Tag: young lion’s cup

Young Lion’s Cup set for NJPW Destruction tour

Posted on by Bryan Rose

NJPW announced this morning that the Young Lion’s Cup tournament will be held throughout the Destruction tour set to take place next month.

The tournament will consist of eight young lions, mostly from NJPW’s two dojos. Clark Connors, Karl Fredericks and Alex Coughlin will represent the LA Dojo, while Shota Umino, Ren Narita, Yota Tsuji and Yuya Uemura will represent the Japan dojo. 

Michael Richards, from Bad Luck Fale’s dojo in New Zealand, will round out the tournament. He made his debut for NJPW back at Southern Showdown, when he lost a six-man tag team match with other Fale Dojo members.

Katsuya Kitamura won the last Young Lion’s Cup, which took place back in September of 2017. Umino and Narita also competed in this tournament.

The round-robin tournament will start on September 4, with the final matches taking place at the Destruction in Kobe event on September 22.

The full list of matches can be seen below:

NJPW bringing back Young Lion’s Cup

Posted on by Bryan Rose

After being dormant for over 12 years, New Japan Pro Wrestling announced last night that the Young Lion’s Cup tournament would be making a return on their Lion’s Gate Project events.

It will be called the Kotetsu Yamamoto Memorial 11th Young Lion Cup tournament, in honor of Yamamoto who was a longtime trainer in the New Japan Dojo after retiring from active competition in 1980. The format this time around will be round-robin style, taking place on more than one show with six young lions vying for the cup. They are:

  • Tomoyuki Oka, 26, a former amateur wrestling champion
  • Katsuya Kitamura, 31, another former amateur wrestling champion whose career in that field was cut short after testing positive for steroids in 2011 
  • Hirai Kawato, 20, who has trained in MMA and joined NJPW right out of high school, making him one of the youngest wrestlers on the roster
  • Ren Narita, 20, who is actually a few months younger than Kawato, making him the youngest member of the NJPW roster 
  • Shota Umino, 20, who is the son of NJPW referee Red Shoes Unno
  • Tetsuhiro Yagi, 25, who has a background in baseball and is the newest young lion, having debuted this past April

Lion’s Gate 8 on October 12th will kick things off with Kawato vs. Narita, Kitamura vs. Yagi, and Umino vs. Oka.

The last tournament was held in 2005, with Hirooki Goto defeating independent wrestler Hiroyuki Ito to win the cup. Previous winners have included Keiichi Yamada (Jushin Thunder Liger), Masahiro Chono, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima, Manabu Nakanishi, and Ryusuke Taguchi.