NJPW Announced The Full Power Struggle Card, Including A New Championship Match

New Japan Pro Wrestling‘s next big show, Power Struggle, is coming up on November 3, and the company just released the full card. Along with the Super Jr. Tag League final and several other tag matches, it includes a previously unannounced championship match that looks like it could set up something dramatic.

This year’s Super Junior Tag League was made up of all teams that hadn’t competed in it before except for Roppongi 3K and the Suzukigun team of El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru. It’s these more experienced teams who will face off in the final at Power Struggle for a shot at the tag titles at Wrestle Kingdom 14.

In the last two matches of NJPW’s show on November 1, El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru defeated the Birds of Prey (Will Ospreay and Robbie Eagles) and Roppongi 3K defeated El Phantasmo and Taiji Ishimori (the current IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions.) This put R3K and the Suzukigun and Bullet Club teams at ten points (5 wins, 2 losses), but because the other two teams had beaten ELP and Ishimori during tag league, the champs were blocked from the final.

From one kayfabe perspective, Roppongi 3K are the favorites to win this match since they won the last two annual junior heavyweight tag team tournaments. From a meta-perspective, the fact that R3k recently tried and failed to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship could point to them winning this tournament as another step towards them moving to the heavyweight division. But from another kayfabe perspective, Yoh and Sho are still kind of the underdogs since Desperado and Kanemaru have beaten them so many times in the past, including in this year’s tag league and shortly before that at King of Pro Wrestling.

While R3K made it to the final with a clean win, Kanemaru and Desperado got there through cheating, but this time, not completely through their own. Bushi had originally had this tour off since there was no other active junior heavyweight in L.I.J. with wh0m he could team, but he was later added when Evil had to leave the tour due to recover from an injury. Bushi wasn’t content to just wrestle Suzukigun in eight-man tags on the undercard though and soon set his sights on the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship held by Will Ospreay.

With no opportunity to get a win over Ospreay on this tour and the Aerial Assassin not accepting his backstage callouts, Bushi had to get creative in order to get himself a title shot. He interfered in the Birds of Prey vs. Suzukigun match by spitting black mist in Ospreay’s face, helping his former enemies make the final and making Ospreay angry enough to be down to fight (with his title on the line) at Power Struggle.

Bushi hasn’t been one of the most high-powered junior heavyweights on the New Japan roster for a while now and his defeating Ospreay seems unlikely, but Ospreay vs. Bushi is now Power Struggle’s semi-main event. This raises the question: Will this Sunday finally see the return of Hiromu Takahashi? Considering his friendship with Bushi, rivalry with Ospreay, and the fact that New Japan is gearing up for its biggest show of the year, it seems like the perfect time for Takahashi to return to the ring. So did the Dragon Lee vs. Ishimori title match before Best of the Super Juniors, but this match is probably even more likely to get people’s hopes up!

In addition to all this junior division drama, Power Struggle will include three singles matches that were set before the Road to Power Struggle/Super Jr. Tag League tour began: Tomohiro Ishii challenging Kenta for the NEVER Openweight Championship, Hirooki Goto challenging Jay White for the IWGP Intercontinental Championship, and Tetsuya Naito vs. Taichi and a grudge match that has since been established to be a number one contender’s match for the IC title. After these recent developments, here’s the full, nine-match card for Power Struggle on Sunday:

• Yuya Uemura, Ryusuke Taguchi, Tiger Mask, and Jushin Thunder Liger vs. Clark Connors, TJP, Titán, and Volador Jr.
• Robbie Eagles and Rocky Romero vs. Taiji Ishimori and El Phantasmo (a non-title match for the junior tag champions against a new tag team)
• Evil (returning from injury) (or possibly “injury”), Sanada, and Shingo Takagi vs. Zack Sabre Jr. Minoru Suzuki, and IWGP United States Champion Lance Archer
• Kazuchika Okada and Yoshi-Hashi vs. Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi
• Tetsuya Naito vs. Taichi
• Super Jr. Tag League Final match: El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru vs. Roppongi 3K (Sho and Yoh)
• NEVER Openweight Championship match: Tomohiro Ishii vs. Kenta (c)
• IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match: Bushi vs. Will Ospreay (c)
• IWGP Intercontinental Championship match: Hirooki Goto vs. Jay White (c)