Author: Mathew Sarpracione

It’s been quite some time, but we welcome back to another edition of the Puroresu Press. The Japanese scene has been rather quiet due to the unfortunate events of Covid-19. But a few promotions have been putting on empty arena shows. We do have some good and fun news and some unfortunate news during this part of the press. Let’s not waste any time and get right to it. We bring you this week’s edition of the Puroresu Press for 5/24/20. NJPW Action Figures Wave 2! Around October, Super7 released information on their first wave of New Japan Pro Wrestling…

It’s that time of year again where Dragon Gate will hold their annual tournament, King of Gate. It’ll be a little bit different this year due to COVID-19 going on and it’ll be single elimination with three blocks instead of a round-robin with four blocks. Here’s how it’ll work this time around, once the winner of the blocks happens, there will be a Battle Royal involving the people that lost in the tournament and the winner of that will be considered the fourth person for the semi-finals. Here we present the King of Gate Tournament 2020 preview below. The blocks…

Shotaro Ashino has made some claims after saying All Japan Pro Wrestling was going to be his main battlefield. He wasn’t wrong with starting his claim. On the April 30th show, he would bring in a former Wrestle-1 wrestler and fellow Enfants Terribles member, Yusuke Kodama in as his mystery opponent for a match. After that, there would be another tag match booked for the May 5th show. Shotaro said he’ll bring in another mystery partner for this show as well. The show happened and it was time to reveal his next partner who was none other than another Enfants…

It’s been a weird time at NOAH in the past couple of days but this was certainly unexpected results/news. On April 19th, two members of Sugiura-Gun International, El Hijo del Dr. Wagner Jr., and Rene Dupree would fight the GHC Tag Team Champions, Masaaki Mochizuki and Naomichi Marufuji in the main event for the titles. This wouldn’t be their first encounter as they were on the same block in the Global Tag League. Wagner and Dupree would defeat them to make it into the finals on April 14th.As it would seem on April 19th, lightning would strike twice. They would now…

News has happened during today’s All Japan Pro Wrestling show as former Wrestle-1 wrestler, Shotaro Ashino. Ashino made a surprise appearance during the show and has made a bold statement. He would talk about AJPW becoming his main battlefield going forward. Little known fact here, before the cancellation of the Champion Carnival, Shotaro Ashino and Jiro Kuroshio was going to be the last two replacements but it’s now unfortunately not happening. https://twitter.com/alljapan_eng/status/1247118999705587712 Despite the Carnival being postponed, Ashino still wanted to make a statement. He wouldn’t be just a one-off type of person and is here to stay as his…

Stardom would deliver on their March 24th show covering their annual Cinderella Tournament. As always, they delivered with some surprises in here except for the winner which we’ll get to in a bit. The new Oedo Tai leader, Natsuko Tora would shock everyone by making it far into the finals. However, it would be able to take on the other finalist, Giulia in the Cinderella Tournament that would turn heads. We can only have one winner and the winner of the finals, and the Stardom Cinderella Tournament was Giulia. Giulia would join the select few that won the tournament such…

It looks like Stardom is back to doing shows again with an audience this time around. And to add more excitement to this next show, Stardom is doing their Cinderella Tournament a month early this year. The Cinderella Tournament is their annual single-elimination tournament where the winner of the match will be able to wear a pretty dress and gets to request any match they want. It could be a title match, a dream match, or just someone to settle the score with. Last year’s winner was Arisa Hoshiki and she was able to challenge Momo Watanabe for the Wonder…

Last week, Naoya Nomura announced that he wouldn’t be medically cleared to compete in this year’s Champion Carnival for All Japan Pro Wrestling and a replacement would be made soon. There were rumors about someone from another promotion that could come jump in to take his place. This was a possibility or someone like Koji Iwamoto would take over. It looks like both of those things wouldn’t be the case. On March 4th, a press conference was held and they would finally reveal the replacement for Naoya Nomura. The decision involved the inclusion of the former Junior Heavyweight Champion, TAJIRI.…

With the coronavirus affecting shows in Japan, it is causing various promotions like NJPW, Stardom, and NOAH to cancel shows. It looks like All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW) still has their schedule for late March along with their Champion Carnival tournament in April. Unfortunately, I do have some bad news regarding the Carnival as Naoya Nomura has announced that he’ll be out of the tournament due to a herniated disc, taking him out of action for two months. Due to this, we have an open slot and there is no official announcement of who will replace him at this time.…

During the AJPW show on February 11th where Kento retained the Triple Crown Championship for the 10th time to tie to record for most successful defenses in one reign, they would announce the official participants for their Champion Carnival tournament. For those that need a reminder, the AJPW Champion Carnival 2020 is their round-robin tournament that will last a month and the winner will receive a Triple Crown Championship match in May or June. We have our eighteen confirmed participants listed down below. Kento Miyahara (Triple Crown Champion) Jake Lee Yuma Aoyagi Naoya Nomura Suwama Shuji Ishikawa Zeus Yoshitatsu Ryouji…