The first half of WRESTLING DONTAKU, New Japan’s annual Golden Week blowout event in Fukuoka, is in the books.
Today’s event was held at Fukuoka International Center in Fukuoka and can be watched on demand on New Japan World OUTSIDE JAPAN ONLY. This event aired live in Japan as part of WORLD PRO WRESTLING LIVE 2024 on TV Asahi.
The announced paid attendance was 2440. On paper, although partially dependent on the setup, that’s not good. (The venue’s maximum capacity, at least for sumo, is 7500. I imagine the setup reduced the capacity to 5500 tops)
Pre-show Match: Shoma Kato & Boltin Oleg beat Katsuya Murashima & Togi Makabe. Oleg pinned Murashima after Kamikaze.
Match 1: Sho & Yujiro Takahashi beat TAKA Michinoku & DOUKI. Takahashi pinned TAKA after Big Juice.
Match 2: Yuya Uemura & Taichi beat Callum Newman & Great-O-Khan. Uemura pinned Newman with a Kannuki suplex hold.
Match 3: Jado, El Phantasmo & Hikuleo beat Kosei Fujita, Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls. Phantasmo pinned Nicholls.
Match 4: Taiji Ishimori, Chase Owens & KENTA beat Tiger Mask, YOSHI-HASHI & Hirooki Goto. Owens pinned TM 4 after a package driver.
Match 5: BUSHI, Hiromu Takahashi, Shingo Takagi & Tetsuya Naito beat Gedo, Drilla Moloney, Clark Connors & David Finlay. BUSHI pinned Gedo after Fable.
Match 6: Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Ren Narita & EVIL beat El Desperado, Shota Umino & Jon Moxley. Kanemaru pinned Desperado with Samson Clutch.
Match 7: Jeff Cobb beat NJPW WORLD TV Champion Zack Sabre Jr. to win the title. Cobb becomes the 5th NJPW WORLD TV Champion.
Match 8: David Finlay beat Yota Tsuji.
Main Event: IWGP Global Champion Nic Nemeth beat Hiroshi Tanahashi to retain the title. V1 for Nemeth. Afterwards, Nemeth demanded to defend against Finlay tomorrow, which would require several card changes because Nemeth is already set to team with Tanahashi to face TAKA & Taichi (Taichi is a replacement for SANADA who is off this weekend due to medical reasons).
Day 2 is tomorrow. Live streaming on New Japan World OUTSIDE JAPAN ONLY will begin TONIGHT at 10:30 PM PT/1:30 AM ET. This will be a TV Asahi live broadcast in Japan.
UPDATE: At about 5 PM PT/8 PM ET it was made official-Nemeth-Finlay for the IWGP Global Championship has just been added to the card. That means Nemeth is off the match mentioned above. Boltin Oleg is the replacement. Because of this addition, the start time for today’s event, which is for the pre-show, has been moved up to 10 minutes to 10:20 PM PT/1:20 AM ET.
