Wrestle Dynasty preview
Half of this card is effectively a spoiler for last night's show, so watch out for spoilers.
Also, I thought this show was going to overlap with AEW Collision, but it looks like Collision airs 8-10pm EST, and the Wrestle Dynasty pre-show starts at 10pm EST. So unless AEW does a big overrun, it's fine!
Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ricochet - Sabre is defending the IWGP world title. On November 4, both Shota Umino and Ricochet challenged Sabre for the belt. Last night, Zack took care of Shota, and now it's Ricochet's turn. Ricochet grew up in Paducah; I'm guessing this is the first time anyone from Kentucky has ever headlined the Tokyo Dome.
Cagematch lists seven singles bouts between these two, between 2013 and 2017. Sabre leads the series with four wins, but Ricochet won their last three encounters. Of course, that was all before Sabre joined NJPW full-time, and Ricochet signed with WWE. Both men are older and wiser today, but the fundamentals of the matchup haven't changed--it's a noodly grapply guy versus a speedy flippy guy.
Over in AEW, Ricochet has been trying real hard to be a contemptible jackass, to the point that fans pelted him with toilet paper in the Hammerstein Ballroom. It's not clear if the New Japan crowd will be as hostile to him. (For example, Konosuke Takeshita would get booed in the US just for bringing Don Callis out with him, but last night nobody in Japan seemed to mind.) I'm curious if Ricochet will try to work as a heel, or if he'll just go whichever way the crowd leads him.
It would be remarkable if Sabre drops the title tonight, less than 24 hours after crushing Umino's dreams. But I just don't see it happening. Putting the IWGP world belt on an AEW guy is a cool idea, but they just did it last year with Jon Moxley, and Ricochet is no Jon Moxley. I expect Sabre to retain here, and take the world title to San Jose against Hechicero, and Osaka against (presumably) Hirooki Goto.
Gabe Kidd vs. Kenny Omega - Kidd is the STRONG men's champion, but the title isn't on the line in this match. This is Omega's first match since December 5, 2023; ten days after that, he announced he had been hospitalized for diverticulitis.
To hype his in-ring return, Kenny did a media tour in Japan a couple of months ago. In an interview he was asked about up-and-coming NJPW wrestlers and namedropped "Greg Kidd." Gabe's whole character is being a fucking psycho with a short fuse, so you can imagine how well he took that. When Omega appeared on the November 4, show, they staged a backstage fight with Kidd, and at that point you knew this match had to happen.
Omega is a big draw for New Japan, and knows how to build himself up as a "final boss" type that shouldn't lose. That being said, Kidd reacts to everything like a soccer hooligan with rabies after you cut him off in traffic, and that energy is enough to make me think he can punch above his weight against anyone. Like, Kenny is going to do his big Final Fantasy entrance and show of his finesse and Gabe is going to fucking throw a chair at his mouth.
The fun thing with Kidd is that, even when his psycho brawling seems to be overwhelming his opponent, his rage and pride work against him, and he makes mistakes that cost him the match. If he ever learns to control that, he'll be unstoppable, but we're years away from that happening. Ordinarily I'd say Omega would be able to weather the storm for a surefire victory. But if Kidd hits Omega RIGHT IN THE DIVERTICULITIS~! (and they've made it clear that will happen), then there's a logical way for Kenny to put Gabe over. As far as I'm concerned, this match is too close to call.
Yota Tsuji vs. Jack Perry - Tsuji won the IWGP global title last night, so this is his first defense. This match was made weeks ago, when Perry laid out Tsuji on November 8. I guess Perry is mad that he didn't win the New Japan Cup, and Tsuji did? Or maybe Jack sees Tsuji as the kind of smiling popular babyface that he used to try to be. It probably doesn't matter.
