10 Things That Must Happen At NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11

January 4 at the Dome promises to be another spectacular show.

by John Bills
wrestlekingdom 11
WK11

2016 has been yet another thrilling year in New Japan Pro Wrestling. A year of transition has seen new stars replace the big names who jumped ship at the beginning of the year, and yet again the annual January 4 Tokyo Dome show looks like it is going to be a blinder.

The card is stacked from top to bottom. Such is the depth of NJPW's roster that long established talent like Yuji Nagata, Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Ryusuke Taguchi can only find a spot in the annual multi-man New Japan Rumble, and top level performers like SANADA, Satoshi Kojima, Will Ospreay and Ricochet are in the multi-team NEVER Openweight 6-Man tag match.

Cody Rhodes will make his New Japan debut by taking on Juice Robinson, and Kyle O'Reilly will defend his newly-won ROH World Championship against adversary Adam Cole. Katsuyori Shibata defends the NEVER Openweight Championship against Hirooki Goto, and KUSHIDA's Junior Heavyweight Championship is on the line against Hiromu Takahashi.

But in truth, Wrestle Kingdom 11 is all about the two headlining matches. Can Tetsuya Naito hand Hiroshi Tanahashi his second WK loss in a row and cement himself as the man to spearhead New Japan in 2017? Can Kenny Omega become the first gaijin to win a Wrestle Kingdom main event?

Here are 10 things that must happen on January 4.

Advertisement
In this post: 
NJPW
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

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.