There’s been a fair amount of NJPW-related news that’s broken since Wrestling Dontaku. Here’s a quick look at what’s going on.

Dominion top matches announced

NJPW has announced the top matches for Dominion, which takes place at Osaka-jo Hall on June 14.

• IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Callum Newman [United Empire] (c) vs. Yota Tsuji [Unbound Co.]
• IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship: Andrade el Idolo [United Empire] (c) vs. Shota Umino vs. Drilla Moloney [Unbound Co.]
• IWGP Tag Team Championship: Knockout Brothers (Yuto-Ice & OSKAR) [Unbound Co.] (c) vs. HENARE & Great-O-Khan [United Empire]
• NEVER Openweight Championship: Ren Narita [House of Torture] (c) vs. Aaron Wolf
• NJPW World TV Championship: Konosuke Takeshita (c) vs. SANADA [House of Torture]
• Yuya Uemura & Taichi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. & Ryohei Oiwa [TMDK]

It’s important to remember that, like Wrestle Kingdom, this show will be broadcast live in Japan on TV Asahi, so this is a very significant show for NJPW. I’d expect an IWGP Women’s Championship match to be added for that reason, and there’s also a chance that whoever wins Best of the Super Juniors will get his IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match at this show, as tradition dictates, but it’s also possible – perhaps even more likely – that that match headlines a Korakuen show somewhere down the line. (There are Road To shows at Korakuen on June 21 and 23.) Of course, that also depends on what the deal is with DOUKI and if he’s ready to go by then.

It should also be noted that Will Ospreay has already announced that he will not be at Dominion, as he is marrying STRONG Women’s Champion, Alex Windsor, the day before. Make of that what you will in relation to the main event.

On paper, this looks like it could be a very good show, but I do kind of struggle to see what among this is going to draw fans to the very large building NJPW has booked for it. NJPW attendance, by and large, has not really improved over last year, which suggests that while the Wrestle Kingdom spectacle was great and it did a nice TV number, it didn’t really lead to a resurgence in attendance. This also suggests that while Aaron Wolf remains extremely over in buildings and attracts a certain amount of mainstream attention, his endless feud with House of Torture is not actually putting butts in seats.

Tenzan announces retirement

Hiroyoshi Tenzan, 55, has announced that he will retire from professional wrestling after working one final match, which will take place at the G1 Climax semifinal show on August 15 at Ryogoku Sumo Hall. This has been a long time in coming – Tenzan’s knees and ankles have been in very bad shape for a long time, significantly limiting his in-ring abilities, but it wasn’t until he attempted to rehabilitate a severe lower back injury he suffered last year that he realized a full comeback wasn’t possible and decided to call it quits.

Tenzan is an NJPW legend whose career unfortunately peaked while NJPW was at its nadir, so he likely will not be remembered quite as fondly as he should be. He is a four-time former IWGP Heavyweight Champion, most recently in 2005, and a three-time G1 Climax winner (2003, 2004 and 2006), as well as a 12-time IWGP Tag Team Champion, most recently in 2017 with his longtime TenCozy partner, Satoshi Kojima, with whom he won the title six times. His career slowed down significantly after he suffered an injury that caused him to miss more than a year in a match with Manabu Nakanishi in the 2009 G1 Climax. His final G1 Climax was in 2016, and he has largely been a bottom-of-the-card old-timer since the pandemic, although he did briefly feud with Great-O-Khan in 2021 and served as an on-screen mentor for Master Wato. He has not wrestled since April 2, 2025, and even before then had visibly lost a great deal of weight, causing fans to be concerned for his health.

Older U.S. fans may remember Tenzan from his handful of appearances in WCW, including a match at Starrcade 1995 against “Macho Man” Randy Savage. However, aside from those appearances, the extent of his work in the West amounted to his excursion to CWA in Germany in 1993 and 1994, three indie shows in Texas in 2013 and 2015, and a couple matches for RevPro in England in 2015 – he never worked for TNA, ROH, WWE or AEW.

