As we move deeper into May, the season of the junior heavyweights is upon us! But Best of the Super Juniors isn’t the only tournament with ties to May as we discover with our weekly dive into the archives.
May 9 1980: Dragon Fever Runs Wild
In a season where we think about junior heavyweights, it’s important to remember just how influential Tatsumi Fujinami was to the division. Laying the groundwork for Tiger Mask to explode onto the scene in the early 1980s, Fujinami blazed a trail through the 1970s, with a dynamic wrestling style and distinct look that made ‘Dragon Fever’ run wild for fans in Japan. Fujinami would seize the WWF’s Junior Heavyweight Championship in New York, and defended it across two reigns for a combined 1375 days against diverse opponents.
One of those opponents was Chavo Guerrero. Long before younger brother Eddie Guerrero took on the famous Black Tiger mask, Chavo would challenge Fujinami in between successful tours in the western NWA territories. This was a thrilling display far ahead of its time nearly four decades ago.
May 10, 1985: Champion Series For Masked Superstar
While we have come to celebrate the most prestigious of junior heavyweight tournaments in late spring in recent decades, this wasn’t always the case. In 1985, it was the heavyweights that were making the headlines, and not just those from NJPW.
In 1983, the IWGP League was born. Representing NJPW’s proud place in the global wrestling landscape, the International Wrestling Grand Prix was a precursor of sorts to the modern day G1 Climax, and saw the best wrestlers from around the world compete in a league, with the eventual winner Hulk Hogan leaving with a title belt (though not one regularly defended).
1984’s second running of the tournament saw Inoki emerge on top, and face Hogan as his prize, getting revenge for a controversial loss the year prior. This was in an era of close working relations between NJPW and the WWF, leading to 1985’s tournament becoming the first ever IWGP WWF Champion series. A single elimination tournament rather than the league format of prior years, the series saw the best of Japan and America compete; the winner would face last year’s IWGP Champion Inoki, while the runner-up would go on to challenge then WWF Champion Hogan.
In the first matchup of the tournament in Fukuoka, Seiji Sakaguchi would take on the enigmatic Masked Superstar. Superstar would fall by the wayside via countout as Sakaguchi moved on, with tough competition still to come in the form of young up-and-comer, the aforementioned Tatsumi Fujinami, and overwhelming tournament favourite, Andre the Giant.
May 12 1996: ChoTen in Korakuen
We fast forward now to 1996; a year that many fans in the west associate with the birth of the New World Order. Its Japanese wing would be formally setup in 1997, but neither nWo Japan, and the New World Order on either side of the Pacific arguably would ever take off to the same degree had it not been for Masahiro Chono.
The nWo was yet to make its presence felt in either Japan or America as of May 1996, but groundwork was doubtless being laid. Masahiro Chono was in the midst of a dramartic change of disposition ever since the prior year’s G1 Climax, a change of disposition that saw him change his look and attitude from hard working blue chip prospect in colourful tights to black leather, a goatee and a bad attitude. No longer a team player for New Japan, Chono was a lone wolf that refused to be part of team NJPW in their clashes with the UWF up to the spring.
Chono had his new attitude recognised by veteran antagonist Hiro Saito. Saito took Chono under his wing and resurrected the Okami Gundan, a stable of renegades Saito had been a part of in the 1980s. Young prospect Hiroyoshi Tenzan would also join the group, and the ChoTen tag team would rech the summit of the IWGP Tag Team division a massive five times in the coming years.
This upstart new stable would draw the ire of another group of outsiders that was given a new edge for the 1990s. Heisei Ishingun was a revival of the Ishingun group that Riki Choshu spearheaded a decade earlier. Shiro Koshinaka and Tatsutoshi Goto’s group was an antagonistic force ever since the decade began, and the presence of Okami Gundan on the scene led instantly to a turf war.
The result, a tag match in Korakuen Hall that’s as wild as they come.
May 13, 2019: Final Boss on Level One
When Best of the Super Junior 26 kicked off on May 10, 2019, it did so with a stacked card at Sendai Sun Plaza Hall. In the main event spot was a rematch from the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship main event from Dontaku just a week prior between Ryu Lee and Taiji Ishimori. Underneath that though was a match almost as hotly anticipated.
Shingo Takagi had been on SHO’s radar ever since he had first appeared in NJPW the prior October. During the 2018 BoSJ, SHO had established himself not just as a tag team expert, but as a potential major singles star, and the name to look to in the division when it came to raw strength. Yet the Dragon’s appearance as a junior heavyweight initially, threatened the RPG3K member, and SHO made it his duty to hand Takagi his first loss in a New Japan ring.
While that didn’t happen, SHO did charge full steam ahead into his opening tournament match. New entrance music evoked classic videogame chip tune music, which was appropriate indeed: SHO was facing the final boss on level one.
May 14 2011: Tana/Haas-i
Unfortunately, NJPW’s return to Madison Square Garden for Wrestle Dynasty has been postponed from August 2020 to 2021. Appropriately enough though, this will put the event at perfect ten years removed from NJPW’s first advances into the United States.
Then, IWGP Champion Hiroshi Tanahashi and more wrestled on the East Coast Invasion tour that also saw MVP become the first ever IWGP Intercontinental Champion. In between events, Tanahashi was said to visit Madison Square Garden and say that he would like to wrestle on that hallowed ground himself one day; something that seemed far fetched at the time, but that did indeed become reality.
For May 14 2011, though, a historic match in its own right. For the first time since Scott Norton put the title on the line at WCW Nitro events over a decade earlier, the IWGP Heavyweight Championship was being defended on American soil. Opposite champion Tanahashi, a man with an immense pedigree in his won right, with a lot of top flight experience under his belt in the states; one Charlie Haas.
