We wrap up the month of March with our second puro schedule post, as we see the New Japan Cup and STARDOM’s Cinderella tournament both come to an end! A major show from All Japan at Ota Ward Gym and a NOAH Korakuen also round out the rest of the month, so let’s get right into it!
Saturday, March 15
AJPW Dream Power Series 2025 Night 2
Okinawa Prefecture Marital Arts Hall, Naha
3:00 pm local time
VOD on AJPW.TV
AJPW will be the first of two of our promotions to head all the way out to the islands of Okinawa, the only major part of Japan unreachable by anything but plane or boat. This is their first time in Okinawa since before COVID, all the way back in May 2019. The show will not air live on AJPW.TV, but according to their website, the VOD footage will be available at 9 pm Japan time on the same day, so that means it would be available fairly early in the morning on 3/15 if you’re in the US anyway.
The main event will see Yuma Anzai & Rising HAYATO attempt defense number four of the All Asia Tag Titles against Hideki Suzuki & Dan Tamura in what will likely be yet another great match in what’s been a really good title reign. The only other title match on the show is for the AJPW.TV six-man titles, as Hokuto-gun will make attempt number three to regain the titles they lost to Yuma Aoyagi, Fuminori Abe & Hikaru Sato. This time around, it’s Hokuto Omori & Aizawa NO.1 teaming up with local Okinawan wrestler and Mixed Marital Artist Mitsuhisa Sunabe (according to Wikipedia his last MMA fight was a losing effort in Pancrase in April 2024, though he’s also a former flyweight King of Pancrase champion!) Let’s just say I don’t like their chances.
STARDOM Cinderella Tournament 2025 ~Championship Match~
Ota Ward General Gymnasium, Tokyo
4:30 pm local time; 3:30 am eastern; 12:30 am pacific
Live on Internet PPV (4620 yen)
The final four wrestlers in STARDOM’s Cinderella tournament will face off in two semi final matches, with the winner moving on to the final later that night (in the semi-main event of the show). The first of the two semis sees Sayaka Kurara from Cosmic Angels take on HATE’s Azusa Inaba (who recently received new gear as well as the new nickname of “Black Princess”- one of those Japanese nicknames that sounds a little weird to westerners, haha) in a first-time-ever singles match. In the other semi, last year’s Cinderella winner Hanan will face her sister Rina one-on-one for the first time in almost exactly three years- they last faced off on March 26, 2022 for Hanan’s Future of STARDOM title, when Rina was still just 15. Hanan has a 3-0 record against her younger sister in singles matches, but that very well may come to an end here- I think a final of Sayaka vs. Rina makes a ton of sense, as both young wrestlers have been a major focus of the promotion as of late. We’ll see which one of these four women ultimately gets to wear the crown and dress, as well as receive a “wish” for a future show.
The main event of the evening will see Starlight Kid attempt defense number two of her Wonder of STARDOM title against Konami. Konami and SLK have not met in a singles match in about four and a half years, with their last meeting coming in the 2020 5*GP. They also met in the semi finals of the 2019 Cinderella tournament, and both matches saw the HATE member defeat SLK. Konami knocked SLK unconscious in the build-up to this match with a kick to the face in the main event of the 3/8 Cinderella opener, ultimately pinning her with one foot. SLK did get some measure of revenge the next night on 3/9 however, pinning Konami for the win in the main event of that show, so they’re even in recent results at least.
The only other major match on this show sees the recently returned Mina Shirakawa taking on Thekla in a match with some unique stipulations- if Mina wins, Thekla will have to apologize in the ring for her various actions that have “embarrassed STARDOM” (mostly normal heel stuff I guess, although she did briefly assault GM Taro Okada at ringside during her match on 3/8) and pay her various fines that she’s racked up. But if Thekla wins, she gets a singles match against anyone in STARDOM she wants (no idea if this means she can just request a title shot or if it’s strictly non-title, as I haven’t seen that clarified anywhere). These two have met three times before with Mina having a 2-1 record, their last singles match coming back in December 2023.
The undercard features your usual array of tags, although there is also a dark match that pits Rian against Fukigen. One tag probably worth keeping your eye on is an all-Cosmic Angels battle: Tam Nakano teams with Saori Anou to face two of the junior members of the unit, Yuna Mizumori & Aya Sakura. Given that Tam may or may not be on her retirement road at the moment, that’s an interesting match.
