New Japan Cup Bracket Announced, Champion Gate Delivers + More| Weekly Puro Guide

New Japan Pro Wrestling

After the disastrous last week for New Japan, this week was just full of announcements for the New Japan Cup, the Anniversary show, and Sakura Genesis.

The Cup this year features 28 participants with the winner getting an IWGP World Championship shot against Tetsuya Naito at Sakura Genesis. Four prior winners of the tournament received byes to the second round. The matches will start on the Anniversary on March 6 and run over two weeks to the final on March 20 in Nagaoka. The surprising name in this line-up is Jack Perry, who will make his in-ring return since getting suspended in AEW on the Anniversary show against Shota Umino. It will be interesting to see how he will do in an NJPW ring.

New Japan announced that Hiroshi Tanahashi will be absent from the New Japan Cup series, as well as Sakura Genesis on April 6 to allow for a full recovery from his ankle injury sustained at New Beginning in Sapporo. His previously announced IWGP Global Championship match against Nic Nemeth will be delayed until a later date to be determined, likely at Wrestling Dontaku in May.

Before his Championship match at Sakura Genesis, Tetsuya Naito will face SHO at the Anniversary show in the traditional IWGP World Champion vs. IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match for the first time since 2021. Naito has always had a pragmatic approach to House of Torture’s tactics, ever since the group began in the fallout from EVIL’s defection from LIJ in 2020. With his cheating, SHO has the chance to become the first junior heavyweight to ever win an Anniversary Match.

Dragongate

Dragongate held their Champion Gate show in EDION Arena Osaka #2 on Sunday with three Championships on the line

The first Championship match was for the Brave Gate Title, which featured Hyo’s best defense to date against Yasushi Kanda, who for a year now has been a veteran that has been a highlight in big matches since last year. Kanda brought some much-needed energy into a Hyo match with firey offense mixed with the traditional heel antics Kanda brought into the company all the way back to the Toryumon Japan times. Throughout the match, Hyo does what he does best, making his opponent’s offense look as convincing as possible. Hyo retains for the fifth time with the Samson driver.

The vacant Triangle Gate Championship was on the line. The belts were vacated after Yoshiki Kato’s knee injury and here KAI, ISHIN, and Shun Skywalker tried to bring back the belts to Z-Brats against the D’courage trio of Dragon Dia, Madoka Kikuta & Ryoya Tanaka. Dragongate’s specialty is their unit warfare-led multi-man tags and the story they can tell with them. It was a traditional match filled with great team combos but the focus of the match was on Ryoya Tanaka, who is 10 months into his career. He had a standout performance in this match that made it clear that fans should keep an eye on him in the future. The finishing stretch of the match was centered around Tanaka and his rival on the Z-Brats side ISHIN, they got to showcase the great chemistry that had been building since their Brave Gate match in November of last year. In the end, ISHIN got the win again with the Jinchu to earn Z-Brats their 3rd Open the Triangle Gate title win with him in the center of the team.

In the main event of the show, Luis Mante defended the Open The Dream Gate Title against Susumu Mochizuki. Normally the match story of the Champion Gate Dream Gate match is that the challenger needed to prove that he is on the Dream Gate level, but here the story was kind of reversed with Mante proving that he is on that level, and he did. Susumu worked his knee well, which led to the fans rooting for him instead of the always-popular Susumu. The finishing stretch was great and had good near falls. In the end, Mante retained with the “Vuelta Finale” for the second time.

Pro Wrestling NOAH

NOAH continued the Victory Challenge Tag Team tournament with the winning team earning the right to challenge the GHC Tag Team Champions Jack Morris & Anthony Greene at the Yokohama Budokan show on March 17th. The big winners of the past week were Atsushi Kotoge & Go Shiozaki, who won all three of their Tag League matches including against the undefeated team of Saxon Huxley & Timothy Thatcher, who are currently tied with the Team NOAH team with a 3-1 record and 6 Points.

Aside from the Tag League matches, the Nagoya show on the 2nd had a GHC Junior Heavyweight Title match with Daga defending the belt for the third time against Tadasuke. The match was built around Tadasuke’s performance as a babyface and he did well. Daga looked good on top, which led to a good performance of Tadasuke and convinced the fans that he may pull off the upset. Daga needed to cheat before hitting his finisher for the win. It was a fun match overall.

Jake Lee and Kazuyuki Fujita faced off in a special singles match on this show as well. The match went for a 30-minute Time Limit Draw and felt like that. The first 10 minutes of this were all grappling on the mat with Fujita showing his amateur wrestling background, while Lee held his own with his BJJ experience. The match then went on for another 20 minutes, but never really got into the next gear. Jake Lee is facing El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. in four weeks for the GHC Heavyweight Championship and is the favorite to win the match, but this match didn’t help him at all to look good coming into the GHC Heavyweight Title match.

Official Victory Challenge Tag League 2024 Standings following Day 4

6 – Saxon Huxley & Timothy Thatcher (3-1-0)
6 – Atsushi Kotoge & Go Shiozaki (3-1-0)
5 – Kaito Kiyomiya & Ryohei Oiwa (2-1-1)
4 – Takashi Sugiura & Ulka Sasaki (2-2-0)
4 – Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bane (2-2-0)
3 – Manabu Soya & Shuji Kondo (1-2-1)
3 – Daiki Inaba & Masa Kitamiya (1-2-1)
1 – Kenoh & Yu Owada (0-3-1)