MAO Wins King Of DDT, BOSJ Enters Final Stage, Great One Night Dream Show | Weekly Puro Guide

DDT Pro Wrestling

DDT held their annual King of DDT Tournament, where the winner will challenge for the KO-D Openweight Championship in the main event of the Wrestle Peter Pan show in Sumo Hall.

The current DDT Universal Champion MAO won the tournament by eliminating former KO-D Openweight Champion Kazusada Higuchi in the semi-final and eventually beating Daisuke Sasaki in the final of the tournament. He will face the winner of Shansiro Takagi & Yuki Ueno, who will battle on DATE in PLACE, for the KO-D Openweight Championship in the main event of DDT’s biggest show of the year. His opponent will likely be the current Champion Yuki Ueno. Together, MAO & Ueno are in the stable NAME and will fight with the biggest prize in DDT on the line.

New Japan Pro Wrestling

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. This week the tournament reached Day 11 and with only the final days of the block stage left, it’s getting clear who potentially is advancing to the semi-finals of the prestigious tournament, where the winner will challenge SHO for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.

Seven wrestlers are still in contention to advance in the A Block, so all five matches on the final day will feel important, with the deciding ones seemingly being Titan vs. TJP and El Desperado vs. HAYATA. A lot in this Block will go through the tiebreakers, and looking at that, TJP & Desperado have the best chances to go through. TJP started with a 0-4 record after losing to Knight, Kanemaru, Connors, and BUSHI, but won his last four matches, including wins over HAYATA & El Desperado. The “Captian” of the United Empire has a story in place that speaks for him getting the push to the semi-finals, while Desperado is the tournament favourite to win it all. After losing the Junior Title to SHO via count-out, Desperado is aiming to get his title back, and winning the BOSJ would be an easy way to get to the rematch.

In the B Block, only three wrestlers are still in contention for the two semi-final spots as Taiji Ishimori & Hiromu Takahashi are the front runners with both having 12 Points, but DOUKI is just behind them with 10 Points. The situation here is clear, DOUKI needs to win his match against Robbie Eagles and hope that Ishimori defeats Takahashi so that he can advance on the #2 spot. Every other result would mean that Hiromu & Ishimori are going through, and that is the likeliest scenario.

The build of the tournament feels like another Hiromu Takahashi vs. El Desperado final, which would be the third final between the two in the past five years. The quality of the match would be great, but the match is so overdone that there are many more interesting match-ups that are not going to be as good but would be fresh.

Official Best of the Super Juniors Standings:
A BLOCK –
10 – Blake Christian (5-3-0)
10 – El Desperado (5-3-0)
10 – Titan (5-3-0)
10 – HAYATA (5-3-0)
8 – Clark Connors (4-4-0)
8 – Kevin Knight (4-4-0)
8 – TJP (4-4-0)
6 – Yoshinobu Kanemaru (3-5-0)
6 – BUSHI (3-5-0)
4 – Kosei Fujita (2-6-0)

B BLOCK –
12 – Taiji Ishimori (6-2-0)
12 – Hiromu Takahashi (6-2-0)
10 – Robbie Eagles (5-3-0)
10 – DOUKI (5-3-0)
8 – KUSHIDA (4-4-0)
8 – Drilla Moloney (4-4-0)
8 – SHO (4-4-0)
6 – Ninja Mack (4-4-0)
4 – Francesco Akira (2-6-0)
0 – Dragon Dia (0-8-0)

Pro Wrestling NOAH

NOAH held the second edition of its ‘One Night Dream’ show. After the successful match between Kento Miyahara & Katsuhiko Nakajima, this time the main event had a special singles match between Kenoh & Minoru Suzuki.

The stand-out match of the show was the match between Masa Kitamiya & Tomohiro Ishii, who battled in a rematch from their great match in January. The two beat the hell out of each other for 18 minutes, and it just rocked. A typical Tomohiro Ishii match with the addition of Masa Kitamiya’s brutality & fighting spirit. Ishii once again came away with the victory just shortly before his NJPW TV Title challenge.

The main event between Suzuki & Kenoh was great and one of the best singles matches Minoru Suzuki has had in a long time. He felt motivated & locked in, which he has been lacking in his recent outings. Part of it was that after just a couple of minutes, Kenoh busted open Suzuki with a kick. The visual of Suzuki bleeding was incredible as ‘The King’ had blood all over his face. The final minutes were great as Kenoh finished Suzuki after around 26 minutes to end a good show.

United Japan Pro Wrestling

The full All Together card for the June 15th show in Sapporo is out, and a lot of question marks came up when the card was released. The biggest one is promotions once again missing the show. Before the first show in May, it was said that TJPW, Ganbare Pro & AJPW, who missed the first show, would get featured on the second show, but that is not the case. On top, Dragongate is missing as well. AJPW has no show that weekend. TJPW has a tour in Fukuoka that weekend, so they are on the other side of the country and can’t make the travel. Dragongate is in Okinawa, which is also on the other side of the country as well.

Most of the card is NOAH vs. NJPW, as DDT, STARDOM & BJW only sent two wrestlers each. The main event of the show will see Jake Lee face Tetsuya Naito in a match that has been built up for the past month. The planning behind these shows is terrible, and if they want to be “UNITED” for these shows, then this is not the way to continue the ‘All Together’ events.

Full Card for UJPW All Together in Sapporo on June 15:

• TMDK (Kosei Fujita, Robbie Eagles & Zack Sabre Jr.) vs. HAYATA, Ulka Sasaki & Yu Owada
• AZM vs. Starlight Kid
• Bishamon (Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI) vs. Daichi Hashimoto & Daisuke Sekimoto
• Tomohiro Ishii vs. Masa Kitamiya
• United Empire (Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb) & Kazusada Higuchi vs. Ryohei Oiwa, Shota Umino & Tetsuya Endo
• Just 5 Guys (SANADA & Yuya Uemura) vs. Hiroshi Tanahashi & Naomichi Marufuji
• Los Ingobernables de Japon (BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, Shingo Takagi, Titan & Yota Tsuji) vs. GLG (Anthony Greene, Jack Morris & LJ Cleary) & Bullet Club War Dogs (Clark Connors & Drilla Moloney)
• Bullet Club War Dogs (David Finlay & Gabe Kidd) & YO-HEY vs. All Rebellion (Alejandro, Kaito Kiyomiya & Kenoh)
• Jake Lee vs. Tetsuya Naito