NJPW Announces 2017 Best Of The Super Juniors Line-Up

The A Block may well be the dictionary definition of 'Group of Death'.

by John Bills
Marty Scurll Best Of The Super Juniors New Japan Pro Wrestling
njpwworld.com

New Japan Pro Wrestling has announced the full line-up for the 2017 Best of the Super Juniors. Current IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Hiromu Takahashi headlines the list, but it is the inclusion of current ROH Television Champion Marty Scurll that will surely turn the most heads.

Scurll and Takahashi find themselves in a superstar heavy A Block, alongside Jushin Thunder Liger, Ricochet, 2016 winner Will Ospreay, TAKA Michinoku, Dragon Lee and Taichi. Liger has previously said that the 24th edition of the tournament will be his last, and the three-times winner will do well to escape from a block that includes two other former winners in the shape of Ospreay and Richochet.

Former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion KUSHIDA will start as the favourite in B Block. Joining the Timesplitter will be former tournament winners Tiger Mask and Ryusuke Taguchi, along with former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion BUSHI. Volador Jr., Yoshinobu Kanemaru, El Desperado and ACH round out the line-up.

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The tournament begins on May 17 and runs all the way until June 3, with the winner guaranteeing themselves a future IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match. Takahashi's divisional dominance means he will start as the favourite, but Ospreay, Scurll, KUSHIDA, and Ricochet may have other ideas.

Or maybe the legendary Liger will have one last tilt at the tournament? The three-time winner will surely be the sentimental favourite, but will he hold the trophy aloft on June 3?

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.