{"id":137562,"date":"2025-07-05T07:34:01","date_gmt":"2025-07-05T11:34:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=137562"},"modified":"2025-07-05T07:34:01","modified_gmt":"2025-07-05T11:34:01","slug":"njpw-new-japan-soul-2025-preview-7-6-2025","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2025\/07\/05\/njpw-new-japan-soul-2025-preview-7-6-2025\/","title":{"rendered":"NJPW New Japan Soul 2025 Preview (7\/6\/2025)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The final stop of the New Japan Soul 2025 tour hits Korakuen Hall this Sunday. Bell time is at 6:30 JST\/5:30 ET, streaming live on <\/span><a  href=\"https:\/\/watch.njpwworld.com\/live-event\/58527\/details?playlist_id=23\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">NJPW World<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">. The junior heavyweights take the spotlight, and a last chance to enter G1 Climax 35 is on the line.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure style=\"width: 600px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.njpw.co.jp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/06\/despe-fujita-small.jpg\" alt=\"NJPW New Japan Soul 2025 graphic featuring El Desperado and Kosei FujitaCredit: New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW)\" width=\"600\" height=\"337\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-caption-text\">NJPW New Japan Soul 2025 graphic featuring El Desperado and Kosei Fujita Credit: New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h2>Full New Japan Soul Match Card<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Championship: El Desperado (c) vs. Kosei Fujita<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: SHO &amp; DOUKI (c) vs. YOH &amp; Master Wato<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">G1 Climax 35 Last Chance Play-In Gauntlet: Chase Owens vs. Satoshi Kojima vs. Taichi vs. Tomohiro Ishii<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Hiroshi Tanahashi Final Road &amp; Tiger Mask 30th Anniversary: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Tiger Mask<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Six Man Tag Team Match: Hiromu Takahashi, Yota Tsuji, &amp; Shingo Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr., Ryohei Oiwa, &amp; Hartley Jackson<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">10 Man Tag Team Match: Ryusuke Taguchi, Tomoaki Honma, Boltin Oleg, Yuya Uemura, &amp; Shota Umino vs. EVIL, Sanada, Ren Narita, Yujiro Takahashi, &amp; Yoshinobu Kanemaru<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kick-off match 2: Masatora Yasuda &amp; Shoma Kato vs. Katsuya Murashima &amp; Daiki Nagai<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Kick-off match 1: Zane Jay vs. Tatsuya Matsumoto<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Tanahashi\u2019s Final Road Coincides with Tiger Mask\u2019s 30th year<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The Ace will look to bounce back after failing to take the IWGP Global title from Gabe Kidd last Friday, as he continues to walk his Final Road. This time, he will go head-to-head with another legend, Tiger Mask, who\u2019s celebrating his 30th year in pro-wrestling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This current Tiger Mask debuted in July of 1995 and is still going strong 30 years later at 54 years old. He looks to prove once more why he deserves to carry the Tiger Mask legacy against Tanahashi, who he only faced once before back in 2006. Tanahashi won their first encounter, and he will surely do his very best this time to get the same result.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Last Chance Gauntlet to Determine Goto\u2019s Replacement<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In a cruel twist of fate, NJPW announced that former IWGP World Heavyweight champion Hirooki Goto will miss the G1 Climax due to injury. He sustained an elbow injury during his defense against Zack Sabre Jr. at Tanahashi Jam last June 29, and after further medical evaluation, was deemed unfit to compete in the tournament.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To determine his replacement, NJPW booked a last chance play-in gauntlet. Chase Owens, Satoshi Kojima, Taichi, and Tomohiro Ishii will have another shot to enter the G1 after losing their play-in matches during the tour. The dynamics make this an exciting gauntlet, with House of Torture\u2019s Chase Owens seemingly being the odd man out and the possibility of having the current tag team champs, Ishii and Taichi be the final two participants.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>Former Champions Seeking Revenge<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">YOH &amp; Master Wato lost the Jr. tag titles to SHO and his surprise partner DOUKI last month at Dominion. They did not know that Yoshinobu Kanemaru would be replaced until DOUKI came out and made his return from injury to join House of Torture.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This time, the challengers are well-prepared and also carry a bit of momentum. YOH &amp; Wato became two-thirds of the NEVER Openweight Six-Man tag champions last Friday after beating SHO, Ren Narita, &amp; Yujiro Takahashi. The only question now is, can they repeat to recapture the Junior Tag Team titles?<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><b>\u201cYoung Punk\u201d Challenges for Junior Singles Gold Again<\/b><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">TMDK\u2019s Kosei Fujita won the 32nd edition of the Best of the Super Junior last month, beating YOH in the finals. He became the youngest winner in the tournament\u2019s history and also earned another shot at the IWGP Junior Championship, currently held by one of the best to ever hold that title, El Desperado.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Last February at the New Beginning tour, Fujita also challenged Desperado, but failed to capture the gold. Although he came up short, he pushed the champion to the limit, with the match lasting a little over 23 minutes. On the other hand, Desperado is coming off a brutal death match against Jun Kasai where he successfully defended the title for the sixth time in this fifth reign.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With both men looking to continue their winning ways, this match might very well top the one they had in February. Desperado holds a 3-0 advantage in singles competition over his challenger, but the confidence Fujita gained from winning the BOSJ is definitely something the champion should be mindful of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><strong>More From LWOS Pro Wrestling<\/strong><\/p>\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> for more on NJPW New Japan Soul, 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 NJPW events and plenty more tremendous wrestling content from New Japan Pro-Wrestling on <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>The final stop of the New Japan Soul 2025 tour hits Korakuen Hall this Sunday. Bell time is at 6:30 JST\/5:30 ET, streaming live on NJPW World. The junior heavyweights take the spotlight, and a last chance to enter G1 Climax 35 is on the line. Full New Japan Soul Match Card IWGP Jr. Heavyweight [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5576,"featured_media":137566,"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":[14,2192],"tags":[1620,9442,9409,9441],"class_list":["post-137562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-njpw","category-wrestling","tag-el-desperado","tag-g1-climax-35","tag-kosei-fujita","tag-new-japan-soul"],"modified_by":"Chinyere Okafor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137562","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\/5576"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137562"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137562\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":137567,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137562\/revisions\/137567"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/137566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}