Ladies and gentlemen, after much wait and much hype, the time has come! New Japan Pro Wrestling brings you Wrestle Kingdom 14 – two days of it, in fact! The WrestleMania equivalent of Japan’s biggest promotion becomes all the bigger, starting tonight! This is sure to be one of the most incredible weekends in wrestling history! I’m Jordan Huie of the Overtimer and I’ll be here with my coverage of the shows as they happen!
With all my duties covering WWE and AEW I haven’t really had much time to talk about New Japan this past year, but I am a massive fan and I can’t let a stop at the Tokyo Dome go by without getting in on it! So let’s take a look at what we have on tap for Night 1!
IWGP Tag Team Championships: The Guerrillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa) (c) vs. FinJuice (David Finlay & Juice Robinson)
And so we have our first title match of the weekend, as well as the first match that actually gives me pause in predicting a winner. On one side, we have GoD, New Japan’s ace team – albeit somewhat by default after their top rivals all left one by one over the past few years. The two of them have actually held these titles dating back to February of 2019, the longest reign for those belts in years.
On the other side, we have FinJuice, a relatively brand new team that won the World Tag League last month to get this shot. These are two guys who are both due some cred, especially Finlay who has been with New Japan for about as long as Jay White has, yet hasn’t achieved near as much. Under normal circumstances, I’d probably be picking new champs here.
But there’s one little wrinkle to this. On Night 2 of Wrestle Kingdom 14, Juice Robinson will be challenging for the IWGP US title, which is a championship that he has a lot of history with, his actual story in 2019 revolved around it. To me, it’s much more likely that he takes that title back than gain this one. And I don’t see him doing both, becoming double champ on Night 2 would sorta undermine what they’re already doing with the Heavyweight and IC titles in the main event.
Another thing worth noting is where this win would likely put GoD in history.
Should Loa and Tama retain their titles here, they likely won’t get another major challenge for them for a while. Odds are pretty good that a win here means they’ll end up crossing that threshold to having a year long tag team title reign. They would be the first team to achieve this feat since, wait for it… Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson during the initial incarnation of the Bullet Club.
Whether letting GoD surpass them is something New Japan actively wants or it’s just a coincidence, it’d nonetheless do a lot to further the idea that the modern day Bullet Club is just as strong as the old, if not even stronger. GoD to retain.
