{"id":36042,"date":"2019-01-21T18:41:53","date_gmt":"2019-01-21T23:41:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/?p=36042"},"modified":"2019-01-21T18:41:53","modified_gmt":"2019-01-21T23:41:53","slug":"andnew-noahs-daisuke-harada-crowned-ipw-junior-heavyweight-champion","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2019\/01\/21\/andnew-noahs-daisuke-harada-crowned-ipw-junior-heavyweight-champion\/","title":{"rendered":"#AndNEW: NOAH&#8217;s Daisuke Harada Crowned IPW Junior Heavyweight Champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday, January 15, <strong>International Pro Wrestling: United Kingdom (IPW:UK)<\/strong> crowned their inaugural IPW Junior Heavyweight Champion in a tournament in alliance with <strong>Pro Wrestling NOAH<\/strong> from Japan. Eight men entered the tournament &#8211; UK&#8217;s <strong>Chris Ridgeway, Kid Lykos, James Castle<\/strong>, and <strong>Ben Basden<\/strong> and NOAH&#8217;s <strong>Daisuke Harada, YO-HEY, HAYATA<\/strong>, and\u00a0<strong>TADASUKE<\/strong>. In the finals, Harada defeated James Castle to become the first IPW Junior Heavyweight Champion.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/IPWUK\/status\/1085300885796868096<\/p>\n<p>The IPW Junior Heavyweight Championship replaces two previous junior heavyweight titles &#8211; the original IPW British Cruiserweight Championship (that ran from 2008 through 2012, with <strong>Marty Scurll<\/strong> as the last champion), followed by the IPW Z-Force Champion (which was active from 2017 through October of 2018, when it was deactivated and this tournament was announced). With a fresh name and start, the IPW Junior Heavyweight title begins a new legacy in IPW, who has reclaimed its spot in the upper tier of the UK indie scene under its <a href=\"https:\/\/lwosonprowrestling.ms.lastwordonsports.com\/2018\/01\/11\/ipwuk-billy-wood\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">new management team under <strong>Billy Wood<\/strong><\/a>, who took over in mid-2017.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/IPWUK\/status\/1082004554030428160<\/p>\n<p>IPW has a fitting champion to start the new title&#8217;s legacy, around the waist of Japan veteran <strong>Daisuke Harada<\/strong>. The 32-year old is a 12-year veteran of Japanese <em>puroresu<\/em>, starting out with <strong>Osaka Pro Wrestling (OPW)<\/strong> in 2006, where he was a 3x OPW Tag Team Champion with <strong>Atsushi Kotoge<\/strong>, before becoming a 2x OSW Champion. Throughout his early years, he would also work exhibition matches for various other promotions, including <strong>New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), Big Japan Wrestling (BJW), Michinoku Pro Wrestling (MPW)<\/strong>, and <strong>All Japan<\/strong>. After working sporadically with NOAH starting in 2010, he made the full jump in 2013, where he captured three GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team titles (again with Kotoge in <strong>Momo No Seishun Tag<\/strong>), en route to becoming a 3x GHC Junior Heavyweight Champion as well. His third reign was started this past December, and now he&#8217;s the reigning Junior Heavyweight Champion in both IPW and NOAH.<\/p>\n<p>https:\/\/twitter.com\/IPWUK\/status\/1085518206226362368<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Tuesday, January 15, International Pro Wrestling: United Kingdom (IPW:UK) crowned their inaugural IPW Junior Heavyweight Champion in a tournament in alliance with Pro Wrestling NOAH from Japan. Eight men entered the tournament &#8211; UK&#8217;s Chris Ridgeway, Kid Lykos, James Castle, and Ben Basden and NOAH&#8217;s Daisuke Harada, YO-HEY, HAYATA, and\u00a0TADASUKE. In the finals, Harada [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":649,"featured_media":36044,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_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":[2,13,24],"tags":[4292,3463,1772,677],"class_list":["post-36042","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-featured","category-international","category-noah","tag-daisuke-harada","tag-ipw","tag-ipwuk","tag-pro-wrestling-noah"],"modified_by":"Jamie Greer","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36042","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\/649"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36042"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36042\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36044"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36042"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36042"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36042"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}