NJPW Announces June 15th Date for Return of Live Events & New Japan Cup Tournament

New Japan Pro Wrestling held an online press conference earlier announcing that they will be resuming live events in Japan starting on June 15th.

The company announced that they began testing all of their talent, officials, and staff for the coronavirus last week. The company’s current plan is for all of their upcoming events until July 11th to be held as empty arena events.

Their first live event on June 15th was announced to be part of a “Together Project Special” with matches to only be officially announced at the start of the show.

The company also announced that this year’s New Japan Cup tournament will be taking place from June 16th to July 11th and will be open to both Junior Heavyweight and Heavyweight wrestlers. This year’s tournament is titled “New Japan World Special New Japan Cup 2020” and the winner will face off against Tetsuya Naito for the IWGP Heavyweight and IWGP Intercontinental Championships at Dominion 2020.

It was also announced that both this year’s New Japan Cup tournament Finals on July 11th and Dominion 2020 event on July 12th will take place in Osaka, Japan with limited fan attendance allowed.

Full schedule for First Round of the 2020 New Japan Cup tournament:

June 16th:

• Togi Makabe vs. Yota Tsuji
• Tomohiro Ishii vs. El Desperado
• Toru Yano vs. Jado
• Tomoaki Honma vs. Hiromu Takahashi

June 17th:

• Kazuchika Okada vs. Gedo
• Yuji Nagata vs. Minoru Suzuki
• Yuya Uemura vs. Yoshinobu Kanemaru
• Taiji Ishimori vs. Gabriel Kidd

June 22nd:

• Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Taichi
• Zack Sabre Jr. vs. Kota Ibushi
• Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Sanada
• SHO vs. Shingo Takagi

June 23rd:

• Hiroyoshi Tenzan vs. Yoshi-Hashi
• YOH vs. BUSHI
• Satoshi Kojima vs. EVIL
• Hirooki Goto vs. Yujiro

The second round of this year’s tournament will take place from June 24th to July 1st. The quarter-finals will take place on July 2nd, the semi-finals on July 3rd, and the finals on July 11th.

In regards to other upcoming events, the company announced that their originally scheduled tour of Hokkaido in July has been cancelled due to coronavirus-related issues.

Full press conference: