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Less than a week ago we wrapped up Super Junior Tag League and crowned Robbie X and Taiji Ishimori the winners. It feels far too soon to be talking about the lineup for World Tag League, the heavyweight version of the SJTL, but here we are with the announcement of the teams in each block. To be fair the tournament starts November 23, so there’s still some time before we find ourselves back on a steady diet of multiple New Japan shows each week.
There are 16 teams competing this year in two blocks of eight. The group stage follows the traditional round-robin format, with the top two teams in each block advancing to the semifinals on December 11. The winners of the semis will face off on December 13 in Kumamoto. It’s not clear right now if the semifinals will be A1 vs B2 and B1 vs A2 or if they will stay within their blocks. There are a few “Road to” shows between now and the start of the tournament, but barring any injuries the lineup should be set. Seems like a good time to give you my preliminary thoughts on each of the entrants, wouldn’t you say?
A Block
Yuto-Ice & Oskar
The reigning tag champs head up the A Block and have to be one of the favourites to progress. There are at least three teams in the block who have no chance at moving on, and I cannot see the Knockout Brothers losing to enough teams to be in jeopardy. These two have rejuvenated interest in the tag team division in New Japan and as such it would be downright negligent to eliminate them at the first hurdle.
Lance Archer & Alex Zayne
Monster Sauce is back! I love these guys together and I will continue to campaign for Zayne to get an AEW run with Archer, preferably not in the Don Callis Family. They have competed in the tournament before but have never made it beyond the group stage. This has been a travesty. Zayne is a modern-day Nova and watching him in the ring is never dull. He plays off Archer beautifully as a character and a wrestler and the Japanese fans love them as a duo. Putting my shameless fandom aside I think it’s unlikely that Monster Sauce is a real threat to progress out of the group. I’m just glad they’re here.
Yuya Uemura & Yuji Nagata
I was tempted to say that pairing a future world champion (at least I hope he’s still seen as one) with one of the Dad Brigade is mind-boggling booking and a sign that they don’t care about Uemura any more. A less reactionary take would be that Uemura isn’t a tag team wrestler and should not be one, and he is better off focusing on the singles division. As there aren’t enough teams in the company to make up a field of 16, a few of these pairings had to happen. It’s better to use Uemura instead of someone like Zane Jay or Tomoaki Honma because of the star power. Nagata will take a lot of falls and this is one of three teams I expect to be propping up the bottom of the table. I won’t be sad to see another installment in the Uemura-Yuto saga, that’s for sure.
Aaron Wolf & Oleg Boltin
If I am going to be a more reasoned person while writing this, I have to say that this pairing is worse than the previous one when it comes to booking decisions. The temptation is to gush over the potential of this pairing and the inevitable match with Knockout Brothers, and I would share those feelings with you. Two thick men who have improved immensely over the last year and who make sense as a team and as friends. The thing is one of them is being pushed to the world title level and the other is a singles champion who needs as many reps as he can get right now. Potentially tying them up as a team (if the experiment works) would be a mistake. Having them feud after the tournament would be more of a downgrade for Oleg than an upgrade for Wolf. I look forward to seeing how the team works together, but I don’t think this was a wise decision for the future.
Yota Tsuji & Jeff Cobb
I put these two halfway between the Uemura/Nagata team and the Wolf/Oleg team. Cobb is not the walking pin donor that Nagata is, and I reckon these guys will challenge for the top four. It’s a little weird having the current IWGP champion in a tag team tournament where the winner ostensibly gets a tag title shot at Wrestle Kingdom, but that’s thinking as a pundit and not a wrestling fan who wants to watch good wrestling. These two are stablemates, they wrestle a similar style, and they make sense as a team. I’m still operating under the theory that Cobb is only in New Japan for a short stay before heading to AEW and possibly joining up with Ospreay. This is the sort of team you expect to see in World Tag League.
Ryohei Oiwa & Hartley Jackson
Oiwa won last year’s edition of the tournament, but his partner was Zack Sabre Jr. Hartley Jackson is no ZSJ. To be fair, this year’s Oiwa is miles ahead of last year’s version. It won’t be enough to bridge the gap but it should keep them off the bottom of the group. We’re guaranteed a reprise of the Oiwa-Yuto feud, and I could see that being one of those unexpected results that we get in New Japan tournaments to keep things interesting. Jackson has become something of a cult favourite in recent months but tournament success is still way beyond him. His contests with Oleg are always fun, so that match will be one to watch as well.
Callum Newman & Jake Lee
I love Jake Lee, and I usually love Newman. With Lee’s limitations after his health issues he might be better off in a tag team…but please, not with Callum. Please leave Callum at the top of the card as a singles competitor. It’s worth noting that Oiwa, Tsuji, Uemura, and Newman are all in this block, ensuring most of the new generation will face each other. That’s neither a gripe or a rave, at least not yet. It’s an observation and an interesting choice. Newman and Lee could easily finish third or fourth here, especially if they embrace the heel tactics. There’s only the one House of Torture team in this block (as opposed to two in B Block) so we “need” another team to wear the black caps.
Sanada & Yujiro Takahashi
And speaking of House of Torture, we have these two bringing up the rear. I legitimately do not know how Takahashi is still employed. There might be two people on the roster who I would be less interested in seeing wrestle. Sanada CAN be great, but his current incarnation is more about outfits and being weird. Maybe with the arrival of Shun Skywalker to play that role, Sanada can go back to being a good wrestler who sometimes cheats. This team is very likely to be in the bottom two and even more likely to annoy me immensely in the process.
