10 Things You Need To Know About NJPW Best Of Super Juniors 2017
7. There Are Several Potential Winners
No matter how stacked they appear, tournaments like this usually present just one or two obvious winners, which brings a sense of predictability to the whole competition. This definitely isn’t the case with BOSJ, however. Few promotions do such a good job of keeping their big events fresh, exciting, and unpredictable, and many of BOSJ’s competitors enter with a legitimate chance of winning.
In A Block, Will Ospreay is one of the most highly-regarded wrestlers in the word, but hasn’t been pushed to his full potential in NJPW. A second BOSJ victory could seal that, but he faces stiff competition. Jushin Liger may be given a glory run in his final NJPW tournament, Junior Heavyweight Champion Hiromu Takahashi hasn’t lost a big match all year, and Ricochet and Marty Scurll also enter with an outside chance of winning.
B Block is a little more straightforward. KUSHIDA is the favourite to advance to the finals, but Ryusuke Taguchi reached that stage last year, and might that repeat the feat again. ACH or Volador Jr. could also top the bracket, but it’d be a major shock if either won outright.
If we were putting money on it today, an Ospreay vs. KUSHIDA final looks like a good bet, with ‘The Aerial Assassin’ scoring his second consecutive tournament title.