NJPW announced the bracket for their 16-man, single elimination New Japan Cup 2018 Tournament. It will take place between March 9 and March 21 and all of the events will air live on NJPW World. Half of them will include English Commentary the rest will be in Japanese. The winner will receive a shot at the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.

The video below is the New Japan Cup 2018 Press Conference featuring Hiroshi Tanahashi, for (somewhat rough) English subtitles click “CC”, Settings, Subtitles/CC, Auto-Translate, English.

Below are the first round match-ups:

Top Bracket

• Michael Elgin vs. Tomohiro Ishii
• Juice Robinson vs. Yujiro Takahashi
• Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Taichi
• Bad Luck Fale vs. Lance Archer

Bottom Bracket

• YOSHI-HASHI vs. Kota Ibushi
• Tetsuya Naito vs. Zack Sabre Jr.
• Toru Yano vs. Davey Boy Smith Jr.
• Chuckie T. vs. SANADA

In the 2017 tournament, Katsuyori Shibata defeated Bad Luck Fale in the finals however would then lose to IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada at Sakura Genesis 2017.

The first New Japan Cup 2018 matches will air on March 9 at 4:30am ET / 1:30am PT.

My Thoughts:

The names alone even for a “non-NJPW” fan are impressive. I’m personally always fan of a tournament and this is something I would like to see WWE do, well they did with King of the Ring. As far as predictions go there are two James that jump out in, Tanahashi and Ibushi. Watching Cody and Ibushi earlier in the year I think Ibushi has a great chance to get the victory. I think an Ibushi and Okada match would be fantastic and is something I would go out of my way to watch. 

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