NJPW New Japan Cup Night 6
Aichi Prefectural Gymnasium (Dolphins Arena), Nagoya
5:00 pm local time; 4:00 am eastern; 1:00 am pacific
Live on NJPW World in English & Japanese
The New Japan Cup heads to Nagoya for an enormous show, as all four quarterfinal matches will take place here, as well as an IWGP World Heavyweight Title match. Let’s start with that title match first- Hirooki Goto will attempt a second defense in the month of March when he faces Yuji Nagata, who’s receiving his first title shot in about thirteen years and three months. His last shot came in this very building on December 4, 2011, when he was defeated by Hiroshi Tanahashi (the penultimate defense Tana would make in his then-record setting title reign that was ended a couple months later with the Rainmaker Shock in Osaka). As Nagata himself recently mentioned, two of his last three failed title challenges came in Nagoya, as he also lost there to Shinsuke Nakamura in December 2009 (the other failed challenge was also to Tanahashi in April 2011, in Korakuen Hall). He last held the big belt in 2007, and that title reign was ended by Tana in Sumo Hall in October. As far as the history of Nagata vs. Goto, they’ve met 11 times in total, with Goto holding a 7-4 record over him- including three straight wins, with the last one being a New Japan Cup first round match in 2022. Nagata’s most recent win over Goto came almost ten years ago in the 2015 G1. I don’t like his chances to break that losing streak here, but it’s still cool seeing Nagata get one last ride as it were.
As far as the New Japan Cup quarterfinals go, we’ll go in tournament bracket order since we don’t have the actual card order yet. The upper left quadrant sees David Finlay taking on Yuya Uemura- Finlay having beat EVIL in a battle of heel unit leaders in the second round after getting a bye, while Yuya having gone through Chase Owens & YOSHI-HASHI to get to this point. Finlay and Yuya have met twice in singles matches before- once when Yuya was a young lion in 2021 in the States which Finlay obviously won, and then last year during the G1 where Yuya beat him (in an awesome match). These are two of the most heavy favorites left in the entire tournament- in Chris Samsa’s bracket challenge Finlay got the most picks to win and Yuya was tied for second. The guy who was tied with Yuya was Gabe Kidd, and he got taken out back on 3/12 in Uwajima thanks to interference from the House of Torture. Will they get involved again to take out Finlay as well? Or perhaps even SANADA will get involved- his loyalty to the War Dogs is currently very much in question after his hilariously ineffective run-in during Finlay’s win over EVIL back on 3/11, and that feels like it’s going somewhere judging by how all the other War Dogs reacted to him the following day.
The bottom-left quadrant will see Zack Sabre Jr. take on Taichi in the long-awaited battle of the Dangerous Tekkers. This is not quite a first-time-ever singles match, as they did meet twice in two sub-ten minute matches in NOAH in 2015- when both were still juniors and Taichi was part of the invading Suzukigun unit, a couple years before Zack would jump to NJPW and join the same unit (they’re 1-1, though Zack’s win did come by DQ; I would bet Taichi’s win was not exactly clean either given how he used to do things at the time, haha). But this is still a match everyone has been waiting a rather long time for. They’re doing an interesting story here with Taichi where he completely lacks confidence due to his lack of results so far this year- indeed, his win over Gabe in the second round (his first win of the entire year!) came via count out after the House interfered, and Taichi immediately took to social media to note that he doesn’t know how he can possibly even face Zack like this and that he was considering withdrawing from the tournament entirely. It would really be something if this was all a setup for the ultimate upset win for Taichi, but I kinda doubt it. It’s far more likely Zack, a very accomplished tournament wrestler in New Japan, is simply moving on to the semi finals.
The top-right quadrant will see ‘Bald’ Shota Umino take on Jeff Cobb. Cobb has obviously been the subject of intense rumors in recent days, with one reporter going so far as to report he’s already listed on WWE’s internal roster. But at least for now he’s still part of New Japan, and he picked up a big win over Tetsuya Naito in the second round of the New Japan Cup to move on to the quarterfinals here (after getting a first round bye). Umino also got a first round bye before defeating Great-O-Khan in a quite inauspicious re-debut. The theme music is the same, the gear is only slightly different (it looks pretty similar but it’s all white now instead of white-and-pink), he comes out through the curtain instead of out of the audience like Jon Moxley, and he has a new finisher…..and of course no hair to speak of. But his first match since the shaving incident was an underwhelming affair to say the least, so we’ll have to wait and see if he looks any better against Cobb in Nagoya. This is a first time ever matchup, by the way- they’ve never faced each other in a singles match before.
