Last night, Pro Wrestling NOAH held their Nippon Budokan PP, and the event was a game-changer for Pro Wrestling NOAH as a whole.
The N-1 Victory blocks were announced with quite a few debuts and a major move from a rival “puroresu” promotion occurred during the undercard as Jake Lee joined Bullet Club WarDogs, with championships also changing hands.
Let’s get to the recap of NOAH’s “Destination 2024” featuring the highly anticipated Marufuji vs. Styles singles match:
- Kaito Kiyomiya retained the GHC Heavyweight Championship against YOICHI in the headliner after a very awesome match. Post-match, Kiyomiya called the N-1 participants into the ring and boasted that he’s gonna win the annual round-robin tournament within Pro Wrestling NOAH.
- AJ Styles defeated Naomichi Marufuji. Definitely the best showing from AJ within the past few years. The WWE-NOAH “forbidden door” is just getting started from what the scuttlebutt is and more appearances from WWE sports entertainers within NOAH will be more frequent.
- El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr & Galeno del Mal defeated Alpha Wolf & Dragon Bane in the lucha libre showcase on the undercard.
- AMAKUSA defeated Daga to win the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Championship in a singles match on the undercard. Surprisingly, no new challengers came forward considering how wild things always are within the NOAH Juniors division.
- Ulka Sasaki defeated HAYATA to win his first championship within NOAH, wining GHC National Championship. Post-match, in a shocking turn of events HAYATA was consoled by his former RATELS mates YO-HEY / Tadasuke.
- Go Shiozaki defeated Akitoshi Saito to win the ZERO 1 World heavyweight Championship in a singles match on the undercard. Post-match both men showed respect towards each other and to the shock of everyone, Team NOAH member Akitoshi Saito announced his retirement from pro wrestling.
- Jake Lee, YO-HEY, and Tadasuke defeated LJ Cleary, Jack Morris / Anthony Greene in the GLG farewell match. Post-match, Gedo offered Lee a spot in the Bullet Club WarDogs faction and it’s now official Jake Lee is headed to NJPW. Jack Morris got planted with a grown man chokeslam from his former mate Jake too.
- Kenoh defeated Yuji Nagata in a special singles match to open the main portion of the PPV.
NOAH had some pre-show matches occur before the main show and here are the results.
- Eita, Shuji Kondo & AKIRA defeated Yu Owada, Yoshinari Ogawa & Ryohei Oiwa in a trios match.
- Manabu Soya , Masa Kitamiya/Daiki Inaba defeated Shuhei Taniguchi / Kazuyuki Fujita & Takashi Sugiura.
- Alejandro / Cristobal defeated Ninja Mack/Junta Miyawaki & Hajime O’hara / Super Crazy in a 3-way tag match.
Also, the promotion announced details regarding the upcoming N-1 Victory 2024 tournament, which starts on August 4th and culminates on September 1st.
- A Block ( Kaito Kiyomiya, Go Shiozaki, Masa Kitamiya, Ryohei Oiwa, Jack Morris, Luis Mante, Josh Briggs & Dragon Bane ).
- B Block (Kenoh, Yoshiki Inamura, Ulka Sasaki, Manabu Soya, Titus Alexander, Alpha Wolf, El Hijo de Dr Wagner Jr & Tavion Heights.
This year, Pro Wrestling NOAH will be collaborating with WWE/NXT and DRAGONGATE for gaijin talent within their annual round-robin heavyweight tournament.
NOAH has already confirmed the tournament bouts for the opening night on August 4th
- Kiyomiya vs Luis Mante
- Ulka Sasaki vs Yoshiki Inamura
- El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr vs Alpha Wolf,
- Go Shiozaki vs Dragon Bane
- Josh Briggs vs Ryohei Oiwa
- Tavion Heights vs Titus Alexander
- Kenoh vs Manabu Soya
- Masa Kitamiya vs Jack Morris
The NOAH Nippon Budokan PPV will be available soon via the wrestleUNIVERSE streaming service for fans of Pro Wrestling NOAH.
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