Jay White Makes NJPW History At Wrestling Dontaku

Jay White made NJPW history during his NEVER Openweight Championship match against Hiroshi Tanahashi at today’s Wrestling Dontaku event.

Today marked the first of 2 Wrestling Dontaku shows. In the main event, White defeated Tanahashi to win the NEVER Openweight title.

During the match, White tapped out to Tanahashi’s Cloverleaf, but the referee was distracted by White’s manager, Gedo. Ultimately, White nailed the champion with the Blade Runner to secure the victory.

With this victory, White became the first NJPW star to hold the NEVER Openweight, IWGP Heavyweight, IWGP Intercontinental and IWGP US Championships. It is fair to say that White has dominated the singles NJPW heavyweight division.

The IWGP US Championship was the first title Jay White won after returning from his excursion. He defeated Kenny Omega in 2018 for the prize, before dropping the belt to Juice Robinson later in the year.

Tanahashi fittingly was also the man that White defeated to become IWGP Heavyweight Champion, pinning the Ace for NJPW’s top prize in 2019. He lost the title to Kazuchika Okada at G1 Supercard 2019.

White won Intercontinental gold in September 2019 from Tetsuya Naito. Naito won the title back from White at WrestleKingdom 14.

Tomorrow on night 2 of Wrestling Dontaku, Will Ospreay defends his IWGP World Heavyweight title against Shingo Takagi. Ospreay has promised that if he retains the championship, he will face Kazuchika Okada in a WrestleKingdom 15 rematch.

Ospreay recently reacted to Kenny Omega’s IMPACT World Championship win. The NJPW star is not the only competitor teasing a match with Omega, with Andrade recently calling out the AEW World Champion. You can read Omega’s response to Andrade’s challenge here.

What are your thoughts on the above story? Let us know in the comments on Twitter or Facebook.

• never openweight champion
• Wrestling Dontaku
• Jay White
• NJPW

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