The long-awaited night is finally here. For the first time, we’ll be to actually call this the January 5 Dome Show! Silly as that sounds, this is serious stuff here, a monumental and historic night for pro wrestling. Wrestle Kingdom 14 is one double the scope of everything that has come before it, a full weekend of wrestling greatness. And now we’re here on Night 2, where things are heating up more than ever before.
I’m Jordan Huie of the Overtimer, and it’s a good thing my sleep schedule was already a great big mess by the end of last year! Otherwise I’d never be able to stick with you for the entirety of these shows! It’s a great trade-off, if you ask me. I’ll be previewing the action for tonight, just as I did for Night 1, so let’s get to it!
IWGP Junior Tag Team Championships: Bullet Club (Taiji Ishimori & El Phantasmo) (c) vs. Roppongi 3K (SHO & YOH)
While these titles have never been the most significant around, these matches are often very fun to watch, and almost always deliver on the big stage in particular. And this one should be no different. Taiji Ishimori and El Phantasmo are among the best Junior tag teams I’ve seen, just extraordinarily talented. They’re probably my favorite tandem in New Japan since the Bucks left. Although admittedly, that’s mostly going off their lone title defense against Will Ospreay and Robbie Eagles… but that match was absolutely incredible so hey!
SHO & YOH on the other hand are basically the Aces of this division in a sense. They’ve won the Super Junior Tag Tournament three years in a row and the Bucks effectively passed the torch to them. The long-form idea has always seemed to be to eventually have them split off and become the Junior singles stars of tomorrow, with SHO in particular reminding many of Kushida.
One thing that’s interesting about R3K, is that even though they’re basically the cornerstone of the Junior tag division, they have yet to leave the Tokyo Dome with the titles. They went into WK12 as champs, and were challengers for them at WK13, but lost both times.
That might be due to be rectified, if they’re gonna be a team for much longer. Otherwise though it might be a dramatic enough failure to drive a wedge between them… but I think the safe pick is going with Roppongi 3K to finally get that big Dome win.
