New Japan announces 46th anniversary card feat. Okada vs. Ospreay

Originally published at https://www.postwrestling.com/2018/02/15/new-japan-announced-46th-anniversary-card-feat-okada-vs-ospreay/

New Japan Pro Wrestling has announced the entire card for their 46th-anniversary show that is scheduled for Tuesday, March 6th at Ota Ward Gymnasium.

The card will air early Tuesday morning at 5 am Eastern on New Japan World and will have the option of English commentary available.

Below is the card:
*Kazuchika Okada vs. Will Ospreay in a non-title match
*Minoru Suzuki vs. Togi Makabe for the Intercontinental title
*Tetsuya Naito vs. Taichi
*Sanada and EVIL vs. Hirooki Goto and Yoshi-Hashi in a non-title match
*Roppongi 3K vs. Hiromu Takahashi and Bushi vs. El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru for the IWGP junior heavyweight tag titles
*Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano vs. Juice Robinson and David Finlay
*Katsuya Kitamura vs. Manabu Nakanishi – Match #7 in Kitamura’s trial series of matches
*KUSHIDA, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Jushin Thunder Liger, Tiger Mask, and Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Yuji Nagata, Toa Henare, Shota Umino, Tomoyuki Oka, and Tetsuhiro Yagi

Okada and Ospreay will headline the show in a non-title match for the CHAOS teammates. The two hyad a singles match in October 2015 for Revolution Pro Wrestling and Ospreay was brought into New Japan the following year as a recruit by Okada.

Didn’t Kitamura alread face Nakanishi in the trial series? :confused:

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He absolutely did, but IIRC wasn’t that a last minute replacement for the injured Kojima??

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I don’t know, but that does make a little sense given the timing… still, surely they could’ve found someone else in the mean time and not just repeat this match - it’s not like it was all that good.

Then again, I’m probably just over-thinking it. There’s no one tuning into these show specifically fro Kitamura’s matches, I’m sure.

This could also be New Japan deciding to bookend the series by having Kitamura go up against Nakanishi. That being said, I wouldn’t be surprised if they have him come beyond close to winning, if not somehow winning the match.

While not the biggest deal, I’m a little disappointed that Okada/Ospreay isn’t for the IWGP title. Sure there’s plenty of reasons why. It does show how protective they are of even just having the title on the line, I mean Okada has been champ since June 2016 and he’s only had 10 title defences, that’s not a complaint as it just means that those defences mean more when they occur.

That card is very weak. Okada/Ospreay is a great match but everything else is skippable. I’ll probably watch the last 5 minutes of the top 4 undercard matches before Okada/Ospreay, at most.