Last night, New Japan Pro Wrestling hit the famed Cow Palace for their next foray into the United States for the G1 Special in San Francisco. Among the matches on the card was a high-flying affair for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship as Hiromu Takahashi defended against Dragon Lee.

During the bout, Dragon Lee set Takahashi for a cradle suplex that didn’t end well, as Takahashi was driven into the canvas on the top of his head. Fans watching knew it didn’t look good, however Hiromu was able to finish the match and wind up retaining his title.

According to Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio following the event, Takahashi reportedly collapsed backstage after the match and was sent to the hospital:

“He finished the match, retained the championship and I guess he collapsed backstage or something. They took him to the hospital and the preliminary word is they thought that he had a broken neck. Hopefully, it’s not as bad as that but that’s the word we got.”

EA’s Take: As soon as the spot happened I said to Dave (from Top Of The Morning Podcast), “He just broke his neck”. At the very least, Hiromu certainly must have a concussion because he was clearly out of it after the bump and looked like his eyes were pretty glossed over. I think the main question here is, which came from our Andrew Balaz, does this make Takahashi rethink his high-risk offense moving forward? Tough to say because we’ve seen cases where these kinds of injuries will force performers to change things up. We’ve also seen it not stop others such as Kota Ibushi, so the jury’s still out on that.

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