All Japan Pro Wrestling
All Japan’s biggest tournament, Champion Carnival, began this month featuring all of AJPW’s biggest stars and a few new faces. The tournament started on the 18th of April. After a solid block stage, the final of the tournament was held on May 12th in the Yokohama BUNTAI.
In the final of the Champion Carnival, the winner of the A-Block Kento Miyahara faced the shocking winner of the B-Block Jun Saito in the main event of a solid All Japan show in Yokohama. Coming into this match, Kento won his last six singles matches in the block stage after a shocking loss to Ren Ayabe on the first day, while Jun won five of his last six singles matches, including a huge win over Suwama.
The match was a typical Kento Miyahara epic main event match as Jun worked on top with Kento trying to fight back, and it worked fantastically. Often, Kento is the clear stand-out performer in his matches, but Jun Saito was not only able to hold his own but at points even outperformed Miyahara.
The final few minutes of this match were incredible, with both working around the other’s finisher move. Eventually, Jun hit his finisher, but Kento was able to kick out. Shortly after, Kento Miyahara hit his Shutdown Suplex, but this time Jun Saito kicked out and was only the fourth wrestler after Zeus, Jake Lee, and Yuma Aoyagi to kick out of Miyahara’s finisher. They fought for a few more minutes until Miyahara once again hit the Shutdown Suplex to win the 2024 Champion Carnival, which is his second Carnival victory after winning it in 2019. Overall, this was a tremendous match. Both wrestlers stepped up and delivered one of the best matches not only in All Japan, but in Japan this year.
New Japan Pro Wrestling
NJPW held its next PPV in the United States called ‘Resurgence’ on May 11th in the Toyota Arena in Ontario, California, in front of 3,024 fans, which is a good number for New Japan. While the show overall wasn’t as strong as fans expected, it still had a couple of highlights & story advancements that are essential for the Dominion build-up.
Jeff Cobb defeated Lance Archer in an NJPW World Television Championship match to retain his newly won belt for the first time. This was just big men doing big man stuff for 11 minutes, and it was fun. Archer, who hasn’t been much in the focus in AEW, is always a good wrestler New Japan can bring in for its talent to have a good match against. Post-match, Tomohiro Ishii made his intentions clear that he wants to challenge for the TV Championship next, after he pinned Jeff Cobb at the All Together show earlier in the week.
After successfully beating Gabe Kidd at Wrestling Dontaku, Shingo Takagi put the NEVER Openweight Championship on the line against Yuya Uemura from JUST 5 GUYS. It wasn’t the typical NEVER Openweight Style match as Uemura is a more grounded & slower wrestler and it took a bit of time to get into the next gear, but it ended up being a good match with Takagi winning. Uemura’s fundamentals are amazing and by far the best out of the young guys, but the ‘Heat Storm’ hasn’t figured out yet how to put it together as he struggles in singles matches to keep the fans engaged throughout the match. Nevertheless, Shingo was able to guide him to a good match with a good performance.
Before the match, a videotape of HENARE was played, who announced that he would challenge the winner of the match for the NEVER Openweight Championship. This will be his return to the ring after suffering an injury in the United Empire vs. Bullet Club War Dogs Cage Match, and it’s a huge one since the match is happening at Dominion. HENARE & Takagi had a great rivalry this past year over the KOPW Championship and will re-start their feud with a match for the NEVER Openweight Title. This will be a typical NEVER Style clash, and it’s going to be fantastic.
The rivalry between Gabe Kidd & Eddie Kingston for the NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship climaxed in a No Rope, Last Man Standing Match. The match was fine. Both tried their best and took ridiculous bumps all over the ring, but the stipulation sucked & the referee counted WAY too fast, which led to the pair having to no-sell a lot of big moves. It ended with Gabe Kidd hitting a brainbuster through the table and winning the NJPW STRONG Openweight Championship, making him the second wrestler after Hikuleo to win both STRONG Championships.
New Japan is clearly really high on Gabe Kidd. They are sending him out to represent NJPW as they easily just could have let Rocky Romero do it. On top, he has a feud with Shingo, stands tall at the end of All Together, and is the one who defeated Eddie. He’s becoming a reliable guy for NJPW, and it’s only a matter of time until he gets a bigger push in the company.
In the main event of the show, Jon Moxley successfully retained his IWGP World Championship against Shota Umino in 34:18 minutes, which is Moxley’s longest singles match post his WWE career. It took a long time to get good, but the final few minutes were great, and I wanted to see what I wanted from the match. Shota showed the much-needed fire and proved that he belonged in the ring next to one of the best of this generation. A part of the problem was the crowd as it wasn’t mic’d well enough to be as loud on the screen as it seemed to be in the venue, but also the American crowd took a while to be loud for Umino and cheer for him, since that was an essential part of the story Moxley & Umino were telling in the match.
After the match, Umino & Moxley had a short emotional moment in the ring before EVIL & Ren Narita of House of Torture jumped the ring and attacked the two. The ‘King of Darkness’ then grabbed the microphone and officially challenged Moxley to a World Championship match, which was later announced for New Japan’s second biggest show of the year – Dominion in Osaka Jo-Hall.
The annual Best of the Super Juniors tournament began this month and is featuring all of NJPW’s biggest Junior stars and a few new outsiders, with Dragon Dia from Dragon Gate, Blake Chrisitan from ROH, and both HAYATA and Ninja Mack from NOAH all involved. The tournament started on May 11th, with the final happening at Dominion on June 9th
On the opening night of the BOSJ in YohaS Arena in Chiba, the show had three really cool matches, the first being Kevin Knight & TJP wrestling in the A Block as they had great chemistry and built a well-worked match with really good spots & counters, including TJP countering the jumping DDT of Kevin Knight into a bridging Nothern Lights Suplex mid-air. Kevin Knight got the shocking win over the Captain of the United Empire to secure his first two points in the tournament.
KUSHIDA defeated Hiromu Takahashi in a great match, where two of the best juniors in New Japan’s recent history delivered a straight-up wrestling match with a logical story and a good ending stretch. KUSHIDA is way too good to be doing nothing for most of the year, and personally, I hope to see him used more by New Japan again.
The main event of the show was great as Titan & El Desperado had a really good match to end a great opening night of the BOSJ. Desperado wanted to get revenge from last year’s semi-final, but once again ended up tapping out to Titan, who started his attempt to win the BOSJ this year with a huge win over the tournament favorite.
Official Best of the Super Juniors Standings:
A BLOCK –
2 – Kosei Fujita (1-0-0)
2 – Kevin Knight (1-0-0)
2 – Blake Christian (1-0-0)
2 – HAYATA (1-0-0)
2 – Titan (1-0-0)
0 – Yoshinobu Kanemaru (0-1-0)
0 – El Desperado (0-1-0)
0 – BUSHI (0-1-0)
0 – TJP (0-1-0)
0 – Clark Connors (0-1-0)
B BLOCK –
2 – KUSHIDA (1-0-0)
2 – Taiji Ishimori (1-0-0)
2 – Ninja Mack (1-0-0)
2 – Francesco Akira (1-0-0)
2 – SHO (1-0-0)
0 – Drilla Moloney (0-1-0)
0 – Robbie Eagles (0-1-0)
0 – DOUKI (0-1-0)
0 – Hiromu Takahashi (0-1-0)
0 – Dragon Dia (0-1-0)
