On April 9th, All Japan Pro Wrestling would bring back their annual tournament, the Champion Carnival. The last one was in September of 2020 due to Covid canceling a lot of events at the beginning of the year. Zeus would win the tournament in October 2020 but it was time for them to do it at their proper date this year. For this year’s tournament, instead of doing two blocks, they would only do one block with ten participants. How would the finals work? Well, if the person has the most points at the end would win but if there was a tie, it would be sudden death. Jake Lee Wins AJPW Champion Carnival 2021.
Zeus was a part of the tournament this time but would be eliminated at the second to last show. On the final show, it was down to four people with two potentially winning it and the other two who would have a chance to make it sudden death. However, both Kohei Sato and the current Triple Crown Champion, Suwama failed to win their matches, thus making them eliminated in the process. Since that happened, it came down to our main event between Kento Miyahara and Jake Lee to decide who would win the Carnival.
Jake Lee Wins AJPW Champion Carnival 2021!
These two aren’t strangers to one another since they were in the finals of the Carnival in 2019, where Kento defeated Jake to win the whole thing. Jake only defeated Kento one time during singles competition and that was at the Royal Road Tournament, six months after the Champion Carnival in 2019. Luckily, that would change as Jake Lee would defeat Kento Miyahara to win the Champion Carnival this year! Jake had a complete turnaround in the past couple of months when he turned heel to form his own group, TOTAL ECLIPSE.
This was Jake’s first Champion Carnival win and this was the right time to pull the trigger on this victory. He has been long overdue for a big win and it seemed like doing it as a babyface wasn’t going to cut it when you look at the talent poll, so him being heel was the career boost that he needed. Kento is already an established star, so he didn’t need to win here or challenge for the Triple Crown Championship for a while since he can bounce back at any time.
Now that Jake has won the Carnival, he now gets a Triple Crown Championship against Suwama. The match was made official for Champions Night on June 26th. other members of his faction are in another title match that same night, so this could be the night for TOTAL ECLIPSE. If they really want to push Jake as their next star, now is the time to win the belt here at this show. Until then, congratulations to Jake on winning and hoping the best for his upcoming title match.
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