WRESTLING DONTAKU 2026, New Japan’s annual Fukuoka Golden Week blowout event, kicked off today with the first day of two days of action.
Today’s event was held at Fukuoka International Center in Fukuoka and can be watched on demand on New Japan World.
The announced paid attendance was 2477. Not sure what the setup was for but that sounds kinda bad given the venue’s full capacity-primarily for sumo-is 7500.
Match 1: Master Wato, Yoh & Toru Yano beat Taisei Nakahara, Ryusuke Taguchi & Tiger Mask. Wato pinned Nakahara after a swan dive elbow smash.
Match 2: OSKAR (The Grouch) & Yuto Ice (Ice Baby) beatMasatora Yasuda & Tomoaki Honma by ref stoppage (KO). Ice beat Yasuda with a knee kick near the chin.
Match 3: Mistico (CMLL), El Desperado, Taichi & Yuya Uemura beat Kosei Fujita, Robbie Eagles, Hartley Jackson & Ryohei Oiwa. Uemura pinned Jackson after a Frankensteiner. Afterwards, Mistico & Desperado issued an IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship challenge to Fujita & Eagles.
Match 4: Great-O-Khan, HENARE & Will Ospreay beat Tatsuya Matsumoto, YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto. Khan beat Matsumoto with Collapse (formerly Domination Claw).
Match 5: Shota Umino & Konosuke Takeshita beat Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens. Umino pinned Takahashi after Second Chapter.
Match 6: Daiki Nagai, Robbie X, Taiji Ishimori, Drilla Moloney & Shingo Takagi beat Zane Jay, Jacob Austin Young, Francesco Akira, Jake Lee & Callum Newman. Moloney pinned Jay after Drilla Killer.
Match 7: Aaron Wolf beat Don Fale.
Match 8: NEVER Openweight Champion Ren Narita beat Boltin Oleg by submission to retain the title. V1 for Narita. Next up: Wolf wants a rematch.
Main Event: Andrade El Idolo beat IWGP Global Champion Yota Tsuji to win the title. Andrade becomes the 7th IWGP Global Champion. Whoa. And they went almost 33 minutes. Next up: Sounds like Moloney & Umino in a 3-way.
Day 2 is tomorrow. Live streaming on New Japan World will begin TONIGHT at 11 PM PT/2 AM ET. However there is a pre-show match scheduled for 10:30 PM PT/1:30 AM ET so it may get moved up 30 minutes for that followed by a break before the main start.