WWE's Shinsuke Nakamura To Face Great Muta At NOAH: The New Year 2023 Event

Muta's retirement tour will include a crossover rematch not seen in 14 years.

by Scott Carlson
shinsuke nakamura great muta
NJPW

The Great Muta, on his retirement tour, will face WWE's Shinsuke Nakamura on New Year's Day in a crossover match that would have seemed impossible just a few short months ago.

Pro Wrestling NOAH announced early Sunday that Nakamura, currently a member of the SmackDown roster, will square off against his old rival Muta at NOAH: The New Year 2023 at Nippon Budokan. Shinsuke, who hasn't wrestled for NOAH since October 2013, tweeted his reaction to the announcement: "This is Miracle."

Muta is currently only his retirement tour, which has seen him pop up on AEW Rampage Grand Slam last month to save old rival Sting and more recently at NJPW's Battle Autumn event last week. Muta (Keiji Mutoh) is slated to wrestle his last match as Great Muta on January 22, 2023, teaming with Sting against two unnamed opponents at NOAH's The Great Muta Final Bye-Bye event in Yokohama.

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Nakamura and Mutoh have competed against each other in singles action just twice, both in 2008 in New Japan, when Mutoh defeated Shinsuke for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in April, and then defended the title in October of that year.

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Scott is a former journalist and longtime wrestling fan who was smart enough to abandon WCW during the Monday Night Wars the same time as the Radicalz. He fondly remembers watching WrestleMania III, IV, V and VI and Saturday Night's Main Event, came back to wrestling during the Attitude Era, and has been a consumer of sports entertainment since then. He's written for WhatCulture for more than a decade, establishing the Ups and Downs articles for WWE Raw and WWE PPVs/PLEs and composing pieces on a variety of topics.