This year, Ishimori is heading to the final.
The finals of the 2024 Best of the Super Juniors tournament will see El Desperado clash with Taiji Ishimori. Both talents have been IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion multiple times, but have yet to win the tournament.
Their match is going to headline NJPW Dominion and going into the match, Ishimori chatted with NJPW1972.com. He looked back on his 2023 Best of the Super Juniors run that was cut short due to a cervical vertebrae injury. At the time, Ishimori was 5-3 and had reeled in 10 points.
That was really the first long injury I’ve had in my career, but during the time off from that, I think those other bumps and bruises healed up. And the schedule this year wasn’t as tight as last year, so that definitely helped in terms of looking after my body.
As of this writing, here’s the lineup for Dominion on June 9th:
- Best of the Super Juniors Final: El Desperado vs. Taiji Ishimori
- IWGP World Heavyweight Championship — Lumberjack Match: Jon Moxley (c) vs. EVIL
- NEVER Openweight Championship: Shingo Takagi (c) vs. HENARE
- NJPW STRONG Openweight & IWGP Tag Team Championships — Tornado Elimination Four-Way Match: BULLET CLUB (Chase Owens & KENTA) (IWGP) vs. Hikuleo & El Phantasmo (STRONG) vs. T.M.D.K. (Shane Haste & Mikey Nicholls) vs. Bishamon (Hirooki Goto & YOSHI-HASHI)
- NJPW World Television Championship: Jeff Cobb (c) vs. Tomohiro Ishii
- NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championships: Hiroshi Tanahashi, Oleg Boltin & Toru Yano (c) vs. Los Ingobernables de Japon (Yota Tsuji, Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI)
- KOPW Championship — Storm Catch Rules Match: Yuya Uemura (c) vs. Great-O-Khan
- T.M.D.K. (Kosei Fujita, Robbie Eagles & Zack Sabre Jr.) vs. Clark Connors, Drilla Moloney & L.J. Cleary
- Tetsuya Naito vs. Callum Newman