The bottom-right quadrant will see Drilla Moloney face Shingo Takagi, which is of course a rematch from their quite fun matchup back on February 11th in Osaka (their only career meeting). It seems likely that Shingo will simply get his win back over Drilla and move on to the semi finals, but we’ll have to wait and see for sure. This does feel like the most easy to predict of all four tournament matches, so watch them swerve us and have Drilla just win now. Even if he does go out here though Drilla has had a nice little start to his career as a heavyweight, beating Shingo back in Osaka to officially elevate to that position, then winning over a classic gatekeeper in Tomohiro Ishii in the first round followed by a win over the junior “openweight” TJP to sort of clearly place himself at a level above. Shingo meanwhile got the first round bye before he put away Boltin Oleg in a battle of hard hitters in Osaka in the second round.
Overall, a pretty solid card between the four quarterfinal matchups and an IWGP World title match on top of it.
Sunday, March 16
NJPW New Japan Cup Night 7
Twin Messe Shizuoka South Building, Shizuoka
3:00 pm local time; 2:00 am eastern; Saturday 3/15 11:00 pm pacific
Live on NJPW World in English & Japanese
The weird structure of the New Japan Cup rears its ugly head here- after we get all four quarterfinal matches the night before in Nagoya, the tour then heads to Shizuoka where we get just one single semi final match. Shizuoka is a city about an hour to the west of Tokyo, or about one hour to the east of Nagoya- directly between the two of them, in another words. It’s a city I’ll be spending two nights in myself not long after this (on 3/30 and 3/31!) for the first time ever, as I wanted to spend some time on my next trip in a couple smaller cities I’ve never been to before since the major ones will likely be very crowded during cherry blossom season (Sendai is the other new smaller city I’ll be checking out!). The port area looks nice, and you can apparently see Mt. Fuji from here quite easily on a clear day. Plus, I’ll be attending an NJPW Road to Sakura Genesis house show just 20 minutes away in nearby Hamamatsu!
I don’t have much to tell you about here besides my travel plans though, as there’s no card yet of course. We do know which semi final we’re getting based on the dates from the bracket- in this case, it’s the left side semi, the winner of Finlay/Yuya vs. the winner of ZSJ/Taichi. Here’s your singles records for the four possible matchups:
- ZSJ 1-0 Finlay (their only previous meeting was in the World TV Title Tournament in October 2022)
- Finlay 1-0 Taichi (their only previous meeting was last November at Power Struggle where Finlay beat him to retain his Global title)
- ZSJ 1-0 Yuya (only previous meeting was all the way back in June 2021 when Yuya was still a young lion)
- Taichi 1-0 Yuya (again only previous meeting was when Yuya was a young lion, also in June 2021)
Pretty much all those combinations would be fresh except I guess we did just see Finlay/Taichi pretty recently, but even that one hasn’t exactly been beaten into the ground or anything!
It will also be interesting to see what the undercard looks like whenever we get it, likely not until the morning of the show Japan time, as that should give some more indications of what’s coming up at Sakura Genesis.
Monday, March 17
NJPW New Japan Cup Night 8
Big Palette Fukushima, Koriyama
6:30 pm local time; 5:30 am eastern; 2:30 am pacific
Live on NJPW World in English & Japanese
The penultimate night of the New Japan Cup heads to the city of Koriyama, the second-most populous city of Fukushima prefecture (its roughly 327k population is only just behind Iwaki’s 332k; the capital city which is also named Fukushima is actually in third at 282k). This is also possibly the most brutal travel day of the entire tour, as they have to basically head right past Tokyo and then keep heading northeast another 2 and a half hours (and that’s if they’re going by Shinkansen- if they’re going by bus it’s an over 5 hour journey from Shizuoka instead). Usually for this much travel there’s an off day in between, but that’s not the case here!
This show features the other semi final match in the New Japan Cup from the right side of the bracket, as the winner of Umino/Cobb takes on the winner of Drilla/Shingo. Once again, here’s your singles records for the four possible matchups:
- Umino 2-0 Moloney (both their matches came all the way back in 2021 in Revolution Pro, during Umino’s excursion there)
- Umino 1-1 Takagi (Shingo beat him when Umino was still a young lion in 2018, and Umino then beat him during last year’s G1)
- Moloney 1-0 Cobb (their one prior meeting came back in 2020 in RevPro)
- Cobb 2-1 Takagi (Cobb beat him twice in a row in the 2019 & 2020 G1s, and then Shingo retained the NEVER title against him in a famously awesome match at Wrestle Kingdom 15)
Three of these four matches haven’t happened in quite a long time and would all be very fresh, and again even though we did see Shingo/Umino in the G1 last year that doesn’t feel like a matchup that’s been run into the ground either. We’ll find out soon enough which one we’re getting.
