Slam Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom Quiz

New Japan takes its shows very seriously and promotes them as close to legitimate sporting contests as they can. As such, it’s only logical that the most important company title – the world championship – be in the main event slot. But this wasn’t always the case. There was one show that didn’t end with a world title defense, but with a random tag match instead.

New Japan isn’t usually known for having the most elaborate entrances for its wrestlers. Though it has amped up the theatrics on these Wrestle Kingdom shows, it has been rare for anyone to get an Undertaker or Shawn Michaels-level spectacle of an entrance. But New Japan did try to crank up the badassery of their wrestlers, as seen with Tanahashi’s WK8 entrance, in which he was played to the ring by a famous guitarist.

After Lesnar left WWE in 2004, he thought he would enjoy a career in pro football playing for the Minnesota Vikings. That didn’t pan out, so he went back to wrestling instead. But not for WWE; he ended up in New Japan in late 2005, and a few months later, defeated this wrestler to become IWGP Heavyweight Champion.

New Japan is strong on symbolism. When big things happen in the real world, it tries to incorporate those into storylines and decisions to give them more gravitas. That’s why one of the following wrestlers decided to retire once the Heisei Era, which corresponded to the reign of Emperor Akihito, also came to an end.

While wrestling in fans in North America were celebrating Mick Foley’s WWF title win on January 4, 1999, there was a much bigger story brewing in Japan. At Wrestling World 1999, something big happened. It was so big that it would go on to have serious repercussions for not just New Japan but pro wrestling in general in that country for many years to come.

Tanahashi and Okada have had one of the best rivalries in pro wrestling history. It started with what many call the shock of the century when Okada, fresh off his return, beat Tanahashi to win his first world title. Their feud would continue on and off for the next nine years and three Wrestle Kingdom main events. But of their three shared main events, Okada only won one of them.

When Kazuchika Okada faced Kenny Omega for the first time, it changed the game in pro wrestling. They put on such a phenomenal classic that it was said to have broken the scale. The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer had no choice but to rate it six stars out of five, which was a rating he hadn’t given a match since 1994.

Most of these Dome shows tend to be repetitive, at least on the surface. They feature title shot after title shot, without much in the way of really big angles. But Wrestle Kingdom 8 was different; there was a special feature to it that made it unique compared to every Dome show that had taken place before it, and that decision was crucial to one of New Japan's longest and most detailed storylines.

AJ Styles’ New Japan stint was short and memorable. He won the IWGP Heavyweight title from Kazuchika Okada in his first match; he became the new leader of Bullet Club, solidified himself as one of the best wrestlers on the planet, and had two terrific Wrestle Kingdom matches … all within the span of two years.

Just like with WWE’s WrestleMania, a wrestler’s presence in the main event match speaks volumes of their skill, popularity, and importance to their company. And as we’ve seen wrestlers like Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, John Cena and the like main event multiple WrestleManias, the same can be said for New Japan and its Dome Show.

These days, Kenny Omega is one of the biggest stars in wrestling, as well as one of its most controversial. Some people adore him for his maverick personality and his explosive wrestling style, while others loathe him for the same things. And before he became one of AEW’s biggest stars, he enjoyed a successful five-year run in New Japan. That run saw him face several people at Wrestle Kingdom, from lower-card juniors to the biggest stars in the company.

Throughout the late 1990s and into 2000, New Japan was obsessed with pushing a wrestler named Kensuke Sasaki. He was solid in the ring, but seen as vastly inferior to guys like Chono, Hashimoto, and Muto. To try and change this, New Japan booked a tournament to crown a new World champion, with Sasaki being one of the favorites to win. The other favorite was an outsider brought in to have dream matches with Sasaki and build him up further as a wrestler.

New Japan is widely seen as the company that really started the “outside invaders” angle that inspired copycats like the NWO in WCW. That creative idea started in the mid-1990s when New Japan had a working relationship with (the remnants of) UWFi, which concluded with several enormously profitable shows. The cross-over gimmick was repeated several times on Dome shows, including one that saw TNA become the main “invading” promotion looking to start trouble with New Japan.

