New Japan continued the New Japan Road Tour today with the final event before Forbidden Door and a roughly 2-week break, headlined by Hiromu Takahashi attempting to follow up his 3rd straight Best Of The Super Junior victory with reclaiming yhe IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship.
Today’s event was held at Korakuen Hall in Tokyo and can be watched on demand on New Japan World in Japanese. This was a Samurai! TV broadcast in Japan.
The announced paid attendance was 1380, a legit sellout. This is about 2/3 notmal capacity for the venue.
Match 1: DOUKI beat Yuto Nakashima by submission.
Match 2: Taichi beat Ryohei Oiwa.
Match 3: Dick Togo, Sho, Yujiro Takahashi & EVIL beat Yoh, Toru Yano, YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto. Sho pinned Yoh. They might have teased yet another NEVER 6-Man Tag Team Championship match between them afterwards.
Match 4: Aaron Henare, Francesco Akira & TJP beat Jado, Master Wato & Ryusuke Taguchi. Henare beat Jado with Ultima.
Match 5: BUSHI, SANADA, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito beat Kosei Fujita, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Togi Makabe & Kazuchika Okada. BUSHI pinned Fujita.
All G1 CLIMAX matches were announced. The first 9 events will have one match from each block, then it will be 5 matches per event until Day 18 at Nippon Budokan, which will have the last 2 matches in each block and will set the Semifinals with the winner of each block.
Match 6: AEW All-Atlantic Championship Tournament: Tomohiro Ishii beat Clark Connors. As a result, Ishii advances to the 4-way for the title on Sunday at Forbidden Door against Pac, Miro and either Malakai Black or Penta Oscuro. That last match is tomorrow on AEW Dynamite.
Main Event: IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Champion Taiji Ishimori beat Hiromu Takahashi to retain the title. V1 for Ishimori. A 36+ minute instant classic. Next up: Time Splitter…KUSHIDA is back! Having been released by WWE earlier this year, KUSHIDA returned and announced he has re-signed with New Japan for what should be the rest of his career and made the challenge. Ishimori said he’d have to earn it. They last met in January 2019 at Tokyo Dome when Ishimori beat KUSHIDA to retain the title.
The next event is 7/3.
