New Japan ran the second half of WRESTLE KINGDOM 17 today, reviving a popular and successful format from last year where they held a crossover event with/against Pro Wrestling NOAH. Every match featured some kind of combination of both promotions with the headlining feature being a 5 match singles series between the LIJ and Kongo factions from NJPW and NOAH, respectively.
Because the event is only available as a PPV, although New Japan has posted results already on their website I am trying to hide results below for those who want to try and avoid SPOILERS before the event can be watched without PPV, which will be in one week. Therefore, only click below or continue reading if you want to know right away what happened!
Today’s event was held at Yokohama Arena in Yokohama and can be watched as a PPV on New Japan World and ABEMA (additional purchase required). It will be available on demand on New Japan World and WRESTLE UNIVERSE for all subscribers with no additional purchase required next Saturday (1/28). You can also watch ONLY THE FIRST PRE-SHOW MATCH FOR FREE on YouTube.
The announced paid attendance was 5533. While that sounds really bad because the venue’s normal capacity is 18,000, vocal cheering was allowed so I believe that and the likely setup significantly reduced the capacity for the event. So that actually is good as I’m guessing the setup only allowed for maybe 7500 tops.
Pre-show:
Match 1: Kosei Fujita & Ryohei Oiwa beat Taishi Ozawa & Yasutaku Yano. Fujita pinned Ozawa.
Match 2: Daiki Inaba & Masa Kitamiya beat Oskar Leube & Tomohiro Ishii. Kitamiya pinned Leube.
Main Show:
The main portion of the event began with a 10 bell salute to Jay Briscoe, who was killed Tuesday in a car accident in the USA. Briscoe, half of legendary independent tag team The Briscoes with brother Mark, made several appearances in Japan over the years.
Match 1: Takashi Sugiura, Satoshi Kojima, Yoru Yano & Hiroshi Tanahashi beat Gedo, El Phantasmo, KENTA & NaomichI Marufuji. Yano pinned Gedo.
Match 2: El Desperado beat YO-HEY.
Match 3: Alejandro, Junta MIyawaki & AMAKUSA beat Master Wato, Ryusuke Taguchi & Tiger Mask. AMAKUSA pinned TM 4.
Match 4: Togi Makabe & Kazuchika Okada vs. Yoshiki Inamura & Kaito Kiyomiya went to a No Contest. Double DQ. Uncontrollable fighting between both sides.
LIJ-Kongo 5 Single Match Series:
Match 5: Tadasuke beat BUSHI.
Match 6: Hiromu Takahashi beat Hajime Ohara.
Match 7: Manabu Soya beat SANADA.
Match 8: Shingo Takagi beat Katsuhiko Nakajima.
Main Event: Tetsuya Naito beat Kenoh. LIJ wins 3-2. Afterwards, a shocking development as Keiji Muto appeared and nominated Naito as the opponent for Muto’s retirement match! This has not been confirmed by NJPW or NOAH yet.
More as it becomes available.
The next event is THE NEW BEGINNING in NAGOYA tomorrow at Aichi Prefectural Gym in Nagoya. Live streaming on New Japan World will begin TONIGHT at 11 PM PT/2 AM ET.
