Pro Wrestling NOAH wrapped up their 2023 today with THE GIFT 2023 in MAKUHARI, a special event to celebrate The Living Legend Keiji Muto’s 61st birthday. Muto attended the event and participated in a limited pre-event autograph session for fans.
Today’s event was held at Makuhari Messe Hall 6 in Chiba and will be available on demand on WRESTLE UNIVERSE at a later date. There was no live broadcast.
The announced paid attendance was 366.
Match 1: Shuhei Taniguchi beat Yu Owada.
Match 2: Go Shiozaki, Atsushi Kotoge & Taishi Ozawa beat Mohammed Yone, Akitoshi Saito & Super Crazy. Shiozaki pinned Saito after Go Lariat.
Match 3: Eita beat Hi69.
Match 4: Kazuyuki Fujita, Shuji Kondo & Junta Miyawaki beat Takashi Sugiura, Hajime Ohara & Kai Fujimuta. Kondo pinned Fujimura after Overdose.
Match 5: Jake Lee, YO-HEY & Tadasuke beat Naomichi Marufuji, ALejandro & Terry Yaki. YO-HEY pinned Yaki after a dropkick.
Match 6: HAYATA beat Yoshinari Ogawa.
Main Event: Manabu Soya, Masa Kitamiya & Daiki Inaba beat Kenoh, Kaito Kiyomya & Ryohei Oiwa. Soya pinned Kenoh after Trajectory.
This brings NOAH’s 2023 to a close. It was another up & down year for the promotion, kinda down near the end with the loss of several wrestlers who are moving on or have moved on to other promotions (Katsuhiko Nakajima and Seiki Yoshioka in particular) and their major events still struggle with attendance, but they’re hanging in there with backing from CyberFight Corporation and hopefully will have a relatively injury-free 2024 (another big challenge for some of their major superstars).
The next event, and first of the new year, is NOAH THE NEW YEAR 2024 on 1/2 at Ariake Arena in Tokyo. Live streaming on WRESTLE UNIVERSE in English only will begin on 1/1 at 10 PM PT/1 AM ET. This is an ABEMA-exclusive broadcast in Japan.