Perry has been absent from AEW ever since he lost the TNT championship. It is implied, but not directly stated, that he has joined his cohorts Matt and Nick Jackson in hiding, "working from home" to avoid a run-in with Jon Moxley's Death Riders. This match might give us some insight into what's next for the little guy, but I sort of doubt it.
Giving Perry the win wouldn't be a bad thing, except Tsuji literally just won the title, after two years of half-assed stop-start pushes. I need Yota to just win for a few months, dammit. Even though Jack's whole deal is spoiling everything, I choose to believe this will be like the scene in Jurassic Park where they feed the goat to the T. rex.
Matt Jackson & Nick Jackson vs. Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb vs. Tetsuya Naito & Hiromu Takahashi - This is a three-way tag team match for the vacant IWGP heavyweight tag team title. So each team gets a corner, and only two men can legally be in the ring. Anyone from any team can tag one of the legal men to get into the match. The first man to score a pinfall or submission on any opponent will win the match and the title for his team.
Weeks ago, the Young Bucks (Matt and Nick) declared their intention to win the tag title on this show. At the time, it wasn't even clear who they'd be challenging for the title, since World Tag League was still in progress, and everybody expected the winners of that tournament to challenge for O-Khan and HENARE for the title on January 4. Then New Japan just announced O-Khan & HENARE vs. the Bucks on this show, as if World Tag League and Wrestle Kingdom were irrelevant.
Then Henare was injured, so the champs had to pull out of the tournament and vacate the belts. Naito and Hiromu won World Tag League and decided not to challenge for the tag title at all, I guess? So we ended up with O-Khan and a mystery partner versus the Bucks. Then, less than 24 hours before this match, Khan revealed Cobb as his partner, and challenged Naito and Hiromu to join the match and make it a three-way. Okay? Why didn't they just make it a three-way last month? I don't understand.
If any AEW talent on this show is going to win a New Japan title tonight, I think the Bucks make the most sense. I like O-Khan and Cobb but there's no reason to think they're so special that they need to win this match; I'm not even sure why they're here expect to get them on the show. Naito and Hiromu would be fun as the tag champs, but if that was the plan they sure tried real hard to act like nobody came up with that plan until the last minute. So I have no idea who the favorites are in this one. Welp, when in doubt, pick the Bucks to win.
Konosuke Takeshita vs. Tomohiro Ishii - Ishii is challenging for the NEVER title and the AEW international championship. For weeks the build to this weekend has been Takeshita vs. Shingo Takagi, winner take all, on January 4, and then the winner goes on to defend against Ishii. I like Ishii a lot, but having him waiting for two top champions to fight over which one gets to fight him seems odd. Clearly the goal was for Takeshita to fight two heavy-hitting mean guys, one right after the other, but they couldn't just say that without giving away the outcome of the Takagi match. This should be fun, but there's no way Ishii is going to beat Takeshita.
Shota Umino vs. Claudio Castagnoli - Jon Moxley sent a video in to New Japan, where he explained that Claudio was coming to this show to send Shota a "message." Reading between the lines, Mox mentored Umino for years in New Japan, but now Mox is a supervillain in AEW, so it stands to reason he's pissed that Umino is a babyface that wouldn't approve of Mox's war on "complacency." The bottom line is that Castagnoli is here to beat the fuck out of Shota. Umino has been working through an ankle injury and he's 24 hours removed from a huge loss to Zack Sabre. He'll be dead meat if he doesn't pull himself together, and I'm not confident that he can.
It feels like the long-term direction is to set up Moxley vs. Umino, but if they don't want to do it here, in the Tokyo Dome, I can't believe they're going to do it any time soon. It's conceivable that Claudio will "convince" Shota to see things Mox's way and align with the Death Riders. But the safer bet is that Shota will remember his principles and valiantly defeat the bad guy for all the kids out there.