Thursday, March 20
STARDOM Spring Vacation 2025 ~Hi-sai! Okinawa~Day 1
Okinawa Convention Center, Ginowan
4:00 pm local time; 3:00 am eastern; 12:00 am pacific
Live on Internet PPV
STARDOM is our second promotion of the month to head to the islands of Okinawa, their first time since a strange two-match show from all the way back in 2016. They’re actually running a different location from AJPW, though the two venues aren’t far apart at all- about 40 minutes away from each other by car. Okinawa is only so big, after all- you can apparently drive from one end of the main island to the other in only about 2 hours and 20 minutes, though there are other smaller islands as well.
We know a few things about this show already- first of all, it will be a PPV of some kind (boo!), just like Night 2 will be, but if we’re lucky hopefully they’ll both be half-priced ones like the 3/8 Cinderella opening show (which was 2270 yen if you don’t recall) instead of full priced like the 3/15 finals. Or at least maybe they’ll offer some lower-priced bundle for both of them.
Secondly, we have a couple matches already- one of them is just a tag match featuring locals from the Ryukyu promotion (yes, men on a STARDOM show- utter woke nonsense!), but the other is a pretty enormous match. World of STARDOM Champion Saya Kamitani will face Wonder of STARDOM champion Starlight Kid (technically she could lose the belt to Konami on 3/15, though I don’t personally expect this) in a non-title special singles match. This will be their sixth ever meeting, and Saya has a 4-1 record against her- SLK’s only win came back in the 2022 5*GP, their fourth of the five matches. Most recently they met in the 2024 5* last August. SLK challenged Saya to this match back on 3/9 based on the fact that Saya may have to retire on 4/27 if she loses to Tam Nakano, as she wanted to face her one more time before then (this earned a quick scolding from Saya, who told the “little kitten” not to speak such nonsense). As I watched this challenge happen live I briefly hoped this would be for the 4/2 Korakuen that I’ll be attending next month during my Japan trip, but alas, it’s the lucky Okinawans who get this one instead.
And if you’re wondering why this show is at 4 pm on a Thursday, it’s yet another national holiday in Japan- Shunbun no Hi (or “Vernal Equinox Day”), which celebrates the first day of spring! As you’ll see, almost all four of our wrestling promotions are helping to ring in spring as well, with the only exception being All Japan. I guess they don’t like spring.
NJPW New Japan Cup Night 9
Aore Nagaoka, Nagaoka
5:00 pm local time; 4:00 am eastern; 1:00 am pacific
Live on NJPW World in English & Japanese
The 2025 New Japan Cup comes to a close in the same place it’s finished almost every year since 2017 (the lone exceptions were in the peak pandemic years of 2020, when it finished at Osaka Jo-Hall the night before Dominion, and 2021 when it ended in Sendai)- Nagaoka, the second-largest city in Niigata prefecture behind only the namesake capital city. It’s way, way behind though, as Niigata city has nearly 780,000 people compared to just 264,000 for Nagaoka. Niigata prefecture is close to being on the direct opposite coast from Fukushima, although the journey still takes almost 3 hours by car (even longer by train for once since there’s no direct Shinkansen route, about 4 hours). At least the wrestlers have a couple off days between those two shows though, unlike with that brutal Shizuoka to Fukushima travel we talked about for the last Cup show.
Of course, the main attraction here is the finals of the New Japan Cup. So let’s go ahead and list the singles records for all the possible remaining matchups with the 8 guys we have remaining as I write this!
- Finlay vs. Umino: 1-0 Finlay (only meeting: 2023 NJC quarterfinals)
- Finlay vs. Cobb: 1-0 Finlay (only meeting: 2024 G1)
- Finlay vs. Moloney: first time ever matchup
- Finlay vs. Takagi: 1-1 (they met twice in the 2022 & 2023 G1s, with Finlay winning first and Shingo winning the rematch)
- Uemura vs. Umino: 4-0 Umino (last meeting: 2019 Young Lion Cup league)
- Uemura vs. Cobb: 1-0 Cobb (only meeting: 2024 G1)
- Uemura vs. Moloney: first time ever matchup
- Uemura vs. Takagi: 3-0 Takagi (Shingo beat him once when he was a young lion in 2018, then twice more last year in the NJC first round & a NEVER title match at Resurgence)
- ZSJ vs. Umino: 3-2 ZSJ (last meeting: Wrestle Kingdom 19 main)
- ZSJ vs. Cobb: 4-2 ZSJ (long history dating back to before either guy was in NJPW, with ZSJ winning their first four matches but Cobb taking the last two, most recently to win the NJPW WORLD TV title from him last year at Wrestling Dontaku)
- ZSJ vs. Moloney: first time ever matchup (shocked they never even faced each other in RevPro, but apparently true!)
