10 Things That Must Happen At NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 11

3. A Second Successive Loss For Tana

Hiroshi Tanahashi
NJPW

After winning five Wrestle Kingdom main events in a row, Hiroshi Tanahashi came up short last year against Kazuchika Okada. This year the Once in a Century Talent challenges Tetsuya Naito for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship, continuing the incredible run of matches for that title at the Tokyo Dome event. LOL TANA WINS isn't quite as accurate today as it once was, but many still think Mr. Tokyo Dome will pull out the win.

If that is the case, NJPW will once again be doing wrong by arguably their most popular talent. Naito has experienced an incredible career renaissance over the last year or so, going from a by-the-numbers vanilla babyface to one of the hottest characters in the entire pro wrestling world. Naito doesn't care about championships, but Naito must retain here.

2016 was a good year for Naito, but 2017 could well be the best year of his already impressive career. Tanahashi is slowing down, and whilst his body is still proving everybody wrong year after year the time is surely going to come when enough is enough. Naito is yet to win a singles match at the Tokyo Dome. That must change 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.