New Japan has announced the full card for their next PPV event, the upcoming Wrestling Dontaku show on May 3, along with information regarding their next tour. The upcoming “Wrestling Dontaku” tour runs from April 20 to May 3 (8 Road to Wrestling Dontaku shows spread across the month of April and the 20th Anniversary show for Hirooki Goto will take place during this tour as well). Here are the important matches of this upcoming tour for New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Wrestling Dontaku Tour Announcements
📣5月2日(火)福岡大会前日イベント
キャナルシティ博多にて開催決定【イベント内容】
・調印式 IWGP世界ヘビー
・トークショー5.3福岡大会をより楽しめること内容となっています！
皆様のご来場お待ちしておりますhttps://t.co/LfEAiFD3B8#njpw #njdontaku pic.twitter.com/LV9Xdh1m8L— 新日本プロレスリング株式会社 (@njpw1972) April 11, 2023
April 27th in Hiroshima: the lineup for the 30th anniversary of NJPW Best of the Super Jrs tournament will be announced, Tetsuya Naito will face DOUKI in a special singles match on this show. Hiromu Takahashi will defend the IWGP Jr heavyweight championship in his 4th defense against Yoshinobu Kanemaru ahead of the big “Wrestling Dontaku” PPV next month. Catch 2/2 ( TJP/Francesco Akira ) will defend the IWGP Jr tag team championship against JetSetters (KUSHIDA & Kevin Knight) on the Hiroshima show too.
April 29th (Wrestling Satsuma no Kuni): Aussie Open make the first defense of their newly won IWGP heavyweight tag team championship against the team who beat them during World Tag League last year, Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls representing TMDK (The Mighty Don’t Kneel) on this show. This match is a rematch of the NJPW STRONG tag team championship finals, whoever walks out here as IWGP hvywt tag team champions will have the 2 time World tag team champions from AEW waiting in the wings (FTR). This show will be headlined by Shingo Takagi defending the 2023 KOPW championship against his long-standing rival , Taichi . The 2 have always delivered good matches and this will be no different but expect Taichi to eke out a win since NJPW is very behind Just 5 Guys and their push within the promotion.
The full card for NJPW Wrestling Dontaku 2023:
- SANADA vs Hiromu Takahashi for the IWGP World Championship
- Tama Tonga vs David Finaly for the NEVER Openweight championship
- Strong Style (Ren Narita , Minoru Suzuki & El Desperado vs the team of Kazuchika Okada & 2 partners for the NEVER Openweight 6-man championships
- Zack Sabre Jr vs Jeff Cobb (the NJPW World TV title will more than likely be at stake if Sabre retains this weekend over Tom Lawlor)
- KENTA vs Hikuleo (potentially with the NJPW Strong Openweight title at stake)
- LIJ (Tetsuya Naito, BUSHI & Shingo Takagi) vs Just 5 Guys (Taichi, DOUKI & Kanemaru) in trios action
- Shota Umino, KUSHIDA & Kevin Knight vs UNITED EMPIRE in a trios match
- Aussie Open & Great O-Khan vs TMDK in a trios match
- House of Torture (EVIL, Yujiro, SHO & Dick Togo) vs CHAOS (Hirooki Goto, YOSHI-HASHI, YOH, Toru Yano) in a tag match
A young lions gauntlet series is happening ” Young Lion Hat Trick challenge ” – 1 of 4 young lions will compete in 3 five minute matches (Oskar Leube, Yuto Nakashima, Boltin Oleg or Ryohei Oiwa). Whoever runs the gauntlet and wins all the matches will receive a future shot at the NJPW World TV championship, as well as 200,000 Yen of Yakkiniku BBQ .
You can catch all these shows via NJPW World live or VOD on the streaming service.
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can rewatch all NJPW events and plenty more tremendous wrestling content from New Japan Pro-Wrestling on NJPWWorld.com; The King of Sports Streaming.
