Pro Wrestling NOAH kicked off 2023 with their annual New Year/year-opening mega-blowout event later today, and it’s legit mega to kick off the biggest annual week of pro wrestling in Japan. A massive 11-match event is headlined by 4 GHC Title matches including the latest chapter in the beyond white-hot Kaito Kiyomiya-Kenoh rivalry, with Kiyomiya defending the GHC Heavyweight Championship this time, and in the second half of the double main event it’s a one-time-only super dream match as current WWE superstar Shinsuke Nakamura returns home to Japan for the first time since before the coronavirus pandemic began for a match against The Great Muta, as Keiji Muto’s masked/face painted alter-ego makes his penultimate career appearance before saying goodbye ahead of Muto’s retirement next month.
Today’s event was held at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo and can be watched on demand on WRESTLE UNIVERSE.
The announced paid attendance was 9500, a legit sellout. That indicates 100% capacity with no vocal cheering.
Match 1: Yasutaka Yano beat Taishi Ozawa.
Match 2: Masa Kitamiya, Daiki Inaba & Yoshiki Inamura beat Mohammed Yone, Akitoshi Saito & Shuhei Taniguchi. Inamura pinned Yone after Musou.
Match 3: Ninja Mack, Dante Leon & Alejandro beat Shuji Kondo, Tadasuke & Hi69. Alejandro pinned Hi69 after Casadora Con Hero.
Match 4: Masaaki Mochizuki, Susumu Mochizuki & Mochizuki Jr. beat Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr., Atsushi Kotoge & Seiki Yoshioka. Susumu pinned Yoshioka with Infinite Package.
Match 5: Kazuyuki Fujita, Kendo Ka Shin, NOSAWA Rongai & TBA-who turned out to be Hiroshi Hase, beat Masakatsu Funaki, Katsuhiko Nakajima, Manabu Soya & Hajime Ohara. Hase pinned Ohara with a Northern Lights suplex hold.
Match 6: Jack Morris beat Timothy Thatcher.
Match 7: GHC Jr. Heavyweight Champion AMAKUSA beat Junta Miyawaki to retain the title. V1 for AMAKUSA.
Match 8: GHC Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Takashi Sugiura & Satoshi Kojima beat Naomichi Marufuji & KENTA to retain the titles. Kojima pinned Marufuji after Western Lariat. V3 for the champs.
Match 9: Yoshinari Ogawa & Etta beat GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions YO-HEY & Kzy to win the titles. Ogawa & Eita become the 54th GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Champions. Eita pinned YO-HEY after Imperial Uno.
Match 10: GHC Heavyweight Champion Kaito Kiyomiya beat Kenoh to retain the title. V3 for Kiyomiya.
Main Event: Shinsuke Nakamura beat The Great Muta.
The next events are on 1/8 at Korakuen Hall, a same-day doubleheader featuring a scramble tag team tournament. 8 teams participating consist of a NOAH wrestler and a Kongo wrestler, making for very interesting pairings. The first event will have the Quartterfinals, the second event will have the Semifinals and Finals. Live streaming on WRESTLE UNIVERSE will begin Saturday at 10 PM ET/7 PM PT for the first event and next Sunday at 4 AM ET/1 AM PT for the second event.
In other news, it was announced that the Keiji Muto Retirement Event on 2/21 (that’s an early Tuesday morning event in the US). will be available live ONLY ON ABEMA AS A PPV. If available worldwide the cost will be around $40 US. There likely will be no live broadcast on WRESTLE UNIVERSE or anywhere else, and UNIVERSE subscribers will probably have to wait at least one week to watch on demand as ABEMA has PPV replays for 7 days included. But the Great Muta final event on 1/21 will be live on WRESTLE UNIVERSE and also available on FITE as a PPV for $19.99 (while that’s almost 3 times the cost of WRESTLE UNIVERSE you don’t have to deal with subscriptions. That will likely have only English commentary).
