The Top 10 Wrestlers of New Japan Pro Wrestling for January 2016

With Wrestle Kingdom 10 in the past, Shinsuke Nakamura's removal as Intercontinental champion and a shake up already in place, the roster of New Japan Pro Wrestling is definitely in flux. But that won't stop me from bringing the second edition of the NJPW Top 10 list for this spot between the January 4th supershow and The New Beginning events in mid-February.

So without any further ado, on to the list!

Nakamura no longer holds this belt, but he's leaving New Japan with a great
sendoff during the CMLL FantasticMania events. Image credit: NJPW.

Things get complicated for B Block at G1 Climax Night 16

With only one show left for them between this one and the finals, the top of B Block was still packed with contenders, though the IWGP Heavyweight champion still sat on top. As the night progressed, things would start to take shape for a math-heavy final.

Image credit: NJPW.

Tournament action started out with another Bullet Club battle as Karl Anderson battled Yujiro Takahashi. Both men entered together with MAO draped between them as the entire Bullet Club looked on. The two men started to fight though as Anderson seemed to want to steal Yujiro's girl from him.

G1 Weekend update: Night 13 and Night 14 results

Because of a busy weekend, I wasn't able to watch all of this weekend's action in full, but here's some quick results.

Night 13 was A Block action again and featured:

• Bad Luck Fale over Kota Ibushi. (Ibushi is eliminated from contention.)
• Tetsuya Naito over Toru Yano.
• AJ Styles over Hiroyoshi Tenzan. 
• Togi Makabe over Doc Gallows.
• Hiroshi Tanahashi over Katsuyori Shibata in an incredible main event.

These results leave former win leader Shibata in danger of elimination, while a five way tie for the top still exists between the five winners.

The B Block heats up at the G1 Climax Night 12

It was another single camera action night as the B Block continued in the top half of the G1 Climax Night 12.

Image credit: NJPW.

Michael Elgin and Yuji Nagata started things off. Nagata looked very solid against Elgin. This was probably one of his high points in the touranment, but another buckle bomb/sitout powerbomb combo brought Elgin up to 8 points, already a great number for a debuting gaijin. He and Nagata shook hands post-match in a great sign of respect.

In the second tournament match of the night, Tomoaki Honma sought to finally get on the board, but he had a tall task against an angry Karl Anderson. Honma looked great again in action here, but he still couldn't quite get the win against the Bullet Club's leader.

The G1 Climax reaches its halfway point with an amazing morning of action!

Image credit: NJPW.

Night Ten of the G1 opened with a rare singles match in the preliminatires as David Finlay (the son of WWE produce Dave) took on Ryusuke Taguchi. Since Prince Devitt left NJPW, Taguchi has been rather lackluster, but the two men worked well together here. Finlay is coming together well, much like fellow black short Jay White, but he wasn't ready for the win here.

The preliminaries otherwise were fairly predictable, though KUSHIDA and Naito as a dysfunctional team was entertaining. One other note would be the aftermath of the Bullet Club match, where Sunday's opponents AJ Styles and Doc Gallows exchanged more than nasty words. Either Styles or Gallows might find their way out of Bullet Club sooner rather than later.

Weekend brings two more mornings of G1 action

No time to waste as we have a packed weekend report of G1 action!

Image credit: NJPW.

Night 8 started with some preliminaries with little to note outside the return of KUSHIDA to Japan after a US tour that saw him working the first Global Force Wrestling tapings.

Tournament actin kicked off with Yujiro Takahashi and Satoshi Kojima. Kojima beat the holy heck out of Tanahashi for most of the match, but interference by Cody Hall allowed Yujiro to hit a low blow for the win.

Karl Anderson worked super old school against Yuji Nagata, picking him apart before getting the win in one of Nagata's best fights of the tournament.

Michael Elgin took out Tomoaki Honma in a brutal back and forth match. Honma continues to be a top performer in the tournament, but his loveable loser gimmick kept him without points again, as Michael Elgin moves up to four. The show had a bit of delay to get Honma out of the ring. Hopefully this doesn't mean an injury.

