New Japan Pro Wrestling
The New Japan Cup started last week and this year the tournament features 28 participants with the winner getting an IWGP World Championship shot against Tetsuya Naito at Sakura Genesis. After this week, the final two of the tournament have been decided with them fighting on Wednesday for the prestigious Cup in the show’s main event.
The tournament didn’t have many highlights, with most of the matches being full of House of Torture interferences with three stable members making it to at least the Quarter final of the tournament with EVIL, Ren Narita, and Jack Perry. A couple of matches were good, but overall it has been a weak tournament. On top, David Finlay forfeited his spot after suffering an illness and being in the hospital.
Yota Tsuji will face off against Hirooki Goto in the final of the tournament. Tsuji made his way to the final by defeating Jeff Cobb, El Phantasmo, Ren Narita, and NEVER Openweight Champion EVIL in four impressive matches. Hirooki Goto defeated Chase Owens in the second round, received a bye in the Quarterfinal due to David Finlay forfeiting his spot, and defeated former IWGP World Champion SANADA in the semi-finals to advance to the final. Goto has won the New Japan Cup three times in his career and reached the New Japan Cup final for the seventh time in his career with the last time being in 2016. Tsuji on the other hand has the chance to not only win his first New Japan Cup but also get his first accomplishment in his NJPW career and a chance to dethrone his LIJ Stable Partner Tetsuya Naito at Sakura Genesis.
Pro Wrestling NOAH
On March 17th, NOAH held a Yokohama Budokan show in front of 977 fans, which is a disappointing number for the promotion. The card featured nine matches including two Championship matches with the GHC Junior Title and the GHC Tag Team Title being on the line.
Daga defeated YO-HEY to retain the GHC Junior Heavyweight Title for the fourth time in a fun match. YO-HEY was great as the underdog babyface, who was willing to take big bumps for the Champion and had a great comeback sequence. The last few minutes of the match were entertaining with good near falls and Daga unsurprisingly retaining.
The main event of the show was originally scheduled to be Anthony Greene & Jack Morris defending their GHC Tag Team Titles against Kaito Kiyomiya & Ryohei Oiwa, who won the Victory Challenge Tag League to earn their shot, Kaito was absent from the Yokohama Budokan event due to a spinal cord concussion that he suffered in practice, with that Saxon Huxley & Timothy Thatcher, who were the runner-ups, will get the shot at the Champions. It was a simple match with REAL dominating GLG for most of the match, which led to a good comeback stretch and eventually the win for Greene & Morris to retain their Championships in a good, but unexciting match.
DDT Pro Wrestling
DDT held the annual Judgement show at Korakuen Hall in front of 1491 fans to celebrate their 27th Anniversary. The show featured 13 matches and went 6 hours long, but it was able to entertain with many different matches that all were enjoyable, especially the final five matches of the show were great.
The top five kicked off with a DDT Extreme Title match in which Shunma Katsumata defeated Hideki Okatani in a Painful Jungle Death Match, where sharp and piercing objects were placed in the ring along with some jungle-looking items. It ended up being one of the bloodiest matches in the recent memory of DDT with Shunma & Okatani throwing each other onto everything they found in the ring. In the end, Shunma hit the Totonou Splash while a barbed wire board was placed on top of Okatani. After the match, HI69 from NOAH wants to challenge for the DDT Extreme Championship on 7th April, which the Champion accepted!
Next, the KO-D Tag Team Titles were on the line with Tetsuya Endo & Yuki Ino defending their titles for the first time against AJPW’s Ryuki Honda & Yuma Anzai. It was a fun match that especially showed how good the two AJPW talents are. Endo pinned Honda with the Burning Star Press to retain. Jun Akiyama came out after the match and challenged the Champions to a title defense on April 7th with a surprise partner. Fans online speculate that either Go Shiozaki, who is facing the Champions on a Team NOAH show, will be the partner or AEW’s Eddie Kingston, who idolizes Jun Akiyama.
MAO defeated Takeshi Masada to retain the DDT Universal Title in a short match. MAO knocked out Masada with the Senpukyaku and the challenger couldn’t stand up after the 10-count. After the match, MAO challenged Billie Starkz for a Championship match at DDT’s America show in Philidelphia in a “No Rules” Match.
Konosuke Takeshita returned to DDT and is facing off against AJPW’s Yuma Aoyagi. DDT Commentary promoted Konosuke Takeshita vs. Yuma Aoyagi as “AEW vs. AJPW” Which should be the first singles match between an AJPW & AEW Wrestler since Chris Danielson & Yuma Aoyagi faced off in late 2022 at the 50th Anniversary show of All Japan.
Aoyagi is called the “Fool” for a reason and made his entrance on the Dramatic Dream bike while wearing an insane helmet. The match itself was just straight-up great. It started with a bit of a comedy segment with Yuma interacting with a huge Takeshita fan on the outside, but quickly developed into an incredible battle between two of the best in the entire world. After a great finishing stretch, Takeshita finished the match with the “Spinning Falcon Arrow” he used to win a match in AEW earlier this week against Komander.
In the main event of the show, Yuki Ueno defeated HARASHIMA in the best match of the show to retain the KO-Openweight Championship after a barn burner. The match had a simple story with the champion who wants to be established as DDT’s ace facing HARASHIMA who is calling himself “Mr. DDT”. It had a big fight feel and felt huge from the minute the bell rang with HARASHIMA having an absolutely incredible performance, with Ueno stepping up to HARASHIMA’s level and defeating him with the WR to retain for the third time. After the match, Akito came out to challenge Ueno for the belt.
