NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 20 Review - January 4, 2026

By Graham "GSM" Matthews

Pre-Show: Katsuya Murashima and Masatora Yasuda def. Shoma Kato and Tatsuya Matsumoto

I'm not familiar with any of these guys, and I can't any one of them stood out in a major way here. The match itself was fine but didn't get a chance to be more than that at only six-and-a-half minutes. Thus, I'm not sure what it was supposed to accomplish. It might have made more sense to scrap this from the card all together and give El Phantasmo vs. Chris Brookes more time.

Pre-Show: NJPW World Television Champion El Phantasmo def. Chris Brookes

I've always liked Phantasmo whenever and wherever I've seen him work, so it's nice to see him with the NJPW World Television Championship. I don't know anything about Brookes, but he looked good in there with Phantasmo and the two of them had a quality contest. As noted in the prior paragraph, I would've given this more time, but for as long as it lasted, I enjoyed it.

TMDK (Zack Sabre Jr., Ryohei Oiwa and Hartley Jackson) Won a Ranbo to Win the NEVER Openweight Six-Man Tag Team Championship

This worked differently than past Ranbos have in that this consisted of multiple six-man tag teams with the NEVER Openweight Six-Man tag titles on the line. The Ranbos have never felt overly important, but this was a downgrade because at least the previous version would feature some surprise entrants and was formatted better. This was much more of a mess and I couldn't get into it, personally. My top takeaway was that Sabre Jr. successfully defended the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship in the main event of last year's show and was put in the opener of this year's installment. Sure, he won, but still. His stock seems to have fallen significantly.

IWGP Women’s Champion Syuri def. Saya Kamitani in a Winner Takes All Match to Win the NJPW Strong Women’s Championship

The women's matches on these Wrestle Kingdom shows tend to be the shortest of the night. Shockingly, that wasn't the case this year, which was a relief. It could have gone longer, but they more than made the most of the time they had. They told a simple story and the action was entertaining. I've only seen Syuri once and that was in the women's Casino Gauntlet match at All In last year, so I'm not really familiar with either of these two, but they both made excellent impressions here.

United Empire (Callum Newman, Great-O-Khan, Henare, Andrade El Idolo and Jake Lee) def. Bullet Club War Dogs (David Finlay, Gabe Kidd, and Drilla Moloney) and Unaffiliated (Shingo Takagi and Hiromu Takahashi)

This felt like it only existed to get as many people on the card as possible. WWE and AEW tend to do the same thing with their respective biggest shows of the year, but this came across as extra inconsequential. Granted, I may only be saying that because I don't follow New Japan Pro-Wrestling's storylines closely, and it was well wrestled, but this was fairly standard stuff with nothing out of the ordinary about it. If nothing else, it was cool to see Andrade take part.

El Desperado def. SHO, Kosei Fujita and Taiji Ishimori in a IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship No. 1 Contender's Four-Way Match

It's strange that there would be a number one contender's match for the Junior Heavyweight title on this show instead of a Junior Heavyweight title defense. This was the shortest match on the main card, but it was a decent sprint for the time it was allotted. My only major nitpick is that there was interference when it wasn't necessary. This would have been a slightly stronger (and less overbooked) without it.

Aaron Wolf def. EVIL to Win the NEVER Openweight Championship

I've seen some of the buzz surrounding Wolf in recent months and was interested in seeing what he could do in his official in-ring debut here. He ended up having a hell of a showing and was super impressive. Yes, there was a ton of interference from EVIL's faction (and it got ridiculous), but I felt that actually added to the fun of the bout in this case with Wolf having to overcome the odds. Him winning a title in his first match is also pretty wild.

IWGP Global Heavyweight Champion Yota Tsuji def. Konosuke Takeshita in a Winner Takes All Match to Win the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship

Takeshita is obviously awesome, so I knew this would be a top-notch match even without seeing a ton of Tsuji beforehand. They had terrific chemistry and Tsuji proved he could hang with Takeshita. This didn't feel quite as big as past Winner Take All matches at Wrestle Kingdom, but it delivered as Tsuji's crowning moment. As much as I love Takeshita, him being dethroned needed to happen since he's not full-time with NJPW.

AEW International Champion Kazuchika Okada def. Hiroshi Tanahashi (Non-Title)

Although Tanahashi has been past his prime for a while now, this was all about the emotion of it being his swan song and Okada was the perfect final opponent for him. I'm sure their other encounters were crisper with better technical wrestling and whatnot, but they recaptured some of their old magic here and told a stellar story with both guys pulling everything out of their arsenal to put the other away. On top of that, the post-match career celebration for Tanahashi with some of his old rivals coming out (most of them being current AEW stars) and him taking time to thank the crowd was wonderfully done. This may have been the best wrestling retirement I've ever seen.

Overall Show

That main event and everything that came after it salvaged this show. That's not to say the rest of the card was abysmal by any means because it certainly wasn't, but this had to be the weakest Wrestle Kingdom on the whole since I started watching them about a decade or so ago. This undercard had multiple matches that felt like afterthoughts, but it did have a few above-average bouts, such as the men's and women's Winner Take All matches and Wolf's in-ring debut. With all of that being said, this entire event was built around Tanahashi's retirement, so Okada vs. Tanahashi living up to the hype made it worthwhile.

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