Welcome to another eWrestlingNews Question of the Day!
Did you get enough wrestling with the 3-hour WWE SmackDown? Well, if you didn’t, you’ve got one hell of a lot more coming your way with New Japan Pro-Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom 19 and the joint-promotion Wrestle Dynasty shows today (starting in just a little bit, actually!)
Since these are so back-to-back, I figured it’d best to just combine them for our usual predictions breakdown. As simple as it is, my question for you today is “Who do you think will win and what will happen at Wrestle Kingdom and Wrestle Dynasty 2025?”
Remember to answer with your response in the comments below.
Here are the cards, for everyone’s convenience, as I’m not going to go through each individual match for my own answers:
Wrestle Kingdom 19 Card:
- New Japan Ranbo to determine the #1 contender for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship
- Four-Way Tokyo Terror Ladder Match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship: Intergalactic Jet Setters (Kevin Knight and Kushida) (c) vs. Ichiban Sweet Boys (Robbie Eagles and Kosei Fujita) vs. Catch 2/2 (TJP and Francesco Akira) vs. Bullet Club War Dogs (Clark Connors and Drilla Moloney)
- Singles Match for the IWGP Women’s Championship: Mayu Iwatani (c) vs. AZM
- Four-Way Match for the NJPW World Television Championship: Ren Narita (c) vs. Jeff Cobb vs. Ryohei Oiwa vs. El Phantasmo
- Lumberjack Match (If Tanahashi loses, he must retire from in-ring competition): Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. EVIL
- Winner Takes All Match for the NEVER Openweight Championship and AEW International Championship: Shingo Takagi (Openweight) vs. Konosuke Takeshita (International)
- Singles Match for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship: Douki (c) vs. El Desperado
- Singles Match for the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship: David Finlay (c) vs. Yota Tsuji
- Singles Match: Tetsuya Naito vs. Hiromu Takahashi
- Singles Match for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship: Zack Sabre Jr. (c) vs. Shota Umino
Wrestle Dynasty Card:
- [Pre-Show] International Women’s Cup Final Four-Way Match: Willow Nightingale (AEW) vs. Persephone (CMLL) vs. Athena (ROH) vs. Momo Watanabe (Stardom)
- [Pre-Show] Tag Team Match for the ROH World Tag Team Championship: The Sons of Texas (Dustin Rhodes & Sammy Guevara) (c) vs. House of Torture (Sho & Yoshinobu Kanemaru)
- Singles Match for the NEVER Openweight Championship and the AEW International Championship: Konosuke Takeshita (c – International) or Shingo Takagi (c – Openweight) vs. Tomohiro Ishii
- Singles Match: Yota Tsuji vs. Jack Perry
- Singles Match: Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd
- Eight-Man Lucha Gauntlet Match: TBA (4 NJPW wrestlers and 4 CMLL wrestlers)
- Singles Match: Shota Umino vs. Claudio Castagnoli
- Singles Match: David Finlay vs. Brody King
- Tag Team Match for the Vacant IWGP Tag Team Championship: Great-O-Khan and TBA vs. The Young Bucks (Matthew Jackson & Nicholas Jackson)
- Singles Match: Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Ricochet
- Winner Takes All Match for the Strong Women’s Championship and the Undisputed British Women’s Championship: Mercedes Moné (c – Strong) vs. Mina Shirakawa (c – British)
As far as my answers…
I don’t watch New Japan…or Ring of Honor…or Stardom…or CMLL. Yeeeesh. That’s making this nearly impossible for me to give out predictions that can be taken too seriously, as I have no idea what the landscape is for so many of these particular matches. However, with a little context clues, I do think I have a grasp of at least some of them.
For everything that I don’t mention, that’s because you can just flip a coin and you’d have the same “I don’t know” type of response from me. For example, the four-way for the NJPW World Television Championship is a complete crapshoot as far as I’m concerned from an outsider’s perspective.
But here are the things I do have something to say about…
- I don’t think EVIL will beat Tanahashi and force the latter to retire. Not just yet. Tanahashi’s retirement was already announced for Wrestle Kingdom 20. For him to just stop a year in advance from that would indicate he’s even worse off with injuries and nixed the whole idea of a retirement tour. He beats EVIL here.
- Takeshita won’t drop the international title to Shingo Takagi. Therefore, he not only beats Takagi at Wrestle Kingdom, but he also retains the title against Tomohiro Ishii at Dynasty and leaves the weekend with two belts.
- Speaking of multiple belts, it wouldn’t shock me at all if Mercedes Mone beats Mina Shirakawa and ends up with THREE titles at the end of this. I don’t know Shirakawa’s contract situation, so there’s a chance she does just beat Mercedes, since the TBS Championship isn’t up for grabs, but I’ll just bet on Mone.
- David Finlay beats Yota Tsuji, then Brody King, while Tsuji beats Jack Perry to offset his loss to Finlay.
- Similarly, Zack Sabre Jr. beats Shota Umino and Ricochet. Then, Umino beats Claudio Castagnoli to set up a possible match against Jon Moxley?
- Kenny Omega beats Gabe Kidd. Omega shouldn’t lose his return match.
- The Sons of Texas retain the ROH world tag team titles.
- I’m betting on The Young Bucks winning the IWGP tag titles.
- As far as the international women’s cup, this is for a title match of their choosing from any of the promotions, correct? At first, I thought that ruled out Athena, as she’s already ROH women’s champ, but she could fight for the other 3 titles. That’s interesting. I don’t know anything about Persephone or Momo Watanabe, so they might be the easy picks here, but as an AEW person, I’d lean more toward Willow or Athena winning and being able to fight for the Stardom or CMLL titles, actually. The more I think about it, the more I think this could be Willow’s victory, especially since this is on the pre-show.
What do you think? Drop your thoughts below!
