Ryuki Honda Wins 2026 Royal Road
Ryuki Honda has won the Royal Road tournament.
Earlier today, Ryuki Honda defeated Yuma Aoyagi to win the first Royal Road tournament of his career. The 26-year-old had previously been in three consecutive finals from 2023 to 2025, however he lost in every single one of them. Winning on Tuesday wasn’t just a massive moment in his career in general, but potentially sparks a new era in his promising run so far. Plus, to win the tournament which started on September 9, he had to defeat a wide variety of different opponents.
In the first round, Honda took out the massive Kuma Arashi in a 21:57 long match, which was the second longest of the entire opening round. A week later, Honda was tasked to defeat the reigning Triple Crown Champion, Kento Miyahara, which he was able to do after 20:28 in what was the longest match in the second round. His semi final match, which just so happened to take place in the opening contest of Tuesday’s AJPW show from Korakuen Hall was quite a bit shorter as Honda defeated XYON (FKA Xyon Quinn in WWE), in 9:06 to reach the finals once again.
His finals competitor was Yuma Aoyagi, a man who has been often been a psuedo-rival of Honda. Aoyagi has always been viewed as a bigger star by AJPW’s brass and fanbase, however, interestingly enough, Honda owned a dominant 6-2 record over Aoyagi in his career. One of his two losses against Aoyagi took place in 2023 when Aoyagi beat Honda to successfully defend his Triple Crown Championship. Honda, however, had held a 2-0 record in Royal Road bouts.
The ensuing match was simply fantastic, one of the best AJPW matches of the entire year and one of Honda’s greatest performances. The match lasted 25:33, the longest Royal Road final since 2016 when Suwama beat Zeus to win his record third Royal Road. Honda is now the ninth different man to win the tournament in it’s 13-year run and has earned a shot at Kento Miyahara’s Triple Crown Title.
With this victory, Honda will take Miyahara on for the belt on October 22. This match will be his fifth attempt at the world title in his career and his first since losing to Jun Saito in July of 2025. Conversely, Miyahara is in the middle of a truly incredible reign with the belt as he’s one defense away from tying the all-time record for a single reign at 10, which would see him match Toshiaki Kawada and himself from 2018.
On the same night as Honda’s Triple Crown Championship match, AJPW will see the debut of Cal Bloom, known to WWE fans as Von Wagner. You can read more about that here.
As always, we’ll aim to provide any further updates on Ryuki Honda’s Royal Road win as soon as we hear more.
