News, results & more from Japanese Pro Wrestling & Sumo
Just came across this post on YouTube from Pro Wrestling NOAH’s Official English channel which says Yoshiki Inamura is headed to WWE. He is at the Performance Center and appears set to join the NXT developmental brand.
More as it becomes available.
http://youtube.com/post/UgkxdDJUq0CNqnNHy8IMXNCI6qIymFh3HDGs?si=7fw3H0mW5neAjA6a
DESTINATION 2024, Pro Wrestling NOAH’s latest signature blowout event, is in the books.
Today’s event was held at Nippon Budokan in Tokyo and can be watched on demand as a PPV only on ABEMA in select countries including the US for the next week. You can also watch the first 3 matches FOR FREE on YouTube.
The announced paid attendance was 4196. Not sure what the setup was for (the venue’s normal capacity is around 8500, I imagine it was set up for closer to 6000) but on paper this sounds like a decent number and much better than for recent major events capacity-wise.
Match 1: Alejandro & Cristobal beat Ninja Mack & Junta Miyawaki and Hajime Ohara & Super Crazy in a 3-way when Alejandro pinned Crazy.
Match 2: Masa Kitamiya, Manabu Soya & Daiki Inaba beat Takashi Sugiura, Kazuyuki Fujita & Shuhei Taniguchi. Soya pinned Taniguchi after a jumping DDT.
Match 3: Shuji Kondo, Eita & AKIRA (Independent/Freelancer0 beat Yoshinari Ogawa, Ryohei Oiwa & Yu Owada. Eita pinned Owada after Imperial Uno.
Match 4; Kenoh beat Yuji Nagata (New Japan).
Match 5: GLG FInal Match: Jake Lee, YO-HEY & Tadasuke beat Jack Morris, Anthony Greene & LJ Cleary. Lee pinned Cleary after FBS. Per Lee’s earlier announcement, GLG has now disbanded.
Match 6: Go Shiozaki beat ZERO1 World Heavyweight Champion Akitoshi Saito to win the title. Shiozaki becomes the 34th ZERO1 World Heavyweight Champion.
Match 7: Ulka Sasaki beat GHC National Champion HAYATA by ref stoppage (techinical submission) to win the title. Sasaki becomes the 12th GHC National Champion.
Match 8: AMAKUSA beat GHC Juntior Heavyweight Champion Daga to win the title. AMAKUSA becomes the 55th GHC Junior Heavyweight Champion.
Match 9: Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr. & Galeno Del Mal beat Dragon Bane & Alpha Wolf. Wagner Jr. pinned Wolf after Wagner Driver.
Match 10: AJ Styles (WWE) beat Naomichi Marufuji.
Main Event: GHC Heavyweight Champion Kaito Kiyomiya beat YOICHI to retain the title. V2 for Kiyomiya. Next up: Probably the N-1 VICTORY Tournament winner, unless it’s Kiyomiya.
The next event is The Reeve Presents LIMIT BREAK ex. on 7/20 at Yokohama Radiant Hall in Yokohama. LIve streaming on WRESTLE UNIVERSE will begin at 12:30 AM PT/3:30 AM ET.
The usual post-event news/fallout:
Injury Report: Daiki Inaba was injured during his match. Torn meniscus. Out indefinitely.
After the event, YOICHI announced he was changing his ring name back to Yoshiki Inamura.
The next Nippon Budokan event will be NOAH THE NEW YEAR on 1/1/2025.
The full N-1 VICTORY schedule and field was announced, there will be 16 participants in 2 blocks of 8. More significantly, there is more WWE participation as WWE has recently shown more openness to working with other promotions (at least in their NXT brand, which has some programs going with US-based TNA Wrestling although they did allow AJ Styles to come over today and let Shinsuke Nakamura return to Japan to face Keiji Muto at the start of this year). The full field:
Block A: Kaito Kiyomiya, Go Shiozaki, Masa Kitamiya, Ryohei Oiwa, Jack Morris, Dragon Bane, Luis Mante (Dragon Gate, some graphics call him Lewis Mante), Josh Briggs (WWE).
Block B: Kenoh, Manabu Soya, Ulka Sasaki, Yoshiki Inamura, Hijo de Dr. Wagner Jr., Alpha Wolf, Titus Alexander, Tavion Heights (WWE).
Both Briggs & Heights are part of WWE’s NXT label.
Shiozaki is the defending tournament champion. The tournament begins on 8/4 and ends on 9/1 (all tournament events except 8/18 will stream LIVE on WRESTLE UNIVERSE, but there will be no live broadcast on 8/18 and 8/12 may only be on ABEMA). The winner in each block will advance to the Finals on 9/1. Tiebreakers will be head-to-head result. If that was a draw, a tiebreaker match will be held.
UPDATE: Akitoshi Saito announced his retirement after losing to Shiozaki. it’s not yet clear if it’s immediate or at a later date. If it’s immediate, Saito is walking away after 33 1/2 years in the ring. His exact age isn’t lnown vut I believe he is in his mid-50s. They also are acting like Jake Lee is leaving the promotion and jumping to New Japan, but he was already announced for this year’s G1 CLIMAX tournament so it’s not known if this is a permanent move or just an angle to cover for the appearance. Lee is apparently now part of Bullet Club. We’ll find out in September, I guess.
One of the only times this site talks about WWE is developing news just coming out: Amidst a firestorm of talent cuts yesterday after a new TV deal for their SmackDown program was announced (I will be attending next week’s show in Sacramento, CA), most notably near-20 year stalwart Dolph Ziggler, today comes word that Japanese wrestler Ikemen Jiro is gone. Jiro, who previously was Jiro Kuroshio (not his real name) in Japan in WRESTLE-1, competed mainly in the NXT label and mostly on programs seen only on streaming although he had a brief tag team run when New Japan’s KUSHIDA was in WWE prior to his current run in Impact Wrestling. Otherwise he mainly was a comedy wrestler. No word yet on his future plans