Even short a match, Night 6 of the G1 Climax continued a streak of great shows

Night six opened with the depressing news that Shinsuke Nakamura was not yet recovered from his elbow injury and would be unable to wrestle. This causes Michael Elgin to win by default and score his first two points in the tournament. He was moved to the first half of the card to team with Tanahashi and Naito.

Image credit: NJPW.

Yujiro Takahashi was out first for the tournament, but he would be up against the legend Yuji Nagata. Nagata put on a great performance, but help from Cody Hall (and a few Terminator beats on the ring apron) helped bring Yujiro the win and his first two points, even without MAO at his side.

B Block brings some hard-hitting offense in their first night of the G1 Climax

Thursday was the second night for G1 action, but of course here in the States that means waking up at 4:30. Luckily for me and my readers, being up at 4:30 is pretty natural, so here is what happened tonight in part two of the G1 Climax.

The night kicked off with the regular multi-man matches but only the alliance of Katsuyori Shibata and Tetsuya Naito (with Ryusuke Taguchi) offered any real intrigue. Shibata and Naito meet tomorrow night and it was interesting to see each try to get into the other's head while ostensibly working together.

Ouch. Image caption: NJPW.

The tournament matches started off with a brutal blast of punches and kicks as Satoshi Kojima took on Tomohiro Ishii. I went in expecting this to be a solid match with Kojima coming out on top. Instead I got a solid brawl with Ishii hitting a mean brainbuster for the two points. Ishii actually looked better than I usually expect here, so maybe we will get more solid matches in the G1 from him.

Yujiro Takahashi had Mao back at his side for his first tournament match, but the beauty was no help against Hirooki Goto. In a match that featured multiple biting spots and some painful looking bumps, Takahashi just couldn't bring it together for Bullet Club. Goto walked away with a relatively easy win.

G1 Climax 2015 Preview - Block B part 1

The G1 Climax is the biggest tournament of the year in New Japan Pro Wrestling. It is by far the largest round robin tournament of the year, held over 19 events in a nearly month long stretch. It will anoint a new #1 contender in NJPW who will get his title chance at the massive January mega-event. And sometimes it can even make a huge new star.

While Block A was staffed with tons of great talent, Block B in my eyes is even bigger. So let's go in and look at the first half of the roster that will kick off the second day of action.

Satoshi Kojima: Kojima is a fascinating figure in New Japan history. He was a junior member of NWO Japan in his early years where he first formed his long running unit with Hiroyoshi Tenzan known as Tencozy. But Kojima would follow his mentor Keiji Mutoh to All Japan where he would score most of his success as a wrestler (with a short stop in North America for Major League Wrestling). He would become World Tag Champion three times as well as score the promotion's top prize, the Triple Crown Championship, twice. In 2005, he would win his first IWGP Heavyweight title in a battle with Tenzan that also had his Triple Crown title also on the line. He would continue to tag with Tenzan on occasion on cross-promotional events. In 2010, an arm injury sent him away for surgery, All Japan didn't resign him because of it and he returned to NJPW. Since then, TenCozy has become a fixture of tag matches. In the last year, Kojima has regularly competed against NWA visitors to the company and won both the NWA World and NWA World Tag Team titles in the process. He has dropped both titles, but despite twenty-five years as a wrestler behind him, Kojima still can go in the ring. The likelihood he will walk away G1 winner is slim, but he'll put on some great battles in the process.

Tomohiro Ishii: The "Stone Pitbull" has never really been a huge star in New Japan. Though he's wrestled for twenty years, the last ten with New Japan, he has never really came off the bottom half of the card. It wasn't until eight years into his NJPW career that he scored his first title in the promotion, the NEVER Openweight belt. He has since became a fixture of the midcard NEVER belt and this has allowed him to shine in physical contests that often break down into all out brawls. This will be the third G1 Climax for the CHAOS regular. He alternately excels or fails in New Japan seemingly at random, so it is anyone's guess how far he can make it in the tournament, but he seems a very unlikely victor.

Dominion 7.5: have we already seen the best show of the summer?

