{"id":126789,"date":"2024-09-04T08:00:19","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T12:00:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=126789"},"modified":"2024-09-04T05:06:15","modified_gmt":"2024-09-04T09:06:15","slug":"preview-njpw-shingo-takagis-20th-debut-anniversary-9-7-24","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2024\/09\/04\/preview-njpw-shingo-takagis-20th-debut-anniversary-9-7-24\/","title":{"rendered":"Preview: NJPW Shingo Takagi\u2019s 20th Debut Anniversary (9\/7\/24)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just as <strong>NJPW<\/strong> resumes schedule and gets us on the road to <em><strong>Destruction in Kobe<\/strong><\/em>, there is an exciting break on Saturday, 7 September to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the wrestling career of the legendary <strong>Shingo Takagi<\/strong>. For the event, Takagi returns home to Yamanashi alongside a host of New Japan\u2019s biggest stars including <strong>Tetsuya Naito<\/strong>, G1 winner <strong>Zack Sabre Jr.<\/strong>, a returning <strong>Tomohiro Ishii<\/strong>, and many more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here\u2019s the card:<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><strong>NJPW Shingo Takagi\u2019s 20th Debut Anniversary Show Announced Card:\u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shingo Takagi, BUSHI &amp; YAMATO vs Tetsuya Naito, Yota Tsuji &amp; Hiromu Takahashi<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">United Empire (Great-O-Khan &amp; Jakob Austin Young) vs TMDK (Zack Sabre Jr &amp; Kosei Fujita)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tiger Mask, Boltin Oleg, Hiroshi Tanahashi &amp; Toru Yano vs HOUSE OF TORTURE (EVIL, Yujiro Takahashi, Dick Togo &amp; Yoshinobu Kanemaru)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Just Five Guys (DOUKI &amp; TAKA Michinoku) vs BULLET CLUB (Gedo &amp; Taiji Ishimori)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tomoaki Honma &amp; Tomohiro Ishii vs Mad Bastards (Gabe Kidd &amp; Jake Lee)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Jado &amp; Shota Umino vs HOUSE OF TORTURE (SHO &amp; Ren Narita)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Katsuya Murashima &amp; Ryusuke Taguchi vs United Empire (HENARE &amp; Jeff Cobb)<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Shoma Kato &amp; Riiita vs United Empire (Callum Newman &amp; Francesco Akira)<\/span><\/li>\n<li>Daiki Nagai vs Masatora Yasuda<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>In-Faction Warfare to Main Event<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With some slightly rearranged teams, <strong>Los Igobernables de Japon<\/strong> will split into two for the second time this year to take on each other in 6-man tag action. Back in July, it was a 30-minute time limit draw at Naito\u2019s homecoming show during the <em><strong>New Japan Soul<\/strong><\/em> tour but, this time, we see new splits and an outsider joining the fold.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As this is Takagi&#8217;s event after all, he has recruited his old friend (or enemy, depending on how you look at it!) in <strong>YAMATO<\/strong> to join forces with him and <strong>Bushi<\/strong> in the main event.\u00a0<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Takagi and YAMATO spent many years together in <strong>Dragongate<\/strong> winning the Open the Twin Gate tag titles three times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So it sparked a big reaction when, at a Dragongate event on August 24, Takagi made a special appearance to call on YAMATO to join him. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Having spent more than half of his pro wrestling career with Dragongate, Takagi wanted someone who truly represented the promotion to be his partner.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Few fit that role better than YAMATO, the current Open the Dream Gate Champion. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The new trio will take on Naito, <strong>Yota Tsuji<\/strong>, and <strong>Hiromu Takahashi<\/strong>.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A very competitive trio that will make up a hard-hitting but likely more friendly and celebratory affair to close out the show.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Tomohiro Ishii Makes Anticipated Japan Return<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Now, this should be a great matchup. Ishii will return to team up with <strong>Tomoaki Honma<\/strong> to take on the latest signing to NJPW, <strong>Jake Lee<\/strong>, and his tag partner, the breakout star of the G1 &#8211; <strong>Gabe Kidd<\/strong>.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">There seem to be no more fitting opponents for Ishii to return to than the hard-hitting <strong>Mad Bastards<\/strong>, and I hope they\u2019re given time to put together a quality match here. It will also be interesting to see what direction Ishii will go in and what plans New Japan has for him, now that he\u2019s back from his impressive run with <strong>AEW<\/strong> over the last 2 months.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Preview for Ryogoku?<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In the semi-main event, <strong>TMDK<\/strong>\u2019s Sabre and <strong>Kosei Fujita<\/strong> team up to take on <strong>United Empire<\/strong>\u2019s <strong>Great-O-Khan<\/strong> and the debuting <strong>Jakob Austin Young<\/strong>. With the match announced to be this high up the card, we can surely expect this to be given some time but the main story here is surely the potential for Sabre to be taking on Great-O-Khan when he gets to Ryogoku in October.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Sabre has declared that he will use his G1 victory to challenge for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship, not at <em><strong>Wrestle Kingdom<\/strong><\/em>, but rather at <em><strong>King of Pro-Wrestling<\/strong><\/em> on October 14. That\u2019s two weeks after <em>Destruction in Kobe<\/em>, where Great-O-Khan will challenge for the World Heavyweight gold held by Naito.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">But, before any of that is decided, they face off in a tag match alongside their respective stablemates. After a shoulder injury during a G1 undercard match kept him out of the rest of the tour, <strong>Kosei Fujita<\/strong> is back in action.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">He will rejoin forces with his mentor and G1 winner, Sabre. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meanwhile, Young is set to make his televised debut for United Empire.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The California native was a regular on NJPW STRONG in 2022, where he formed a friendly connection with United Empire leader, <strong>TJP<\/strong>, and now makes his debut in Japan. Regardless, this show will be to celebrate 20 years of Shingo Takagi in pro wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/h3>\n<p><em><span class=\"s1\">Header photo \u2013 NJPW \u2013 Stay tuned to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/\" target=\"_self\">Last Word on Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0for 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.\u00a0 You can rewatch all 2021 NJPW events and plenty more tremendous wrestling content from New Japan Pro-Wrestling on\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/njpwworld.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">NJPWWorld.com<\/a>; The King of Sports Streaming.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Just as NJPW resumes schedule and gets us on the road to Destruction in Kobe, there is an exciting break on Saturday, 7 September to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the wrestling career of the legendary Shingo Takagi. For the event, Takagi returns home to Yamanashi alongside a host of New Japan\u2019s biggest stars including [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5123,"featured_media":126807,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[13,14,2192],"tags":[3427,385,188,2942],"class_list":["post-126789","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international","category-njpw","category-wrestling","tag-destruction-in-kobe","tag-new-japan-pro-wrestling","tag-njpw","tag-shingo-takagi"],"modified_by":"Chinyere Okafor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5123"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=126789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/126789\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/126807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=126789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=126789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=126789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}