This ends up being a slow and plodding match. However, Gianni Valletta’s dollar store Bruiser Brody act does nothing for and seeing the lack of reaction from fans when he attempts to scare them during his entrance neither does the audience in Japan.

Violent Giants are one of my favorite tag teams going right now and I am a big fan of the Zeus story. After some more comedy including Hikaru Sato, Black Menso-re & Black Tiger VII getting tied up in streamers by Matsuyama, Aoki catches Matsuyama with a clutch and pins him. From there Aoki and Maruyama take most of the match. Matsuyama does a legitimately impressive turnbuckle to turnbuckle top rope walk. But it kicks into high gear immediately when it finally starts. This match takes forever to get going, with an absurd amount of pre-match comedy. However, he turns out to be surprisingly agile for someone his size. However, he looks like a fat version of the Brahmin Brothers who I’m not a fan of. Kanjyouro Matsuyama is a local Niigata wrestler that I have to profess I am not very familiar with. Atsushi Maruyama, Black Menso-re & Black Tiger VII Atsushi Aoki, Hikaru Sato & Kanjyouro Matsuyama def. They have a nice back and forth match before Naoya puts Sato away for the quick win. However, the fact that they let him back in the promotion at all and that they included him in Jake Lee’s Sweeper faction shows that they still think he has a lot of potential. Since then he has mainly been on opening match job duty, while he earns back the trust of the promotion’s top brass. He then ends up working mainly in FMW before he is let back into All Japan in August 2017. After a big debut teaming with Keiji Muto, Akebono and Ryota Hama against New Wild Order, he forms a tag team with Kotaro Suzuki, which doesn’t do much of note and he is out of the promotion within six months. However, only three months after his debut he quits the promotion and soon turns up in Wrestle-1. He started off as an All Japan dojo trainee in 2015, with endorsements from both Jun Akiyama and Kenta Kobashi. This was your standard opening match fare, so let’s talk about Keiichi Sato for a second. Watch: / Cagematch Results: /?id=1&nr=208954 Naoya Nomura def. By now the Royal Road Tournament is the only reminder of that era and now going into its sixth iteration has firmly established itself as AJPW’s secondary tournament after the Champion Carnival. The Akebono era in many ways was the low point for the promotion, which has been on the path to recovery ever since they went all in on Kento Miyahara as their ace. The match drew an atrocious 2,563 fans in Ryogoku Kokugikan and was the last time All Japan ran the building until 2016. He would end up winning the tournament in dominant fashion and then went on to beat Suwama for the Triple Crown title a month later.

In 2013 All Japan held the first Royal Road Tournament largely as a vehicle to get Akebono over as a credible main eventer.

Royal road story tracker