B Block
Hirooki Goto & Yoshi-Hashi
Bishamon is the longest-standing team in the tournament and always a threat to win it all. The difference between tag team Yoshi-Hashi and singles Yoshi-Hashi is like the difference between mint ice cream and mint chocolate chip ice cream. They will get the chance to reprise their long-standing feud with Henare and O-Khan, who I would consider the other favourites in the block. Bishamon won the tournament three years in a row, and Goto won it with two other partners as well. I would not be too surprised if this is the year they fail to make it out of the group stage, given the relative parity at the top of this block, but I still think it unlikely.
Henare & Great-O-Khan
The most recent former tag champs should be in contention to win the block. They’ve been a team for a while and they don’t have anything going on as singles wrestlers, but more to the point they are a good team. Their match with Shingo and Drilla will not be for the faint of heart. I’ll be curious where Henare stands in the United Empire civil war, as he has been less enthusiastic to partake in the rule-breaking than his partner. I’m not sure we would see a rehash of the Akira-Young story from SJTL but we may well learn something about what Henare is thinking.
Shingo Takagi & Drilla Moloney
These guys only became a team last year, just before the 2025 WTL. They finished one win short of making the semis in their block They are the definition of a thrown-together team, but the best kind of thrown together team. Shingo’s currently playing the Kane role of a midcard guy you can believably heat up to being a title challenger, and Moloney is starting to move up the card. Unlike a lot of these makeshift units these guys have a team name (War Dragons) and have even come up with some tandem moves. I would be shocked if they don’t have a shot at the semis on the last night of block competition. It’s probably safe to say that the number of Drilla Killas Moloney hits will be less than or equal to their win total.
Don Fale & Chase Owens
The only bright side to this pairing is that they aren’t spread over two teams. Chase Owens had some modicum of talent but it just never developed. He’s better than Yujiro but who isn’t? Oh right, Don Fale isn’t. The thing about Fale is that he wasn’t ever actually any good. When Bullet Club was born Fale was pushed like so many foreign monster heels before him and since him. That was 13 years ago. He’s a huge man and at 44 years old the rigours of carrying that weight have caught up to him. He is glacially slow and barely mobile enough to bump for others at this point. I never thought I would be hoping for as much Chase Owens as possible, but here we are. There’s a good chance that these guys actually pick up more than one win in the block, and that alone is a travesty. It’s almost enough to counteract the return of Monster Sauce.
Shota Umino & Satoshi Kojima
You have to love symmetry. This pairing is almost an exact mirror of A Block’s Nagata-Uemura team, and if we’re being honest it will probably have exactly the same record. You could argue that Kojima has not deteriorated to the same degree as Nagata (who is only two years older) but I don’t expect that to make much difference. As with their mirror in the other block, this team is here to get Umino on the tour and fill a spot in the tournament with some star power.
Toru Yano & Togi Makabe
Great Bash Heel reunited earlier this year in a bloody brawl against the Knockout Brothers in a number one contenders’ match. They lost, but they put on a better show than anyone would have predicted. More to the point, Yano reminded us that he hasn’t always been the complete comedy character he has played for the last twelve years or so. That was a one-off match with stakes in a main event of a tour stop. I cannot imagine either man being able to go that hard for seven matches in a two-week span. I expect some shorter matches where they lose decisively, at least one classic Yano thievery win, and maybe one longer hardcore match where they roll back the clock again. I could even see that match being a deciding loss for one of the contending teams.
Taichi & Zack Sabre Jr
Yet more symmetry here as the reunited Dangerous Tekkers are the Monster Sauce of B Block. This might be the hardest team in the whole tournament to predict. They are former tag champions, and although GBH are too, at least ZSJ and Taichi had their reign this decade. ZSJ has almost done it all in New Japan, including winning last year’s WTL. Taichi is coming off an absolute banger of a match with Gabe Kidd and is a perennial favourite…who never wins. I could see them start slow and then win out, but sadly I cannot see them threatening the favourites in the group.
Ren Narita & Shun Skywalker
I am torn on this team. Narita has occasionally been a rare bright spot in House of Torture, probably because he is actually a good wrestler. Skywalker is too, but I find him so hard to watch and enjoy because of the noises. I could live with the outfit without the noises, but as a package deal…no. I think it’s between these guys and War Dragons to put pressure on the top two teams, sadly. New Japan brass seems to have high hopes for Skywalker and although there’s no world where I see the team making the semis I do expect them to be mildly successful. Due to HoT Shenanigans (TM), naturally.
Overall thoughts
Both blocks are quite easily separated into a top five and a bottom three. In A Block I would expect Knockout Brothers, Wolf & Oleg, Tsuji & Cobb, Monster Sauce, and Newman & Lee to be the top five. Monster Sauce would comfortably be number five of that group, but picking a second team to join KOB in the semis is tricky. I’ll put my money on Newman & Lee…but it’s a small amount.
Across the bracket the top two teams are clearer but the next three are harder to determine. War Dragons and United Empire are my two favourites, only because I can see Bishamon falling off the pace a bit this year. I could easily imagine House of Torture or Dangerous Tekkers challenging for one of those spots, though I do think they will fall short. War Dragons are unlikely to win the tournament since their stablemates are currently the champions, so my prediction is that Henare & O-Khan win it all.
It’s my plan to stay on top of the tournament and keep you updated on results and match recommendations on a regular basis. If you have a pick to win it all, especially if you disagree with my pick, come visit the VIP Forums and tell me why I’m wrong!