- ZSJ vs. Takagi: 4-2 ZSJ (they each got a win over the other in last year’s G1, with Shingo winning the block match but ZSJ beating him in the semi finals, and ZSJ then also retained the IWGP World title against Shingo at Power Struggle last year)
- Taichi vs. Umino: 0-0 (would be their first singles match ever)
- Taichi vs. Cobb: 2-2 (Taichi beat him to win the NEVER title in 2019, then they traded wins in three straight G1s between 2019 and 2021, with Cobb winning the most recent one)
- Taichi vs. Moloney: you guessed it- first time ever matchup
- Taichi vs. Takagi: 4-3 Takagi (they had a famous series over the KOPW Title that represents most of these matchups, but their most recent meeting was at 2024’s New Beginning in Sapporo show which Taichi won)
We actually do have one other match for this show already besides the NJC Final at press time: Hiroshi Tanahashi will face Satoshi Kojima in his ongoing retirement tour. This will be their first singles match in nearly 11 years, as they last fought each other in the 2014 G1. Their record is probably a lot closer than you might think at 5-4 in Tana’s favor, with Kojima actually getting the win in their second-to-last match during the G1 the year before in 2013. They have 6 G1 meetings in total including the 2010 finals that Kojima also won, along with a match in the 2008 Champion Carnival in AJPW (Tana won that one), and two IWGP Heavyweight Title matches- Tana beating Kojima for the title to kick off his legendary 2011-12 title reign at Wrestle Kingdom 5, and then Tana beating him again to retain in a rematch the next month at New Beginning in Sendai.
This is our last appearance for NJPW in this column, as they take a bit of a break afterward. They definitely don’t have anymore televised shows for the rest of March, and looking at the Road to Sakura Genesis schedule and the venues they’re running, it wouldn’t surprise me if their next televised show wasn’t until the Korakuen Hall event on Friday 4/4, the night before SG itself from Ryogoku on 4/5 (we don’t have the NJPW World schedule for April yet as I write this, but none of the other Road to venues really stand out as ones they usually televise from- they’re likely to all just be house shows). So yeah, probably another two week or so break from the Shin Nihon as far as televised shows go coming up here, unless they end up doing another one of these weird “test streams” or something that they don’t archive (they ended up doing one toward the end of the Fantasticamania tour before the Korakuens as well- I still don’t understand why they don’t save these shows for VOD later and only air them live!).
NOAH Sunny Voyage 2025
Act City Hamamatsu, Hamamatsu
6:00 pm local time
VOD on Wrestle Universe
NOAH finally checks in to this column with their first show of the period, a pretty standard house show level event from Hamamatsu in Shizuoka prefecture. This is mostly about building up the big matches for their Korakuen Hall show that’s just two days later on 3/22, which we’ll obviously get to in a second. The main event will see Team 2000X’s OZAWA, Tetsuya Endo and Owada-san take on Masa Kitamiya, Takashi Sugiura & Mohammed Yone. Not much else here of note unless Manabu Soya vs. new Canadian foreigner Bryce Hansen really moves you. No? How about Shuhei Taniguchi vs. Black Menso-re? Well if you can’t wait to see either of those matches, the show will apparently be available as a VOD on Wrestle Universe a day later on Friday 3/21.
Saturday, March 22
STARDOM Spring Vacation 2025 ~Hi-sai! Okinawa~Day 2
Okinawa Convention Center, Ginowan
1:00 pm local time; 12:00 am eastern; Friday 3/21 9:00 pm pacific
Live on Internet PPV
STARDOM’s second of two days in Okinawa has one match currently announced, and it’s an all-STARS affair: the wing☆gori team of Hanan & Saya Iida will attempt defense number two of their Goddesses of STARDOM titles against their unitmates Mayu Iwatani & Momo Kohgo. Interestingly enough, this is actually Mayu’s first time challenging for the tag titles in STARDOM in nearly four years- her last challenge came all the way back in July 2021, when the STARDOM Icon teamed with Konami in a losing effort against Giulia & Syuri. For her last time actually holding the belts you have to go back even further, to 2018, when she and Saki Kashima reigned for 119 days from June to September. Her one other time as Goddesses champion was alongside her then-Thunder Rock partner Io Shirai (now Iyo Sky) in a famous 407 day reign from May 2015 to June 2016. Momo, meanwhile, has never held a single title in any promotion in her entire 6-year career.