Not everything in the Tokyo Dome is automatically better. New Japan has long experimented with wrestlers from different companies and athletes from other backgrounds and have brought them onto their shows. But one of these “experimental” matches was so bad that it was rated as one of the worst matches of all time.

Moxley worked double duty at Wrestle Kingdom 14. On the first night, he defended his IWGP US title successfully against Lance Archer, and on the second night he retained it again against Juice Robinson. But after he won it he found himself staring at the entrance way, mouth agape as someone came down the aisle to challenge him to a match.

After spending two years wrestling abroad, Okada returned to New Japan in time for Wrestle Kingdom. But when he returned, he also underwent a complete character transformation. He became “The Rainmaker” and began acting like a hybrid between Ted DiBiase and Randy Orton. Though the gimmick wasn’t popular at first, Okada underwent perhaps the biggest career upswing since The Rock. Within six months of his return, he was World champion and seen as a one of the best wrestlers on the planet.

Inoki was considered the heart and soul of New Japan for decades. He was the one that founded the company in 1972 and was its major star for the better part of its first two decades in business. But once New Japan started running annual January Dome Shows, he became less important as an active wrestler. In fact, of all these big shows, he has only main evented once, with the rest of his matches being on the undercard.

New Japan is a bit prickly when it comes to showcasing non-native wrestlers. Even though outsiders have been big draws over the years, they haven’t been featured in main event matches as much as the Japanese talent. Maybe it has something to do with contracts and guarantees, or maybe it’s something else. Whatever the case, one of the four wrestlers listed below, despite being as big a star as the rest, never main evented a January Dome Show.

Wrestle Kingdom 13 had one of the most stacked cards in New Japan history. It featured some tremendous matches such as Tanahashi vs. Omega, Jericho vs. Naito, Will Ospreay vs. Ibushi, just to name a few. It was also a financial success as well, drawing in more paying fans than all the Wrestle Kingdom Dome Shows that preceded it. But those weren’t the only reasons it was so important.

These Dome Shows aren’t the same as modern WrestleManias; they don’t open with World title matches or big angles just to have a token “hot opener.” In New Japan, card placement is a symbol of one’s place on the totem pole. That’s why the wrestler that wrestled in the first match on the first-ever January 4 Dome Show wasn’t a World champion, but a rookie starting out his career.

Hiroshi Tanahashi and Shinsuke Nakamura are to New Japan what John Cena and Randy Orton are to WWE. They’re two wrestlers that started at the same time, were both pegged as top prospects from the beginning, and later became huge stars for the company. They also faced each other many times over the years, but while Cena and Orton never faced off at WrestleMania in one-on-one competition, Tanahashi and Nakamura did at least once.

New Japan has lots of belts. As of 2022, the promotion has nine active titles and many more that   are now inactive. Some of these inactive titles were deactivated following big unification matches, and the best place to unify two (or more) prestigious championships is on their biggest show of the year. But which one of these didn’t actually take place?

New Japan had a working relationship with TNA for several years. This relationship saw New Japan wrestlers fight in TNA and TNA wrestlers fight throughout the year in New Japan, but mainly at Wrestle Kingdom. But all of that came to an end in 2012, and since then, TNA has been largely ignored by New Japan.

At Wrestle Kingdom 14, Naito realized his big dream after years of failure and coming so close but not close enough. He had a huge post-match celebration that was supposed to be his big moment, only for it to be interrupted by an attack. That was supposed to be the start of a white-hot blood feud, but that didn’t pan out because New Japan basically closed a month later when COVID took out the pro wrestling world.

Even though New Japan has tried to keep its world title as the sole focus of the main event, that hasn’t always worked out. There was at least one case in which New Japan brought both an outside wrestler and said wrestler’s World title to its show and used it for the main event. It was a strange situation, to be sure.