New junior heavyweight match announced for NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 20
Five matches are now official for Wrestle Kingdom 20.
A four-way match featuring El Desperado, SHO, Kosei Fujita, and Taiji Ishiimori has been added to the lineup. The winner will earn a future shot at the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship, currently held by DOUKI.
The match was announced during a press conference in Tokyo on Sunday, which also confirmed Kazuchika Okada as Hiroshi Tanahashi’s opponent for Tanahashi’s retirement match.
Ishimori pinned SHO in a tag match on Saturday’s show and called out DOUKI after, upset at how DOUKI and SHO had defeated him and Robbie X in the finals of the Super Junior Tag League. DOUKI was later confronted backstage by El Desperado, who was upset that DOUKI cheated to win the title from him last month. Best of the Super Juniors winner Kosei Fujita had also confronted DOUKI backstage last week in Gifu.
DOUKI set up the challengers four-way during his backstage comments on Saturday, making sure his tag team partner SHO was part of the match as well.
“I’m done dealing with this,” DOUKI said. “You guys can run your own contenders match.“
“Desperado, Ishimori, and there was another loud punk, Fujita. Go ahead and have your contenders match, but there’s one condition from the champion, include this guy in the match (putting his hand on SHO). Don’t you think he’s the one who truly deserves to be a challenger?”
The updated lineup for the show is below:
NJPW WrestleKingdom 20 (January 4)
- IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Konosuke Takeshita vs. IWGP Global Heavyweight Champion Yota Tsuji in a winner takes all match
- Hiroshi Tanahashi retirement match: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada
- EVIL vs. Aaron Wolf for NEVER Openweight title
- NJPW Strong Women’s Champion Saya Kamitani vs. IWGP Women’s Champion Syuri in a winner takes all match
- El Desperado vs. SHO vs. Kosei Fujita vs. Taiji Ishiimori in an IWGP Junior Heavyweight number one contender match
Ian Carey is a writer from Toronto, Ontario, Canada, whose work has been featured in NOW Magazine, The Huffington Post, and more. A lifelong wrestling aficionado born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, he has covered the industry for a decade and a half. He joined the f4wonline.com team in 2019.