The nature of Tenzan’s final match has not been announced, but he hinted at wanting to do a singles match with Kojima. Given his physical state, however, I strongly suspect it’s more likely to be a tag match of some sort.

NJPW-related WWE coming and goings

Oddly enough, there’s a lot of news regarding former NJPW talent arriving in and departing from WWE. First and foremost, WWE officially signed EVIL – now “Naraku” – and debuted him in NXT. This was, of course, completely expected, since EVIL’s departure from NJPW was due to him wanting to move to the U.S. to be with Iyo Sky, with whom he has been in a relationship for several years. Sky re-signed with WWE last year and clearly expects to be there long-term, so EVIL made the move as well.

It’s also widely believed that Hiromu Takahashi will be signing with WWE, if he hasn’t already; WWE recently trademarked the name “Nox Raijin,” which was originally believed to be for EVIL but is now thought to be for Takahashi. He and EVIL are very close friends, and he’s stated that he wants to work in prime time, so a run in WWE (NXT, let’s be real) makes a certain amount of sense.

However, a run in WWE also likely made sense for the 30 or so wrestlers the company cut beginning in late April, including former NJPW wrestlers Jeff Cobb, Tanga Loa and Alex Shelley, as well as inaugural IWGP Women’s Champion, Kairi Hojo, and former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champion, Chris Sabin; according to some insiders, Tama Tonga was also on the internal list of people who were scheduled to be cut, but he apparently will remain with WWE for now.

Obviously, the most intriguing name here is Cobb, whose NJPW departure last year was extremely controversial. In mid-March 2025, Fightful reported that Cobb was already listed on the WWE internal roster, despite the fact that he was still working for NJPW; it should be noted that Cobb was working without an NJPW contract at the time, so this was not a case of tampering (not that WWE has ever shown itself to be above that). However, at Sakura Genesis on April 5, Cobb and Newman won the IWGP Tag Team Championship from Tetsuya Naito and Takahashi, and Cobb made light of the rumors after the match. Internally, Cobb was scheduled to wrestle Hirooki Goto for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestling Dontaku on May 4, but, on April 14, NJPW announced that Cobb was, in fact, leaving the promotion and that he and Newman were vacating the title. On April 19, Cobb lost to Hiroshi Tanahashi in his final NJPW match; his spot in the Dontaku match was taken by Newman, so it could easily be said that Cobb’s departure hastened Newman’s rise to the top of the promotion. Cobb debuted in WWE as “J.C. Mateo” on May 10 as part of Solo Sikoa’s MFT faction (along with Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa and “Talla Tonga,” formerly Hikuleo) and did nothing of note for the next 11 months, even though he was allegedly promised a significant singles run.

It’s difficult to say if Cobb would be welcomed back to NJPW. On one hand, it certainly seems that he misled the promotion into thinking he was staying at least through Dontaku, and possibly even longer – there’s no way NJPW would have put the tag title on him and Newman if it thought there was a chance he would leave before they could lose it in the ring. On the other hand, he was working without a contract, and the fact that he agreed to go out on his back against the company’s president suggests that there may have been some sort of mending of fences before his departure. I think the fact that United Empire is now a hot act makes it somewhat more likely that he could return, especially if there is a faction split after Newman and Ospreay have their inevitable blow-up. However, with HENARE back in action and Jake Lee and Andrade now in the faction, you could certainly make the case that there’s no room for him, especially since NJPW is clearly trying to reduce the number of fly-in guys they use. It will be interesting to see if he returns.

As for the others, I have a hard time envisioning a Tanga Loa return to NJPW without either one of his dojo-trained brothers, especially considering how abysmal his in-ring work has been since he returned from a catastrophic knee injury in 2023, while Shelley is expected to sign with AEW, in which case NJPW appearances would not be out of the question.

I’ll be back on Thursday with night 1 of Best of the Super Juniors. Pray for me.