10 Early Predictions For NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 13

8. NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship Gauntlet

Firing Squad Hirooki Goto
NJPW

The other ‘get everyone on the card’ match at Wrestle Kingdom is the annual gauntlet for the least credible titles in the company — the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championships. Fans could be forgiven for forgetting who the current champions are (for the record, the Firing Squad trio of Tama Tonga, Tonga Loa and Taiji Ishimori currently hold the straps).

The match will feature either four or five teams, and I’d be very surprised if the current trio are involved. The Tongans will likely be involved however, with Bad Luck Fale replacing Ishimori. The Firing Squad has received a push of sorts over the last six weeks, but the New Japan crowd is yet to respond in any meaningful fashion.

The token CHAOS trio will be made up of Beretta, Toru Yano and YOSHI-HASHI, with Taichi and Killer Elite Squad making up a strong Suzuki-gun trio.

Rounding out the competition will be EVIL, SANADA and BUSHI of Los Ingobernables de Japon. Many fans will be disappointed with EVIL and SANADA’s position on the card, and rightly so. Both men have challenged for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship over the last 12 months, and undoubtedly deserve better. Their time will come, but not yet. The trios titles will be back in LIJ control by the end of the night.

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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.