NOAH Star Navigation Premium 2025
Korakuen Hall, Tokyo
6:30 pm local time; 5:30 am eastern; 2:30 am pacific
Live on Wrestle Universe
NOAH returns to Korakuen Hall in Tokyo with a show that’s honestly much more loaded than their Yokohama Budokan show from earlier this month. It’s a pretty stacked card overall!
The main event will see OZAWA attempt defense number three of his GHC Heavyweight Title when he faces Masa Kitamiya. Now that Hirooki Goto finally won the IWGP (World) Heavyweight Title on his ninth try, I think it’s time to look at Kitamiya as perhaps the next biggest heavyweight title challenger who just can’t seem to get it done. This will be his eighth time challenging for the GHC title, and he’s come up short each and every time- his most recent loss only came last October when he was defeated by Kaito Kiyomiya. I think he’s very likely to make it up to eight unsuccessful challenges just like Goto did, as they would be pretty crazy to take the belt off of OZAWA right now given the positive effect he’s had on their business since they strapped him up back in January. Either way though this has a lot of potential to deliver a great match (depending on your tolerance for T2KX heel antics though I guess), as OZAWA should be more than able to bump around well for Kitamiya here.
The semi-main will see Eita try to make defense number two of his GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title when he faces Alejandro. Interestingly enough these two have apparently never met in a singles match before according to Cagematch, so we’ll see if Eita’s title reign can survive a first time ever meeting in Korakuen. Alejandro is looking to win the GHC Jr. Title for the first time in his career (which Eita just did finally back in January), although it’s only his third time challenging- he most recently came up short against Daga last May. Perhaps not a great omen for him- he did challenge Eita twice before for the GHC Jr. Tag Titles in 2023 & 2024 and lost both times.
Speaking of the GHC Jr. Tag Team Titles, they’ll be on the line third from the top when HAYATA & YO-HEY take on the winners of this year’s Jr. Tag League AMAKUSA & Junta Miyawaki. Keeping to the theme for the night’s title matches, both are looking to win the Jr. Tag Titles for the first time in their respective careers- Junta is another wrestler that’s never held a title at all in fact (the veteran AMAKUSA has been NOAH’s singles junior champion twice before, among many other titles he held before he arrived in the promotion).
KENTA will go one-on-one with Ulka Sasaki in a first-time singles match, after the two crossed paths earlier this month in a tag match in Yokohama. Meanwhile, a four-person tournament for the GHC National Title that OZAWA immediately vacated (and stepped on) after he won the double title match against Manabu Soya (also earlier this month in Yokohama) kicks off, as Tetsuya Endo faces Takashi Sugiura in another first-time singles match (the other first round match is Manabu Soya vs. Galeno on 3/31 in Shinjuku FACE, with the two winners facing off to determine the 17th champion on 4/11 in Niigata). I can’t exactly say it makes the National Title look great to have what feels like a losers’ bracket four man tournament, featuring the guy OZAWA just beat and the guy that guy beat right before in Endo. But whatever I guess!
After Soya got betrayed by Tadasuke back in that aforementioned double title match in Yokohama, he’ll apparently be bringing in a replacement for him in Ratel’s on this show, as he and Yuto Kikuchi team up with the mysterious X to face Naomichi Marufuji, Kenoh and Hajime Ohara. All Soya will tell us about X is that he is “a very passionate man”. Alright then.
The main card will open with an 8-man tag, as T2KX’s Jack Morris, Daga, Tadasuke and Owada-san faces ALL REBELLION’s Kaito Kiymoiya, Galeno, Kai Fujimura & Harutoki. There will also be a dark match where new foreigners Knull & Bryce Hansen face the team of Kazuyuki Fujita and Daiki Odashima. It will be interesting to see Fujita team with Daiki instead of terrorizing the poor kid for a change, I guess! But yeah, all in all, a pretty nice looking card on paper and again definitely much better than the Yokohama show on 3/2.
