On the July 2nd show in Wrestle-1, They had both the semi-finals and finals of the Wrestle-1 Grand Prix 2019 tournament take place where the winner of the match will fight the Wrestle-1 Champion at their next big show. Our last four participants were Shotaro Ashino, Daiki Inaba, Kuma Arashi, and Koji Doi. Daiki would defeat Kuma while Shotaro would defeat Koji to win their semi-final matches for them to fight off in the main event of the show, later that night.
The tournament started off on the June 6th show where all four first-round matches started off to see who would advance on the July 2nd show and these were the results that we had. Shotaro wanted to win to get his redemption over the person that took the title away from him, T-Hawk from STRONG HEARTS when they fought on January 5th.
During the finals of the match, Daiki would actually be the one that defeats Shotaro to everyone’s surprise to win the Grand Prix. Daiki is no stranger to the Wrestle-1 Championship as he won it one time on August 11th, 2016 where he held it for 83 days before he dropped it to Masayuki Kono.
With Daiki getting the win over Shotaro, he now gets his chance to fight T-Hawk for the Wrestle-1 Championship on September 1st during one of their biggest shows of the year and could become a two-time champion with all the momentum he has behind him defeating the ace. T-Hawk along with STRONG HEARTS have been dominating the Wrestle-1 scene and don’t plan on stopping any time soon. T-Hawk has two successful title defenses under his belt when he defeated Jiro Kuroshio and Shuji Kondo, and he now looks to have a third defense against Daiki Inaba. Daiki is also the fifth winner of the tournament as it started in 2015 where Shuji Kondo won it back to back in both 2015 and 2016, Jiro Kuroshio in 2017, and Shotaro Ashino winning it last year as Daiki can now join that rank.
After the show, both Daiki and T-Hawk have shared their comments about the victory here and this is what Daiki had to say first. “It was so painful and so tough. There’s really nothing else to say, I love pro wrestling.”
T-Hawk also had this to say about his next challenger, Daiki. “My opponent for the big match main event of Wrestle-1’s 9/1 show is Daiki Inaba. The first time we met was when I was just 22 in Mexico City. Let’s go all out on that day. Congratulations on the victory.”
Now, what’s next for Shotaro Ashino? He did leave some comments on W-1’s Twitter after the match about his reaction to losing. “Inaba surpassed me. We’re losing in a really important place this year. I thought I’d look at what’s missing for me again. But at the end of the W-1 ring, I’m the one who’s standing and laughing. Right now I’m the bottom in W-1.” So, it looks like he’s got a lot to think about if he wants to get back in the title picture and I have no doubt he’ll find a way to get back on top.
The show happened on July 2nd but it’ll air on July 14th, so be sure to keep an eye out for it online once that happens. Congratulations once again to Daiki for winning this tournament and I’m looking forward to his big match against T-Hawk since it’s something you don’t wanna skip. We’ll see them on their big show Love in Yokohama 2019 on September 1st.