In the last few years, New Japan Pro Wrestling has grown from just another Japanese wrestling company into easily the second largest brand in professional wrestling today. They have done so with a mix of straight forward puroresu aesthetics: highly competitive matches with high work rates, solid storytelling and psychology, and clean finishes—usually, at least.

Their fandom is on the rise worldwide thanks to the AXS television series airing classic matches of the last few years as well as the far more significant (IMHO) New Japan World. The streaming service is cheaper than WWE Network, but offers almost every New Japan show in history. Much like WWE, it also includes live streaming of all its current fare. This will be thoroughly impressive later this month as the G1 Climax tournament starts (more in the future), but it also makes shows like the epic Dominion 7.5 well worth watching.

Much like January's Wrestle Kingdom event, Dominion 7.5 was built to be a supercard in a company already known for great pay-per-views. While Jim Ross and Matt Striker did not call the action in English for this event, the wonderful thing about NJPW is that so much of the action speaks for itself.

I talked about the undercard in my preview last week, but the likes of Kenny Omega, KUSHIDA, the Young Bucks and RPG Vice put on some amazing action. The Bullet Club (Anderson & Gallows) and The Kingdom tore each other apart. KUSHIDA stole one title from the collected Bullet Club, but Anderson & Gallows retrieved the Heavyweight tag belt.

The battle between Hiroshi Tanahashi and Toru Yano proved to be a great start to the main event portion of the show. Tanahashi can be best described as the Japanese John Cena, but unlike Cena his constant victories do not turn off nearly as many fans. He can best be compared to the current US champion Cena. He's a guy you can depend on for great matches, but don't expect him to lose much. He didn't here either, but the number of false finishes between Tanahashi and Yano was impressive.

Japanese artist Kyobashi+ did this amazing
illustration of red ninja Nakamura.

The semi-main event for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship went about as I expected. Hirooki Goto seems cemented into his new position as the successor for the title, but that didn't mean Shinsuke Nakamura was going quietly into the night. Nakamura brought it to the man that took his title and Goto answered in kind. With stiff chops and kicks, this one echoed through the arena. But in the end, Nakamura seems ready to go back into IWGP Heavyweight title competition, so his loss here comes as no surprise.

The main event featured AJ Styles defending the aforementioned heavyweight belt against Kazuchika Okada. Every time these to men face off, a lot is made out of Okada's time as Okato in TNA, where he was barely a jobber to guys like Styles. But as "The Rainmaker", Okada is now an amazing star. Everything about this fight was designed to keep fans on the edge of their seats, starting with the Bullet Club's ejection from ringside about five minutes in.

While Styles vs. Okada isn't a new encounter, this was easily their best match. Copyright: NJPW.

While Styles isn't used to going it alone, everyone knows how good "The Phenomenal One" is in the ring. He didn't lose a step against Okada, but without outside interference, he had to deal with multiple surges from "The Rainmaker". But no matter what he threw at Styles, Okada couldn't seem to get the champion down. Okada's impressive clothesline, also called the Rainmaker, has never failed in winning him a match immediately after its use. But somehow Styles resisted two of the devastating blows in the battle. Ultimately it would be a third strike with the Rainmaker that he just could not answer. As the 63rd IWGP Heavyweight champion, he now enters his third reign with the title.

New Japan put on an amazing show on Sunday, but they are not a company that rests on their laurels. Their biggest tournament of the year, the round robin G1 Climax, kicks off in less than two weeks. I will have a rundown of the competitors in what should be an amazing three weeks in the days ahead.

Japan takes over the wrestling world this weekend!

That isn't a headline I thought I would be writing on this site anytime soon and I'm a New Japan and Dragon Gate fan. But nonetheless, WWE and NJPW are both putting on huge shows over this weekend, back to back on July 4th and 5th, and both frightfully early in the morning for us Westerners. Of course, I work nights already, so a 4:30 a.m. bell time shouldn't bother me too much. And both companies have streaming services more than nice enough to offer replays if I should miss them.

Source: WWE.com.

