New Japan Pro Wrestling
NJPW presented Dominion in Osaka Jo-Hall in front of 7,254 fans on Sunday, which is a solid number and up by around 200 fans compared to last year’s show that had Yota Tsuji’s return match against SANADA for the IWGP World Championship in the main event. This year had nine matches, including five championship bouts. It was a good Dominion show from New Japan with multiple fun matches. The booking decisions felt like course correction at points. The company is seemingly heading in a promising direction again, which is good, but now it’s time to deliver a great G1 to set up the Wrestle Kingdom show.
Tetsuya Naito & Callum Newman had a fun opening match. Newman is better in a “Young Lion” role where the vets just bully him before they eventually pick up the win. Callum had a good performance, and him kicking out of the Corriendo Destino was shocking, but once again, it shows they see a lot in him.
The KOPW Title match with Storm Catch Rules between Yuya Uemura & Great-O-Khan was a fine match that could have been better. They used the catch rules solidly, but it felt like it could have hit the next gear on a show where they had a bigger spot. Great-O-Khan won the championship back, which is okay since the title doesn’t matter much, and it potentially frees Yuya up for something bigger on the road to Wrestle Kingdom.
In the NEVER Six Man Championship match, Yota Tsuji pinned Hiroshi Tanahashi to win the first championship of his career and the first NEVER Championship for Hiromu Takahashi. The match was fine, but nothing special, with the highlight being the interactions between Oleg Boltin & Yota Tsuji, who have been teasing a little rivalry after the match that potentially could set up a future big match between the two.
Jeff Cobb & Tomohiro Ishii battled for the New Japan World Television Championship. It was a fantastic 11-minute sprint that had a typical Tomohiro Ishii lay out, and it always works. Even at the age of 48, he can have great matches with everyone, and that was the case with Cobb here as well. The current champion had a good performance and held his own. Pure action from the very beginning as the two guys just fought it out at a kind of intensity that made it stand out. The Frankensteiner from Tomohiro Ishii with the crowd erupting was a fantastic spot that brought the match to the next level. Jeff Cobb retained and is moving on to Forbidden Door as the TV Champion.
The IWGP & STRONG Tag Team Championship match was a four-way elimination match between Bishamon, GoD, TMDK, and Chase Owens & KENTA. The match had a relatively poor start, during which El Phantasmo & Hikuleo were eliminated quickly, with Chase Owens & KENTA following suit shortly after. Once the two sets of champions were eliminated and the final stretch between Bishamon & TMDK started, the action picked up, and the crowd was invested in the match. In the end, Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls eliminated YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto to win the match.
TMDK have finally done it and are the new IWGP & STRONG Openweight Tag Team Champions. Absolulely the right winners as no tag team in the company deserves it more than these two. The booking of the division in recent times has been questionable, to say the least. KENTA & Chase Owens had two IWGP Tag Title runs that helped absolutely no one as they had no role in the final minutes of the match, same for Hikuleo & El Phantasmo, who won the STRONG Tag Team Championships back from TMDK, just to drop them again. The most logical idea would have been Bishamon going into Dominion as IWGP Tag Team Champions so that the win of TMDK would have meant even more. That being said, the division needs fresh blood. More stable combinations like SANADA & Yuya Uemura should challenge for the belts more regularly to keep the division alive with there only being three teams right now after the split of Hikuleo & El Phantamo as Hikuelo is seemingly heading to WWE.
HENARE & Shingo Takagi continued their rivalry with the NEVER Openweight Championship on the line, and it was a good match while it underdelivered a bit. The crowd was behind HENARE and wanted him to win. It felt to be his moment when he finally won gold in New Japan, but after 15 minutes, the match ended in a double knockout, and with that, Shingo Takagi retained the NEVER Openweight Championship. The two will fight in a rematch in Sapporo.
The IWGP World Heavyweight Championship was on the line as EVIL challenged Jon Moxley in a Lumberjack Match with House of Torture backing EVIL and the team of Yuji Nagata, Togi Makabe, Tiger Mask IV, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, and Shota Umino backing Moxley. It was surprisingly a fun match and personally my favourite IWGP World Championship match since Wrestle Kingdom. The crowd was red hot, and both EVIL & Moxley were as motivated as ever. It’s clear that they had one mission, and that was proving everyone wrong, and they did.
After the match, Moxley called out anyone backstage to challenge him next, and out came Tetsuya Naito. He announced that he is the next challenger for Jon Moxley’s IWGP World Heavyweight Championship as the two will clash at Forbidden Door. Naito is trying to get revenge for his loss at Windy City Riot 2024 and bring back the gold to New Japan’s roster. This is the biggest match between NJPW & AEW as the two biggest stars of both promotions will collide with the World Championship of New Japan on the line. It’s a perfect match for Forbidden Door.
The main event of the show was the final of the Best of the Super Junior Tournament between El Desperado & Taiji Ishimori, and it just felt big. It was the biggest spot for the Junior division in a long time as two of the big three of the division in the past five years faced off in the main event of New Japan’s second biggest show of the year and they absolutely delivered.
It had the big dramatic feeling that a final needs and felt like a major main event at Dominion. The crowd was totally into it, and the winner was the correct choice. El Desperado was great and deserves all the praise he is getting, but Ishimori stepped up his game for the most important matches of his career. He had a difficult past year with a major injury that kept him out for a few months, but in the final three matches of the BOSJ, he showed why he is one of the top guys in the division and why New Japan still trusts him in these spots.
El Desperado was the right winner as he deserves this moment for his work in recent years. He will challenge SHO for the IWGP Junior Championship in a Steel Cage Match. How good that match turns out to be remains to be seen, but the most important part is Desperado winning the championship back to build up the eventual clash against Master Wato, with Wato’s crowning moment which hopefully happens at Wrestle Kingdom.
NJPW has announced the format for this year’s G1 Climax 34 tournament. The annual tournament will occur between July 20, 2024, and August 18, 2024, with the winner getting an IWGP World Heavyweight Championship shot at Wrestle Kingdom next year. The biggest change is that NJPW has decided to go back to the old format as it’s two blocks of 10 wrestlers with every match having a 30-minute time limit. 18 participants are to be announced next week at the Sapporo show with two participants to be determined by a play-in tournament beginning June 22.
The top three wrestlers in each block will enter a knockout stage, with the second and third-place wrestlers in each block competing to advance to the semi-final, while the winner of the block will receive a bye to the semi-final. The winners of the semi-final matches will wrestle in the G1 Climax Final on August 18.
GLEAT
On the latest GLEAT show, Katsuhiko Nakajima made a shocking appearance on the show as he was seen with Hiroyuki Suzuki, who is the president of LIDET. It’s Nakajima’s first official appearance after losing the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship to Yuma Anzai at the end of June.
Fans expected him to either come back to All Japan or go to New Japan, so it’s a shocking development that GLEAT is seemingly his next destination. He is yet to be announced for a match, but he will likely wrestle at the July 1st show in Tokyo Dome City Hall. Questions will likely be asked whether he has burned the bridge with All Japan, but that is impossible to say. Nakajima potentially could do a little stint in GLEAT and then come back to All Japan when he is needed for a big match against Yuma Anzai or Kento Miyahara.
