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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.