New Japan held a special TANAHASHI JAM event today, a Hiroshi Tanahashi Produced event marking the halfway point of his retirement road and the grand finale of the Aichi Prefectural Gym venue, which is closing for good to make way for the brand-new Aichi International Arena (aka IG Arena) that opened about a month ago and will have it’s official grand opening in a couple weeks with the July 2025 Grand Sumo Tournament.
Today’s event was held at Aichi Prefectural Gym in Nagoya. There is/was no live or on demand broadcast outside of Japan. This event aired live in Japan only exclusively on TV Asahi.
The announced paid attendance was 4570.
Pre-show match: Katsuya Murashima vs. Daiki Odashima (Pro Wrestling NOAH) went to a 10 minute time limit draw.
Match 1: Ryusuke Taguchi, Shota Umino & Hiroshi Tanahashi beat LEONA (Dradition), Hiromu Takahashi & Tatsumi Fujinami (Dradition). Tanahashi beat LEONA with a Texas cloverleaf.
Match 2: Chase Owens, Yujiro Takahashi, Ren Narita & EVIL beat YOSHI-HASHI, Taichi, Tomohiro Ishii & Yuya Uemura. Owens pinned YOSHI-HASHI after Last Testament.
Match 3: NEVER Openweight Champion Boltin Oleg beat Yuji Nagata to retain the title. V1 for Oleg.
Match 4: Master Wato, Yoh, El Desperado & Dragon Kid (Dragon Gate) beat Yoshinobu Kanemaru, Sho, DOUKI & SANADA. Wato pinned Kanemaru after a falcon blow.
Match 5: NJPW WORLD TV Champion El Phantasmo beat TBA, revealed at match time to be Taiji Ishimori, to retain the title. V2 for Phantasmo.
Match 6: Shun Skywalker (Dragon Gate), Yota Tsuji & Shingo Takagi beat Jacob Austin Young, Callum Newman & Great-O-Khan. Skywalker pinned Young after SSW.
Match 7: Zack Sabre Jr. beat IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Hirooki Goto by ref stoppage (technical submission) to win the title. Sabre becomes the 13th IWGP World Heavyweight Champion. And the second 2-time champion.
Main Event: Naomichi Marufuji (Pro Wrestling NOAH) & Hiroshi Tanahashi beat Kaito Kiyomiya (Pro Wrestling NOAH) & Ryohei Oiwa. Tanahashi pinned Oiwa after High Fly Flow.
The next event is Friday at Tokyo Budokan in Tokyo for the penultimate event of the New Japan Soul 2025 Tour. Live streaming on New Japan World will begin at 2:30 AM PT/5:30 AM ET.
UPDATE: After the event, Dragon Gate announced Tanahashi will participate in the promotion at Kobe Pro Wrestling Festival 2025, the promotion’s biggest event of the year, on 7/13 at Kobe World Hall in Kobe. He was revealed as the TBA that will team with Dragon Kid to face Yuki Yoshioka & Dragon Dia. That event will be available to watch live & on demand on DRAGONGATE NETWORK.
UPDATE 2: Goto was injured in his match today. Right elbow. Out Friday. Status uncertain beyond that.
