Is New Japan WWE's Next Great Competitor?

Tomorrow night, New Japan comes from the USA for the very first time ever with their G1 Special. The first show in the two night tournament will air live on AXS TV with WWE legend Jim Ross leading commentary along with MMA star Josh Barnett. The California based show is going to feature several of the brightest stars in the wrestling world headlined by Kazuchika Okada vs Cody Rhodes for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in the main event. With a spectacular card, legendary announce team, and the first live broadcast from the US in company history, it feels like this could be New Japan’s breakout show. Of course, the company has been extremely popular with wrestling fans in the know for years now yet, they have been unable to break into the mainstream conscious thus far. Fortunately for Bullet Club fans everywhere, I think Saturday might just be the day that New Japan breaks out.

On top of what should be a terrific main event featuring a former WWE star, New Japan is going to able to show off the full breadth of their roster with the card they’ve compiled. The Bullet Club (Bad Luck Fale, The Young Bucks, Yujiro Takahashi, and ROH TV Champion Marty Scrull) are scheduled to take on CHAOS (Trent Beretta, The Briscoes, Rocky Romero, and Will Ospreay). The high-flying talent of Ospreay and the Young Bucks combined with the ever entertaining Marty Scrull and Briscoes should make this match a perfect example of all the talent New Japan has to offer. The night will also feature the beginning of a IWGP US Heavyweight Championship tournament. The aforementioned title was recently created for New Japan’s America debut and sets to have a variety of world class stars competing for it. On Saturday’s card, Former ROH World Champion Jay Lethal is taking on Hangman Page from The Bullet Club, Juice Robinson (formerly NXT’s CJ Parker) will go toe-to-toe with British wrestling standout Zack Sabre, Tetsuya Naito and Tomohiro Ishii will square off in a battle of New Japan greats, and to top it off, one of the hottest wrestlers in the world today, Kenny Omega will face former ROH bruiser Michael Elgin, all in the first round of the tournament. For anyone who knows the talent level of that first round, they understand how must-see those matches are. It’s action like that which has the capability of propelling New Japan to heights capable of taking on WWE. No one can truly understand the epic scale of some of the wars New Japan is capable of hosting until they see them for themselves and hopefully, on Saturday, a lot more eyes will be on New Japan’s immensely talented roster. All in all, a thrilling lineup like that is poised to get people talking. I believe this show has the capability of putting New Japan on every US wrestling fan’s radar. I know I will be checking out the action and I hope you all will too!