Sunday, March 23
AJPW New Age Chronicle-z 6
Shin Kiba 1st Ring, Tokyo
12:00 pm local time; Saturday 3/22 11:00 pm eastern; Saturday 3/22 8:00 pm pacific
Live on AJPW.TV
AJPW brings their latest youth-focused show to Shin Kiba on 3/23. Not a show you probably have to go out of your way to watch or anything, but there’s some mildly interesting stuff here I guess. But in the interest of brevity since we’re already approaching 5000 words and I have a much bigger AJPW show to preview before we’re done, I’ll just note you can check out the full five match card (featuring some guest stars from other promotions as well) by clicking the link above.
Thursday, March 27
STARDOM New Blood 20
Shinagawa Intercity Hall, Tokyo
6:30 pm local time; 5:30 am eastern; 2:30 am pacific
Live (free) on STARDOM’s Youtube channel
STARDOM’s own youth-focused brand has a show a few nights later, and like all these New Blood shows it will be streaming live for free on their Youtube channel. We’ve only got one match at press time, what will almost certainly be the main event: E neXus V’s HANAKO & Waka Tsukiyama will attempt defense number two of their New Blood Tag Team Titles against the Cosmic Angels team of Yuna Mizumori & Aya Sakura. This match has been built up pretty damn well for a free Youtube show of their sub-brand: Yuna & Aya won a one-night tournament back on the 3/1 New Blood 19 show, and then Aya and HANAKO were matched up in the first round of the Cinderella tournament on 3/8. HANAKO taunted Aya during the pre-Cinderella press conference a few days before, very clearly getting under her skin when she asked her if she minded that her fellow young Angel Sayaka Kurara seems to get all the attention, and also noted that Aya seems to show a lot more fire when wrestling in “other promotions” than she does in STARDOM itself. The two ended up having a pretty great match for their respective experience levels on 3/8, which ended up going to a 15 minute draw. And now we’ll get the tag title match here. This very easily could be a title change, as Aya & Yuna both feel like they could use the win and it’s also possible they want to move the towering HANAKO on to something bigger (no pun intended).
Friday, March 28
NOAH Sunny Voyage 2025
Yokohama Radiant Hall, Yokohama
6:30 pm local time; 5:30 am eastern; 2:30 am pacific
Live on Wrestle Universe
NOAH heads back to Yokohama in the small Radiant Hall venue for the first of two days, a show that will air live on Wrestle Universe. And that, folks, is all the information I have to share with you here, as they don’t have anything announced for this show yet as I write this. Yup. Did you know I’ll have been in Japan for three days already when this show takes place? I’ll be in Osaka though so I can’t go to it- in fact, NOAH weirdly avoids me for the entire trip as my schedule just never aligns with theirs (the biggest near miss is the Shinjuku FACE show we’ll get to in a second, as it’s the day before I arrive in Tokyo from Shizuoka- sad!), which sucks as I really wanted to hear OZAWA’s awesome theme song live at least. They’re the only one of the four promotions we talk about here that I won’t be able to see this time, in fact. Oh well. You’re probably tired of hearing about my Japan trip by now but I literally have nothing else to write about here. Osaka is a really fun city by the way!
Saturday, March 29
STARDOM in Tokorozawa 2025 Mar.
Saitama Tokorozawa Sakura Town Japan Pavilion Hall A, Tokorozawa
1:00 pm local time; 12:00 am eastern; Friday 3/28 9:00 pm pacific
Live on STARDOM World
STARDOM will be about an hour outside of Tokyo in Saitama prefecture’s fifth largest city of Tokorozawa (population of about 344k) for a show that will stream live on STARDOM World. No matches announced yet at press time, but you can safely expect a smaller card full of tags here.
AJPW Dream Power Series 2025 Final
Ota Ward General Gymnasium, Tokyo
4:00 pm local time; 3:00 am eastern; 12:00 am pacific
Live on AJPW.TV
All Japan will head to Ota Ward Gym to wrap up their March for a major show featuring one hell of a main event (well, we don’t have the final card or match order yet, but if anything other than this main events you can catch me vacationing on the Moon instead of Japan): Jun Saito attempting his third defense of the Triple Crown Title against Kento Miyahara. Somehow it’s been over two years since Kento last held the Triple Crown- he lost the belt to Yuji Nagata in February 2023 in Korakuen Hall, and has since failed in four straight challenges. Two of those failed challenges were against the guy he currently holds the tag titles with, Yuma Aoyagi (in October 2023 and September 2024). He also had a failed challenge against current Youtube star and recent headliner of Shin Kiba shows that draw worse than Zero1 Katsuhiko Nakajima in December 2023, and against Yuma Anzai in May 2024.
