As NJPW rolls on towards their next major show on the way to January 4th in the Tokyo Dome, more clairty has been put on what might be happening with Will Ospreay and his IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship.
Who Will Be Challenging?
At the end of Road to Power Struggle Super Jr Tag League Day 13, during a tag match to determine if Will Ospreay & his tag partner Robbie Eagles would advance to the finals against Suzuki-Gun (El Desperado & Yoshinobu Kanemaru), Los Inobernables De Japon member BUSHI would run in, spray Ospready with the evil green mist, and cost The Birds Of Prey their matchup, and chance at the finals. Ospreay will certainly want revenge on the evil luchador, and the challenge has been set for their upcoming PPV.
Their History
BUSHI & Ospreay have only had two singles matches against each other, both in the Best Of The Super Juniors annual tournament, where Ospreay had beaten BUSHI in this years event, but BUSHI beat Ospreay in 2018. Their paths have crossed in many multiman tags, but as NJPW rarely does singles matches outside of title matches & tournaments, that is a still pretty fresh matchup.
Who Will have the Advantage?
Will Ospreay is the current ace of the Juniors Division, being a 3 time winner of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, and a two time winner of the Best of The Super Juniors Tournemant. Ospreay even entered the realm of the heavyweights entering this years G1 Climax, scoring 4 wins, beating the likes of Hiroshi Tanahashi, KENTA, Bad Luck Fale & SANADA using his agility as an advantage.
Bushi meanwhile is a one time IWGP Junior Heavyweight champion, has never won a major tournament, and mainly had success as a holder of the NEVER Openweight Six Man Tag Team Champion alongside fellow Los Inobernables De Japon members EVIL & SANADA.
The advantage in a straight up match easily goes to Ospreay, but BUSHI has enough devious tricks up his sleeve to throw some wrenchs into the victory plans of Ospreay, including the blinding green mist he used to goad Ospreay into this match in the first place.
The Potential Of A Returning Star
On July 7, 2018 at the G1 Special In San Franciso, rising Junior Heavyweight star and then champion Hiromu Takahashi was injured and had to vacate the title, as he was set to be out for 9 to 12 months and wouldn’t be able to make key defenses. We’re beyond that window, he’s also a part of Los Inobernables De Japon, and he will have a claim to the title upon his return. Could this matchup with BUSHI simply be a stepping stone to his return to try and reclaim his title on January 4th in the Tokyo Dome at Wrestle Kingdom? Time will tell, but we have a great matchup coming on on November 3rd at Power Struggle in the mean time.
