10 Most Prestigious Wrestling Tournaments Of All Time

7. The Young Lions Cup (NJPW)

If you€™re a wrestling promoter and you have an enormous roster filled with young and hungry wrestlers, but don€™t know how to elevate all of them at the same time or determine which one of them deserves more booking attention, put all of them in a single tournament and allow them to showcase their skills in front of the audience. That is the essence of the Young Lion Cup, a tournament in NJPW. How it works is that the entire tournament is composed of rookies, and the winner receives an opportunity to go on a foreign excursion to improve their skills. When NJPW€™s international cross-promotional deals were at their highest in the 1980s and 1990s, these were much more important; but because these matter less in the 2010s, this tournament hasn€™t been seen in recent years. That said, the idea itself is excellent and previous Young Lion tournaments have yielded positive results. By focusing more attention on rookies and keeping established main-eventers out of the tournament, it gives the newer talent an opportunity to make a major impact, and for the audience to be exposed to something newer. Some of the winners of this tournament include Horooki Goto (excellent current NJPW wrestler), Manabu Nanakishi (beloved NJPW wrestler), Satoshi Kojima (awesome NJPW/AJPW wrestler), Masahiro Chono (one of NJPW€™s Three Musketeers), and, arguably the biggest star to ever win the tournament, Keiichi Yamada, who would later become none other than Jushin €˜Thunder€™ Liger. Considering the success these men achieved after this tournament, they don€™t get any more prestigious than this.