Who’s ready for the Best of the Super Juniors?
New Japan Pro-Wrestling is hot off the heels of their New Japan Cup. It was another strong year for the annual tournament and on paper, that might be the case for the Best of the Super Juniors tournament.
The Best of the Super Juniors tournament is more like the G1 Climax, where the first portion is a round-robin style tournament. Whether it’s by pinfall, submission, countout, or disqualification, a win is worth two points. A draw is worth one point, and a loss gets you zero points.The time limit for each match this year is 30 minutes. The tournament was actually introduced in 1988 and big names such as Owen Hart, Dave Finlay (who is the father of recent winner David Finlay), Eddie Guerrero, Finn Balor, Ricochet, and Will Ospreay have all competed in the tournament.
The Best of the Super Juniors starts on May 10 and will happen across 13 shows, with the finals on June 1. Twenty wrestlers will be featured and split into two blocks.
The usual suspects are mostly here; KUSHIDA, Robbie Eagles, El Desperado, Taiji Ishimori, Ryusuke Taguchi, YOH, and Hiromu Takahashi. However, there are several new names such as AEW’s Nick Wayne, who will be entering the tournament for the first time in his career. MAO is also a new entry in this year’s tournament. New AEW star Kevin Knight is in his third year, but it should be interesting since he’s a full time AEW star now. A CMLL name is expected to be announced for the B-Block soon.
As always, the winner of the Best of the Super Juniors will receive a shot at the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title, which is currently held by El Desperado. The title match will take place at Dominion. New Japan Pro-Wrestling hasn’t officially confirmed the date and time, though that’s been the case for previous winners since 2010. Should they release a different date and time then we'll release the updates. Check out the full list of names below:
A Block:
- El Desperado
- Ryusuke Taguchi
- YOH
- Master Wato
- KUSHIDA
- Kevin Knight
- Ninja Mack
- Kosei Fujita
- Robbie Eagles
- Hiromu Takahashi
B Block:
- BUSHI
- Francesco Akira
- Taiji Ishimori
- Clark Connors
- SHO
- Yoshinobu Kanemaru
- Dragon Dia
- MAO
- Nick Wayne
- CMLL representative – A CMLL wrestler will be announced very soon.