So is this finally the night that Kento breaks his Triple Crown losing streak? I could easily see arguments both for and against it, but ultimately I think Jun is holding onto the title for one rather simple reason: I just can’t imagine they end this reign without doing the brother vs. brother title match against Rei (who has to be considered a major Champion Carnival favorite should Jun retain here) first. One last note: these two men have met in singles matches twice before, both in the Carnival (2023 and 2024, with the 2024 one being the final), and Kento won them both.
Speaking of the Champion Carnival, it kicks off about a week and a half later on 4/9 at Korakuen Hall (which will be the AJPW show I’ll be in attendance for in the front row, wheee~), and there will apparently be some kind of rumble match on this show featuring the participants. We don’t have an exact list of who will be in it yet, just that this “Road to Champion Carnival 2025 Rumble” will in fact be happening with the participant list TBA. Maybe they’re waiting to see who of the foreigners they can actually get in the country in time first.
Four of those Carnival participants are confirmed to be in action already (in addition to the Rumble too maybe? guess we’ll see) in a tag team match, as the returning Davey Boy Smith Jr. (making his first appearance in AJPW since the 1/3 Korakuen show) will team with Dragongate’s Madoka Kikuta to face Cyrus (also making his first appearance since 1/3!) and the debuting Xyon (a former NXT roster member who was released from his WWE contract in April 2024).
The only other title match currently announced for this show will see MUSASHI attempt defense number three of the AJPW World Jr. Heavyweight Title against Seiki Yoshioka, who laid down the challenge at Korakuen on 3/9 after MUSASHI retained against Seigo Tachibana. Seigo will also be in action on this show facing Suwama, who hasn’t been seen in AJPW since the 2/9 Korakuen. Suwama by the way, who left AJPW as a full timer at the start of the year, will be missing the Champion Carnival for the first time since 2016, and only the second time since 2005.
The only other match currently announced for this show is a tag match pitting GAORA TV Champion Yuko Miyamoto & Fuminori Abe against Naruki Doi & Senor Saito.
Overall, certainly not the deepest big show card so far (it’s possible they still add more but it’s also possible all the other bigger names not currently booked are simply in the Carnival rumble thing), but I’m not sure they need much more than Jun vs. Kento, easily the biggest match AJPW can book with their current roster. And it’s also one where you could legitimately make a case for either guy to win, which always helps too.
NOAH Limit Break ex.
Yokohama Radiant Hall, Yokohama
4:30 pm local time; 3:30 am eastern; 12:30 am pacific
Live on Wrestle Universe
Interesting that they’re continuing to run these LIMIT BREAK shows even while Go Shiozaki is out long-term with injury, as this will be the first one since the 1/13 show (also from Yokohama Radiant Hall) where Go lost to Mohammed Yone and then announced his absence. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of card they put together here without him, as there’s nothing currently announced as I write this.
Sunday, March 30
STARDOM in Hachioji 2025 Mar.
Tokyo Tama Future Messe (Hachioji City), Tokyo
1:00 pm local time; 12:00 am eastern; Saturday 3/29 9:00 pm pacific
Live on STARDOM World
Another smaller STARDOM show from the Tokyo suburb of Hachioji, another show that will air live on STARDOM World, and another show where we have nothing currently announced as I write this. Not much else to say really, and this is almost 6000 words already anyway so let’s just move on to wrapping this monster up!
Monday, March 31
NOAH Sunny Voyage 2025
Shinjuku FACE, Tokyo
6:30 pm local time; 5:30 am eastern; 2:30 am pacific
Live on Wrestle Universe
Our last show of the month is a small NOAH show from Shinjuku FACE, for which we currently have one match announced: the other semi final match in the four-person GHC National Title tournament, with Manabu Soya facing Galeno. The winner moves on to face the winner of the Endo/Sugiura match from the 3/22 Korakuen in the finals, which as I mentioned earlier will happen next month on 4/11 in Niigata.
And that’s it, we’re done! The entire rest of the month of March covered!
Now, as I’ve mentioned a few times in this column, I’ll be leaving for Japan soon- on 3/24, in fact. So I’m not going to guarantee you another schedule column to start the month of April. I would like to do one, and maybe I’ll try to find some time to get through at least the first eleven days while I’m riding on the Shinkansen or something, but no promises! But either way, we’ll be back at some point during the month of April, so until then as always- enjoy the wrestling!