WWE's Beast In the East comes first early on the 4th of July. The WWE Network airing of what was just a Japanese house show has upped the impact of an already interesting card. Most interesting is the inclusion of a NXT championship match between Kevin Owens and his number one contender Finn Balor. With Owens on the main roster and Balor in the country that made him an international star, this has the biggest fight feel of any NXT title match ever. I suspect Balor to walk out with the belt, but not until after an epic match... and a new round of face paint.

In a perfect world, it would also inspire WWE to start calling it the NXT World title. But I won't hold my breath for that.

The card gets its name from Brock Lesnar's in-ring return as he faces Kofi Kingston. A lot has been made of this odd choice of opponents, but I love it. I think Lesnar and Kingston are a great fit for one another with their contrasting styles and ability to sell anything. Plus with the rest of The New Day in his corner, Kofi should have a nice little army to help him against Brock. Not that it will matter, I suspect, as this sounds like a solid setup to show that Lesnar can overcome even 3 on 1 odds.

The other matches aren't too shabby with a first time meeting between Chris Jericho and another former star in Japan, Neville. John Cena and Dolph Ziggler will team up to take on King Barrett and Kane in the show's oddest match. The Divas title will be on the line as Nikki defends against Paige and Naomi. The Lucha Dragons will take on the other two members of the New Day while Cesaro gets an intriguing singles match with Diego.

It should be a lot of fun, but it won't be as amazing as New Japan's Dominion 7.5, a stacked card from top to bottom coming out of the world's second biggest wrestling promotion. All six New Japan titles will be on the line.

Source: NJPW.co.jp

The show kicks off with an all-gaijin battle for the Jr. Heavyweight Tag Titles. Redragon and Roppongi Vice both challenge the Young Bucks in what will be a spot fest. The Young Bucks have been strong in New Japan, but I could see the fast rising team of Rocky Romero and Trent unseat them on July 5th.

Jr. Heavyweight champion Kenny Omega will also put his title on the line against the Best of the Super Juniors winner KUSHIDA in what may be the match of the night. These two men are both at their very best right now. Given fifteen or twenty minutes they could show up one of the best rosters of wrestlers in the world.

One incorporates Street Fighter II moves into his repertoire and the other thinks he's Marty McFly. How could this match ever be bad? 

The IWGP Tag Team match also features only gaijin in action as the ongoing war between the Kingdom of Taven and Bennett and the Bullet Club's Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows continues. This seems like the time for the feud to end, but it is anyone's guess how much longer these four men can destroy one another.

It's rare to see a New Japan card this big without Hiroshi Tanahashi in one of the top two matches, but New Japan's answer to John Cena didn't make it into either. Instead he takes on Toru Yano in an interesting clash of styles.

Shinsuke Nakamura lost the IGWP Intercontinental belt back in May to Hirooki Goto in what many saw as an upset. Over the course of the last three years, Nakamura has elevated the title nearly to that of the IWGP Heavyweight title, but now seems like the time to possibly move him past it. Every American fan of New Japan has been itching for an ongoing Nakamura and Styles feud, but that can only happen if Nakamura moves past trading the titles with his contenders.

Goto and Nakamura should also have a coolest coat competition.

The main event features the aforementioned AJ Styles as he defends the IWGP Heavyweight title against Kazuchika Okada. This is far from the two men's first encounter as Styles began his first run with the belt by pinning Okada. Styles would drop the belt in order to set up a bigger main event for Wrestle Kingdom 9. But NJPW seems firmly behind Styles now and there's a good chance he may hold the belt to next year's January Tokyo Dome mega-event. Though some suspect this might be the comeuppance for the former Okato over a TNA original, I expect Styles to pull out the win.

Fans can watch the broadcast live on New Japan's own streaming service NJPW World.

Welcome to Week Two!

In a weekend that brought the tragedy of Shinsuke Nakumura losing his IWGP Intercontinental championship to Hirooki Goto, I do have some bright news. Later today, Wrestling Weekday adds our second correspondent as Richard Evans joins the crew to talk about his return to the sport of kings earlier this year.

I am more than glad to have him aboard and look forward to contributions from him in the future!