{"id":94921,"date":"2021-06-26T07:13:25","date_gmt":"2021-06-26T11:13:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/?p=94921"},"modified":"2021-06-26T07:13:25","modified_gmt":"2021-06-26T11:13:25","slug":"royal-road-2021-competitors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/2021\/06\/26\/royal-road-2021-competitors\/","title":{"rendered":"Royal Road 2021 Competitors Announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Royal Road is one of the major tournaments that happen in All Japan Pro Wrestling. It is a single-elimination tournament. The winner gains an opportunity at the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship. In an interesting change, this year will have the inclusion of junior heavyweight talent. So a junior winner could become a contender for the World Junior Heavyweight Champion rather than the triple crown.\u00a0 At Champions Night the Royal Road 2021 lineup was announced. <strong>Note: the below listing contains spoilers for Champions Night<\/strong><\/p>\n<h2>\u00a0Royal Road 2021 Participants<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>Jake Lee &#8211; <strong>Triple Crown Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Suwama<\/li>\n<li>Kento Miyahara &#8211;\u00a0 <strong>AJPW World Tag Team Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Shuji Ishikawa &#8211; <strong>GAORA TV Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Zeus &#8211; <strong>All Asia Tag Team Champiion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Yuma Aoyagi &#8211; <strong>AJPW World Tag Team Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Yoshitatsu<\/li>\n<li>Takao Omori<\/li>\n<li>Tajiri &#8211; <strong>AJPW TV Six-Men Tag Team Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Koji Iwamoto<\/li>\n<li>Izanagi<\/li>\n<li>Black Menso-Re<\/li>\n<li>Ryuki Honda<\/li>\n<li>Dan Tamura<\/li>\n<li>Hokuto Omori &#8211; <strong>AJPW TV Six-Men Tag Team Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Atsuki Aoyagi<\/li>\n<li>Jun Saito<\/li>\n<li>Rei Saito<\/li>\n<li>Hikaru Sato<\/li>\n<li>Akira Franchesco &#8211; <strong>World Junior Heavyweight Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Rising Hayato<\/li>\n<li>Shigehiro Irie<\/li>\n<li>Shotaro Ashino<\/li>\n<li>Koji Doi<\/li>\n<li>Yusuke Kodama &#8211; <strong>AJPW TV Six-Men Tag Team Champion<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>SUGI<\/li>\n<li>Ayato Yoshida<\/li>\n<li>T-HAWK<\/li>\n<li>Abdullah Kobayashi<\/li>\n<li>Seigo Tachibana<\/li>\n<li>Devil Murasaki<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Confirmed matches for the tournament&#8217;s first-round action<\/h3>\n<h4>Opening show: August 15\u00a0 Noon Show<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Jake Lee vs. SUGI<\/li>\n<li>Koji Iwamoto vs. Koji Doi<\/li>\n<li>Hokuto Omori vs. Ryuki Honda<\/li>\n<li>Black Menso-Re vs. Ayato Yoshida<\/li>\n<li>Takao Omori vs. Atsuki Aoyagi<\/li>\n<li>Tajiri vs. Devil Murasaki<\/li>\n<li>Zeus vs. Seigo Tachibana<\/li>\n<li>Yuma Aoyagi vs. Shotaro Ashino<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h4>2nd Show: August 15 Night Show<\/h4>\n<ul>\n<li>Dan Tamura vs. Abdullah Kobayashi<\/li>\n<li>Suwama vs. Rei Saito<\/li>\n<li>Shigehiro Irie vs. Kuma Arashi<\/li>\n<li>Yoshitatsu vs. Hikaru Sato<\/li>\n<li>Kento Miyahara vs. Yusuke Kodama<\/li>\n<li>Rising HAYATO vs. T-Hawk<\/li>\n<li>Shuji Ishikawa vs. Jun Saito<\/li>\n<li>Izanagi vs. Akira Franchesco<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>This tournament will take place throughout August, and will go for four events. 2 shows will happen on August 15. The quarter-finals will happen on August 24, with the semi-finals and the finals on August 29. This tournament does feature new names like T-Hawk and Devil Murasaki. It also features the return of Seigo Tachibana, who hasn&#8217;t been seen in AJPW since September 2019. Since there wasn&#8217;t a tournament in 2020, the previous tournament winner was Jake Lee.<\/p>\n<p><em>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. Make sure to watch\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.ajpw.tv\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">All Japan Pro Wrestling<\/a>\u00a0on AJPW.TV.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-24 ai-viewport-1 ai-viewport-2\">\n<div id=\"snack_dex6\"><em>Looking to talk wrestling, pro football, or any number of sports? Head on over to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/boards\/index.php\" target=\"_self\">LWOS Boards<\/a>\u00a0to engage in conversation with fellow fans!<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-1\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<div class=\"code-block code-block-1\">\n<div class=\"entry-content\">\n<p><em>Looking to talk wrestling, pro football, or any number of sports? Head on over to the\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/boards\/index.php\" target=\"_self\">LWOS Boards<\/a> to engage in conversation with fellow fans!<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Royal Road is one of the major tournaments that happen in All Japan Pro Wrestling. It is a single-elimination tournament. The winner gains an opportunity at the Triple Crown Heavyweight Championship. In an interesting change, this year will have the inclusion of junior heavyweight talent. So a junior winner could become a contender for the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3258,"featured_media":94928,"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":[23,13,12],"tags":[1056,5117,2389,6282,7141,6844,2392,426,6843,1225],"class_list":["post-94921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-ajpw","category-international","category-news","tag-ajpw","tag-jake-lee","tag-kento-miyahara","tag-koji-iwamoto","tag-royal-road","tag-shuji-ishikawa","tag-suwama","tag-tajiri","tag-yoshitatsu","tag-zeus"],"modified_by":"Alex Richards, LWOF Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94921","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\/3258"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=94921"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94921\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/94928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=94921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=94921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/prowrestling\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=94921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}