All Japan Pro Wrestling
All Japan ended their Dream Power Series 2024 tour with an Ota Ward Gymnasium show on March 30th in front of 2057 fans in attendance. The show featured eight matches, including four championship matches and a battle royal as a preview for the upcoming Champion Carnival. Kento Miyahara was able to win that battle royal after eliminating Ren Ayabe last. Post-match, Ayabe grabbed a microphone and announced that he had signed with AJPW. This was a move that had been anticipated for a while now, but with Shuji Ishikawa leaving, it took longer than expected. He is a great get for All Japan and will be able to develop into a solid talent for the promotion.
In the first Championship match, Dan Tamura & Hikaru Sato defeated Atsushi Onita & To-y to win the All Asia Tag Team Title and bring them back to AJPW. The match was poor, with Onita just not being good anymore at his age. The best part about it was when the match was over and Tamura & Sato won. Let’s hope whatever is next for the belt is better than what Onita did with it in the past few months.
Rising HAYATO defeated MUSASHI to retain his AJPW World Junior Championship for the first time. This match was good, but a bit underwhelming like most of the Jr title matches this year. Their chemistry wasn’t always on point, and it took them a while to get going, but the final minutes were great. The reverse B Driver was nasty with MUSASHI spiking his head on that mat, with HAYATO just needing to finish his opponent off. Kaz Hayashi is challenging next which is cool since he was an important guy in the AJPW Jr division in the 2000s so him getting another title match before his retirement in July is great and gives HAYATO an important defense.
Jun & Rei Saito won the AJPW World Tag Team Championship from Hideki Suzuki & Suwama in a nothing match when Jun pinned Suwama. The team of Suzuki & Suwama isn’t clicking and feels more like they are doing bits to pop themselves rather than doing something entertaining. After vacating the titles in February, it only took the Saito Brothers 50 days to win the gold back and are once again on the top of the All Japan Tag Division. Post-match, the Voodoo Murders announced that they are set to disband, which is great since they suck.
The most newsworthy part of the show was the main event that saw Yuma Anzai defeat Katsuhiko Nakajima to become the new Triple Crown Heavyweight Champion. It was a controversial match that gained attention on social media as Nakajima destroyed the young challenger for over 90% of the match, until the very end where Anzai countered the Vertical Spike to hit a Jumping Knee and a bridging German Suplex to get the surprising win to crown himself the youngest Triple Crown Champion of all time at the age of 24. While Anzai was celebrating his title win, Nakajima just walked out of the ring to the backstage area.
It was a bizarre match even with the knowledge of the story that Nakajima totally overlooked Anzai and rather wanted to face Suwama, whom he had been calling out throughout the build-up to the match. He didn’t take Anzai seriously, and it backfired in the end and cost him his championship. The show ended with Anzai bringing the Saito Brothers, Dan Tamura, and Rising HAYATO into the ring as they all posed with their championships to officially start a new era.
A day later, Nakajima posted a video today on Twitter where he ended up “sleeping” under a bridge, implying that he’s now “homeless”. In a wrestling context, he’s essentially implying that he has no home promotion anymore after losing the Triple Crown Title. Tokyo Sports reported that Nakajima has currently no plans to wrestle in an All Japan ring anymore and that his run in the promotion has seemingly come to an end with this match against Anzai.
All of this fits to the past three months of Katsuhiko Nakajima, who came into All Japan as this big outsider, but over time he developed into a walking problem with him seemingly having Simon Inoki in his ear and starting all the Inokiism tributes, which even led to AJPW nearly getting sued by the family. If that is the end, then it was a great, but weird run for Nakajima.
Pro Wrestling NOAH
NOAH held a Korakuen Hall show on March 31st in front of 1388 fans with eight matches on the card, including a GHC Heavyweight Championship match between El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. and the former champion Jake Lee.
The match was great and one of the best GHC Heavyweight Title matches of Jake Lee’s run in NOAH. The final few minutes of the nearly 30-minute match were especially fantastic and featured some great nearfalls that had the crowd cheering loudly. In the end, El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr. defeated former champion Jake Lee after the Moonsault Press to retain his title for the first time.
The second season of Monday Magic, which is a weekly show on Monday in Shinjuku FACE, started with a huge surprise. NOSAWA Rongai announced a special guest for the show and the music of none other than Giulia hit, who appeared to the shock of the fans in the crowd. It’s her first public appearance after leaving STARDOM just the day before. She announced that she would take part in the “Wrestle Magic” show at Sumo Hall on May 4th, with her opponent yet to be announced. Her taking part in the NOAH show is part of the strategy for the launch of Ogawa’s new company, according to Dave Meltzer in the WON Daily Update.
