Puro Newsflash – New Year and Early January Events – DDT, AJPW, BJW and Zero1!

Before I start, I’m running down five shows across four days here, all at Korakuen Hall… wrestling capital of the world, perhaps?

All Japan at Korakuen Hall: As is tradition, All Japan headed to Korakuen Hall on January 2nd and 3rd to present two cards with feature both heavyweight and jr. heavyweight battle royals. The tradition itself extends waaaay back into Giant Baba territory of All Japan, the first heavyweight battle royal taking place in 1977, and continuing every year on January 2nd at Korakuen Hall ever since. The jr. heavyweight battle royal on the other hand started a little later in 1984, before skipping a few years and starting full time in 1991, once again at Koarkuen Hall on January 3rd. This year the heavyweight battle royal was won by Akebono, outlasting sixteen other men to take the win. One day later, Hiroshi Yamato won a much smaller nine man battle royal to win the jr. heavyweight version of the match for the first time in the new decade. Also on the cards, on January 2nd Kaz Hayashi made his seventh defence of the AJPW Jr. Heavyweight Title against Masanobu Fuchi, and on the 3rd Keiji Muto and Masakatsu Funaki unseated Taiyo Kea and Minoru Suzuki to lift the AJPW World Tag Team Titles. The New Years Shining Series continues until the 11th, with Triple Crown Champion Satoshi Kojima defending the titles against Joe Doering.


ZERO1 at Korakuen Hall: ZERO1, the promotion that most thought, including your writer, would not make it to the end of 2009, ended up surviving and finished the year with a new World Heavyweight Champion in former All Japan top star Toshiaki Kawada. The promotion’s first show of the year featured the new champion’s second defence of the belt against Big Japan representative Daisuke Sekimoto. On January 1st at Korakuen Hall, Kawada successfully defended the belt in just over a quarter of an hour. The main event of the show saw Akebono and Shinjiro Otani defeat Ryouji Sai and Kohei Sato in a special new years match.


New Year, New Deathmatches: Big Japan started the year in the only way they knew how, by heading in Koarkuen Hall on January 2nd and presenting not one, but two deathmatches! Drawing a crowd of 1,426, the first deathmatch on the show, a Scramble Bunkhouse Deathmatch, saw Jun Kasai and Jaki Numazawa defeat The Winger and MASADA in a nutty finish which involved a lighttube bat. The final match also featured Lighttubes in an elimination eight man tag death match. Union’s Isami Kodaka picked up the win for his team by elimination Abdullah Kobayashi after 27 minutes.


How Many Men Can You Fit In A Ring? It seems DDT was at lengths to find out the answer this question on December 31st when they ran a co-promoted show at Korakuen Hall with Kaientai Dojo and Big Japan in front of a customary 2,010 people. The main event was a huge 108 man battle royal. That’s right, one hundred and eight people. In one ring. The match was eventually won by Freedom’s representative Jun Kasai after 85:12. I suspect that the match is one of the longest of the last decade, and what a way to finish the decade off!