbreaker is such a weird spot when it isn't fluid from a counter. Again its Okada eating heavy stuff (really nice high arching German into a bridge by Makabe) , kicking out, no-sell dropkick, no-sell all previous damage, rainmaker and advancement to the finals. Not particularly good.