Titles are changing hands left and right in New Japan Pro-Wrestling.
First it was the IWGP Tag Team titles and now, the Junior belts have new owners. That’s because Wato & YOH beat the Ichiban Sweet Boys to capture the IWGPJunior Heavyweight Tag Team titles. The duo got the three count after a combination of Total Elimination and Falconblow.
For YOH, this is his sixth run with the Junior Heavyweight titles. His other five stints are with his former partner SHO of Roppongi 3k. His longest run was back in 2020 where YOH and SHO held the belts for an astounding 236 days. SHO would turn on his tag team partner in late 2021 and is currently the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag Team Champion with Ren Narita and Yujiro Takahashi of House of Torture.
This also isn’t Wato’s first run with the belts as he won them with Ryusuke Taguchi back in 2022 and they held them for 121 days.
Robbie Eagles and Kosei Fujita originally won those titles at Wrestle Kingdom 19 in a wild ladder match that also featured Intergalactic Jet Setters (Kevin Knight & KUSHIDA), Bullet Club War Dogs (Clark Connors & Drilla Moloney) and Catch 22 (Francesco Akira & TJP). They managed to successfully defend their belts twice after the big pay-per-view against Roppongi ReVice (Rocky Romero & YOH) and BULLET CLUB War Dogs (Robbie X & Taiji Ishimori). This rivalry was developing for a good period of time before the title change took place.
Congratulations to YOH and Master Wato! Can get they beat the record for longest tag title run? Currently, Shinjiro Otani & Tatsuhito Takaiwa hold that record for 348 days . Of course, we’ll just have to wait and see at this point. There's no word yet on whether Wato & YOH and the Ichiban Sweet Boys will a rematch for those prestigious belts.