NJPW is in a brief refractory period after a draining G1 Climax, so here’s a quick look at the NJPW news and rumors that have emerged in the afterglow.

Destruction in Kobe and the Road to Destruction

NJPW has announced several matches for Destruction in Kobe, which takes place at Kobe World Hall on September 27. Here’s what’s been announced so far.

• IWGP Heavyweight Championship: Yota Tsuji [Unbound Co.] (c) vs. Hirooki Goto – Goto beat Tsuji on Night 2 of the G1 to earn a title shot. The winner of this match faces Ryohei Oiwa at King of Pro-Wrestling at Ryogoku on October 12. As luck would have it, Street Fighter (which features Goto) opens on October 16.
• IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship: Gabe Kidd (c) vs. Drilla Moloney [Unbound Co.] – Moloney beat Kidd in the G1, also on Night 2, so he will get another shot at the Global title here. (He failed to win the title in a three-way against Shota Umino and Andrade el Idolo at this year’s Sakura Genesis.)
• NJPW World TV Championship: Konosuke Takeshita (c) vs. Shun Skywalker [HOUSE OF TORTURE] – Skywalker, formerly of Dragongate, debuted in NJPW (after a fashion – he’s wrestled in NJPW before, most recently in the main event of last year’s Purge Night of Torture show) at G1 Climax 36, Night 18, joined HOUSE OF TORTURE, and set his sights on Takeshita and his World TV title.
• Jeff Cobb [Unbound Co.] vs. Callum Newman [United Empire] – Cobb returned to NJPW at G1 Climax 36, Night 19, and surprisingly threw in with Unbound Co. instead of rejoining United Empire, citing his dislike of Newman’s leadership tactics as his cause.
• Aaron Wolf, Yuya Uemura & Taichi vs. TMDK (Ryohei Oiwa, Zack Sabre Jr. & Kosei Fujita) – Of course, this one revisits the amazing G1 Climax 36 final with Oiwa and Uemura, as well as pitting longtime bros Sabre and Taichi against each other. Also, Fujita wants to challenge Wolf for the NEVER title, although given Wolf’s G1 Climax record, he may need to get in line.

The Road to Destruction also features a handful of significant matches.

• September 9, Korakuen Hall – Tatsuya Matsumoto vs. Yushin Hatazawa – This is Hatazawa’s debut. He is the big guy who has been Young Lion-ing during the Tokyo shows for several months now. He is six feet tall, is 210 pounds, is 20 years old and trained in sumo.
• September 19, Kuribayashi – IWGP Tag Team Championship No. 1 Contender Match: Most Violent Players (Toru Yano & Togi Makabe) vs. Knockout Brothers (Yuto-Ice & OSKAR) [Unbound Co.] – This was set up at G1 Climax 36, Night 19; the winners will take on the champions (HENARE and Great-O-Khan) at some point in the future.
• September 23, Sapporo – Special Tag Match: El Desperado & Mistico vs. DOUKI & SHO [HOUSE OF TORTURE] – This is being framed as an eliminator match, so if DOUKI and SHO win, they’ll get an IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship match at some point in the future. Also, perhaps more importantly, we’ll probably get to hear Mistico’s wacky replacement music again.
• September 23, Sapporo – IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: YOH (c) vs. Taiji Ishimori [Unbound Co.] – Ishimori pinned YOH in a tag match at G1 Climax, Night 19, so now he gets a title shot.

Injuries

There were a couple of significant injuries during this year’s G1 Climax. Of course, the most notable was that Shota Umino suffered a concussion on Night 1 and had to miss the rest of the tournament. Thankfully, he is scheduled to return to action at the Road to Destruction show on September 5 in Tochigi, and is appearing throughout the tour.

Also, Jake Lee was injured on Night 16 when Tsuji hit him with a Fire Blaster into a turnbuckle pad. The extent of his injury is unknown as of now, but he is not scheduled to wrestle at any shows on the Road to Destruction tour.

International travels

Yujiro Takahashi and DOUKI of HOUSE OF TORTURE traveled to Mexico to take part in this year’s International Grand Prix match, which took place at Arena Mexico on August 7, and worked a few other CMLL shows as well. While there, they formed a loose alliance with OKUMURA’s heel faction, which includes YUTANI (a wrestler NJPW is known to have its eye on) and Shoma Kato, who is there on excursion there and is letting his freak flag fly, in case you haven’t seen him lately. This was breathlessly reported by some as OKUMURA, YUTANI and Kato fully joining the HOUSE, but it’s most likely just heels heeling with other heels. Still, if Kato retains this character when he returns to Japan, it wouldn’t be at all surprising to see him with the HOUSE.

Also, HENARE and Francesco Akira appeared on the August 19 edition of AEW Dynamite, teaming with Will Ospreay against the Don Callis Family team of Lance Archer, Brian Cage and Rocky Romero. Weirdly, HENARE and Akira entered to Newman’s theme; my guess is that they intended to use HENARE’s theme but found out at the last minute that they’d have to license it, and they didn’t have any of the NJPW-produced United Empire music on hand. So, they used what they did have on hand, which was Newman’s music, since it was created by [Q]brick, aka Romero. Anyway, United Empire won when Ospreay pinned Romero; both Akira and HENARE looked great and were 100% babyfaces. Also on Dynamite, Kidd returned to assist The Dogs in beating down Jay White, marking his first appearance in AEW since April.

Finally, Sabre and Newman have both been announced for RevPro’s 14th Anniversary Show, which takes place in London on August 29, which is, notably, the day before AEW’s All In show. The fact that Newman will be in London while Ospreay is main-eventing a stadium show is not entirely inconsequential, though I don’t suspect AEW is going to be compelled to include this NJPW angle that hasn’t even been hinted at on AEW TV as part of Ospreay’s coronation in front of more than 40,000 fans. I could be wrong, though.

There’s not a whole lot else going on right now. I will have a very dumb post sometime next week, I believe, and once the Road shows get going, I’ll probably check out the significant matches.