New Japan Pro Wrestling

New Japan kicked of the 15th edition of their Best of the Super Jr. tournament in Saitama on May 31.

In tournament matches TNA's Jimmy Rave beat AKIRA in somewhat of an upset. Tiger Mask defeated Tetsuya Naito and Ryusuke Taguchi avenged recent losses to the man who took the IWGP Jr. title from him, Wataru Inoue.

Zero-One MAX and NJ took the latest installment of their war to Korakuen Hall on Z1-MAX's May 29th show that saw a 30 minute time limit draw between Shinjiro Otani & Masato Tanaka and Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi. This feud must continue!

Best of the Super Jr. tournament results from June 1 in Tokyo (Korakuen Hall) -

Block A: Wataru Inoue beat Tatsuhito Takaiwa
Block A: Minoru beat Jushin Thunder Liger
Block B: Tiger Mask beat Prince Devitt (looks like Devitt got legit injured in this match, don't know exactly what happened).

Best of the Super Jr. tournament results from June 4 in Toyama (Toyama Techno Hall) -

Block B: Jimmy Rave beat Tetsuya Naito
Block A: Jushin Thunder Liger beat Yujiro
Block B: AKIRA beat Koji Kanemoto

So far the standings look like this (accumulated points are in brackets) -

Block A:
Wataru Inoue [2]
Ryusuke Taguchi [2]
Minoru [2]
Jushin Thunder Liger [2]
Yujiro [0]
Tatsuhito Takaiwa [0]

Block B:
Tiger Mask [4]
AKIRA [4]
Jimmy Rave [4]
Koji Kanemoto [2]
Tetsuya Naito [2]
Prince Devitt [0]

Looks like Prince Devitt is off the tour due to an injury he suffered in his match with Tiger Mask on the first night of the tour, sucks to be him. All his scheduled opponents will receive an extra 2 points for his forfeits. I can't imagine this will affect the booking of the rest of the tournament that much as Devitt was unlikely to make a big impact in this tournament.

Manabu Nakanishi and Hirooki Goto will battle at Korakuen Hall on June 15 to determine the first challenger to Keiji Muto's IWGP Heavyweight title.

Dragon Gate

There was a lot of shake-ups coming out of Dragon Gate's May 14th Korakuen Hall show the main one being the dissolution of 2 big units, Muscle Outlaws and New Hazard and the creation of 2 units out of that.

New Hazard was killed when members Shingo Takagi & Cyber Kong turned on BXB Hulk and joined forces with Gamma & YAMATO (along with other MO'z members Genki Horiguchi and Yasushi Kanda) to form Real Hazard. Former MO'z members Naruki Doi & Masato Yoshino saved Hulk and teamed with him in an impromptu Triangle Gate title match that saw Real Hazard win (Shingo, YAMATO & Gamma).

Coming out of the May 31st Kobe Sambo Hall show saw the unveiling of the other new unit's name and theme. Doi, Yoshino & Hulk (along with Naoki Tanisaki & m.c.KZ) will now be called WORLD-1 and their colors will be white and silver.

I think the unit re-shufflings are interesting and look forward to seeing how these new teams function in matches and angles. Hopefully this WORLD-1 will fare better than the ill-fated Keiji Muto backed promotion from a couple of years ago.

Don't forget to check out Doi and Yohino in TNA as they'll be there from June 7 to June 11.

All Japan Pro Wrestling

Kensuke Sasaki's Kensuke Office announced the line-up for their June 13th show in Osaka and the semi-main and main event should be really good.

Puroresu prodigy, Katsuhiko Nakajima takes on NOAH's KENTA. This should be a real blistering match and both of these guys will probably hit each other really, really hard (Lance Storm will hate this match).

Sasaki will face Naomichi Marufuji in the main event in what should be another really good, hard-hitting match.

Akira Raijin will make his return to All Japan on June 22 in Korakuen Hall after working in the States, Mexico, Puerto Rico and here in Canada. We'll see what he's picked up over the last year or so.

Pro Wrestling NOAH

NOAH's June 14 card in Yokohama is highlighted by a special tag match that sees Kenta Kobashi & KENTA vs. Kensuke Sasaki & Katsuhiko Nakajima and a GHC Heavyweight title match between Takeshi Morishima (c) vs. Takashi Sugiura.

KENTA & Taiji Ishimori successfully defended their GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Titles against former champs Ricky Marvin & Kotaro Suzuki in their first title defense.

NOAH announced the full card for their European show and their first card outside of Japan -

NOAH "EUROPEAN NAVIGATION 2008", 6/21/08
Coventry Skydome Arena, England

1. Atsushi Aoki vs. Joel Redman
2. Junji Izumida & Tsuyoshi Kikuchi vs. Wade Fitzgerald & Martin Stone
3. Doug Williams & Nigel McGuinness vs. Takashi Sugiura & Kotaro Suzuki
4. Jun Akiyama & Bison Smith vs. Takeshi Morishima & Mohammed Yone
5. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team Title: KENTA & Taiji Ishimori (c) vs Bryan Danielson & Eddie Edwards
6. GHC Jr. Heavyweight Title: Yoshinobu Kanemaru (c) vs Jay Briscoe
7. Kenta Kobashi & Go Shiozaki vs. Mitsuharu Misawa & Naomichi Marufuji

The following foreign wrestlers will be on the next NOAH tour "Summer Navigation 2008" Tour (June 29 to July 13):
- Bison Smith
- Buchanan
- Keith Walker
- Davey Richards