David Finlay vs. Brody King - Brody called out Finlay weeks ago, before we knew this wasn't going to be an IWGP global title match. Without the belt this feels like it's just sort of there, although I like both guys and I love the idea of them savagely beating the piss out of each other. Now that Finlay has put over Yota Tsuji, there's less of a need to protect him, so King might just be able to put him away and send him further into a downward spiral. On the other hand, if Finlay was going to lose here, I think AEW would have sent a bigger name to beat him. I think this could go either way.
Mercedes Mone vs. Mina Shirakawa - This is a double title match. Shirakawa is defending the RevPro British women's title, which was unified with the Queen of Southside title in 2023, so that's why she carries two belts for one championship. Mone is putting the STRONG women's title on the line, but the AEW TBS title is not involved. Basically, if Mercedes wins she gets all of the belts, but if Mina wins she will only get one of Mone's belts.
Mercedes has been on a roll lately with two great bouts against Kris Statlander, and an even better match against Hazuki. I figure there's no reason this match can't be on that level. Then again, being the third match on the main card works against them--I can't picture the bookers giving them 20-30 minutes to steal the show. I could see this match going either way, but my gut says it's about time for Mone to drop some of her hardware, and there may never be a better place to do it than in the Tokyo Dome.
Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Katsuyori Shibata - This match was made last night, when Shibata did a run-in to save Tanahashi from the House of Torture. Twenty years ago, Tana, Shibata, and Shinsuke Nakamura were dubbed the "New Musketeers," and they lived up to the hype by leading New Japan into its glory years. Now Tana is kicking off his retirement tour, and Shibata wants one last match.
If people act like they thought they'd never see this match again, that's because they almost didn't. During a 2017 match, Shibata suffered a nearly fatal hematoma in his brain due to his brutal headbutts. His career looked to be over, but he returned for a pair of exhibition grappling matches in late 2021 and early 2022. In the second match, he appeared to go into business for himself and demanded a normal match, and I'm still not sure if that was just part of the show. Either way, it seemed like New Japan benched Shibata, and it felt like he had to go to AEW/ROH to resume even a part-time in-ring career.
This is the kind of match where sentiment is more important than who should go over. I could see Tana putting over the guy who's not retiring, or Shibata doing the honors so Tana can celebrate with the crowd. It really makes no difference what they do here.
Lucha gauntlet match - This is supposed to be an eight-man gauntlet, so two men will start the match and each additional man will enter at one-minute intervals. The match can end before all the participants have entered, but I'm guessing it won't. All we know about the participants is that four will be from the NJPW roster, and four will be coming in from CMLL. Dave Meltzer reported that most of the top names in CMLL are booked in Mexico, and only a handful of key guys would be available for this match. So I guess maybe Hechicero might be here, but it seems far more likely that we're getting four NJPW midcarders and four CMLL midcarders.
This match clearly exists to give us a hot opener for the main card, and to justify putting the CMLL logo on the advertising. Other than that, nothing about the match matters. I think a CMLL guy should win, but that's hard to say for sure when I don't even know who's in the match.
Dustin Rhodes & Sammy Guevara vs. SHO & Yoshinobu Kanemaru - This is scheduled as the second kickoff match. The Sons of Texas (Rhodes and Guevara) are defending the ROH tag team title. This is Sammy's first match in the Tokyo Dome; Dustin was last here in 1993, about six months before Sammy was born. Sho and Nobu are obviously in this match to put the champs over.
Athena vs. Willow Nightingale vs. Persephone vs. Momo Watanabe - This is set to be the opening match in the kickoff. This is a four-way match, and the final of the International Women's Cup tournament. Whoever scores the first pinfall or submission over any opponent will win the match. Athena's ROH women's world championship is not at stake.
The winner will earn a title shot, apparently for any women's championship available in New Japan, AEW, CMLL, Stardom, ROH, and maybe RevPro for all I know. I'd say Athena is the heavy favorite, but I don't know what she needs with a title shot. Willow would be my pick, although that's without knowing much about Watanabe or Persephone. So I expect this match to surprise me one way or another.
