NJPW (New Japan Pro Wrestling) announced the currently listed matches for their upcoming Road To New Beginning shows.
You can check out the full announcement below:
Korakuen hall main events set on Road to new Beginning!
2025 is now in full swing, but the New year doesn’t truly feel like it’s underway until the first Korakuen Hall event of the calendar. The Road to New Beginning sees four cards in the hallowed Hall, with two big title matches as well as some first time combinations to look forward to!
January 22: El Desperado and Hirooki Goto team up!
The main event on January 22 will see an unprecedented tag team affair, as a double championship preview will see Hirooki Goto and El Desperado face Kosei Fujita and Zack Sabre Jr. Though El Desperado’s representation of Hontai in recent years has allowed him to be on the same side as Goto, this will be the first time for them to form a two on two tag team since way back in May of 2014.
The occasion is a double preview of Kosei Fujita’s challenge to the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Desperado on February 4, and Hirooki Goto’s challenge to the IWGP World Heavyweight Champion Zack Sabre Jr. one week later in Osaka. Fujita is already the youngest ever champion in IWGP history after his junior tag title win alongside Robbie Eagles in the Tokyo Dome, but wants to be singles champion as well. He’ll be looking to assert himself as a challenger, while supporting the Frontman ZSJ, who is looking for his fifth defence of the IWGP gold.
January 23: Oiwa vs YOSHI-HASHI!
After the two came to blows during New Year dash on January 6, Ryohei Oiwa and YOSHI-HASHI will go head to head in Korakuen hall on January 23. This match will also mark Oiwa’s first singles main event in NJPW, one month to the day after tearing the house down alongside Zack Sabre Jr. and opposite Shota Umino and Tomohiro Ishii to end 2024. New Beginning sees a theme of the *New* New Japan getting underway, and Oiwa proudly represents what he calls the ‘super new generation’ in NJPW. But will he be able to defeat the Headhunter in this high pressure spot?
February 3: NJPW World TV Championship!
February 3’s card will be headlined by a match for the NJPW World TV Championship as El Phantasmo seeks his second defence over Jeff Cobb. On the face of things, it’s second verse, same as the first for ELP and Cobb after both collided over the TV gold in San Jose on January 11. Yet neither man was happy with how the song ended at Battle in the Valley. A retention for ELP came only as a result of the champion’s advantage amid a double countout on the night, thanks in no small part to Cobb launching a human missile at Phantasmo that stopped him breaking the referee’s count. Now both champion and challenger have requested no countouts for this rematch, and while both await confirmation of the requested stipulation, the fight is sure to escalate in intensity either way.
February 4: IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship
After defending the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship against Taiji Ishimori at Battle in the Valley, El Desperado seeks his second defense against a much younger challenger in Kosei Fujita. Fujita was on the cusp of victory in Wrestle Dynasty’s lucha gauntlet match when Ishimori sent the referee crashing into the Japanese Young Punk. Fujita feels like he deserved a shot of his own at the champion and has been granted one, in the same Korakuen Hall sight of an emotional defeat to the current champion during Best of the Super Jr. 31. Will Fujita earn redemption and become the youngest double champion in IWGP history?
