Earlier this week, All Japan Pro Wrestling returned to Korakuen Hall as part of its Excite Series with Triple Crown champion Kento Miyahara defending the title against Yuma Aoyagi.
The match was set up on January 3rd following Miyahara’s defense against Jake Lee. After the match, he was attacked by Aoyagi.
This week’s card took place on Tuesday in Tokyo, which was a holiday with All Japan and Big Japan hosting shows at Korakuen Hall that day.
The story of the main event saw Aoyagi attack the right elbow of Miyahara after the champion missed a strike and connected with the ring post. This prevented Miyahara from using the Shutdown German on several occasions. There were two failed attempts at the move with Miyahara unable to execute it due to the arm.
Aoyagi went for his End Game submission unsuccessfully and connected with a head kick and the Rockstar Buster for his big near fall of the match. Miyahara rebounded and hit Break Heart and on the third try, hit the Shutdown German for the win at the 24:08 mark.
After the match, Miyahara offered his hand, but Aoyagi refused and walked out. Suwama came out to issue the next challenge for Miyahara and go for his seventh Triple Crown championship.
In the match prior, Suwama and partner Shuji Ishikawa retained the All Japan tag titles against Shigehiro Irie & Lucas Steel in 11:28 after several consecutive back suplexes by Suwama before pinning Steel.
In an excellent junior heavyweight title match, Susumu Yokosuka retained the championship against rising star Francesco Akira in 11:32 after hitting the Yokosuka Cutter. Akira was a great underdog in the match and the audience got into the hope spots as he came off very well in a high-profile match. Yokosuka is a great addition to this division and looked great.
Yusuke Okada challenged Yokosuka after the match. Earlier in the show, Okada scored the pinfall in a six-man tag with Hikaru Sato & JR Kratos against Hokuto Omori, Tsugataka Sato & Rising HAYATO.
The show also featured Manabu Nakanishi working an eight-man tag on his retirement tour with his final match taking place on February 22nd. He teamed with Jun Akiyama, Osamu Nishimura & Yutaka Yoshie to defeat Yoshitatsu, Ryoji Sai, Tajiri & Dan Tamura.
They let Nakanishi be the star of the match as everyone worked around him due to the limitations and culminated with a lariat and the Hercules Cutter on Tamura, who submitted at 10:29.
Below are the results from the show and their next Korakuen Hall card is set for Monday, March 23rd:
*Yusuke Okada, Hikaru Sato & JR Kratos over Tsugataka Sato, Hokuto Omori & Rising HAYATO
*Zeus, Izanagi & UTAMARO over Ayato Yoshida, Fuminori Abe & Tatsuya Hanami
*Jake Lee & Koji Iwamoto over Takao Omori & Black Menso-re to retain the All-Asia tag titles
*Manabu Nakanishi, Jun Akiyama, Osamu Nishimura & Yutaka Yoshie over Yoshitatsu, Ryoji Sai, Tajiri & Dan Tamura
*Susumu Yokosuka over Francesco Akira to retain the AJPW junior heavyweight title
*Shuji Ishikawa & Suwama over Shigehiro Irie & Lucas Steel to retain the All Japan tag titles
*Kento Miyahara over Yuma Aoyagi to retain the Triple Crown
