NJPW Announces Top Matches for Summer Struggle in Jingu; Okada Announces New KOPW Championship

New Japan Pro-Wrestling held a press conference today at which they made two major announcements going forward.

The first announcement, made by wrestler Kazuchika Okada, was to announce a new NJPW championship. He referred to it as “KOPW 2020” which is presumably short for “King of Pro-Wrestling 2020.” Okada stated that this championship would be unconventional and, for some, harken back to the past of NJPW. These are the details that we know about the new KOPW Championship.

• The KOPW Championship is not represented by a championship belt; the Champion at the end of the year is presented with the KOPW trophy
• The KOPW Championship is vacated at the end of each calendar year
• On August 26th, an event will be held that includes four singles matches; each wrestler can suggest a stipulation for their own singles match, and the fans will decide whose choice they want to see for each of the four matches
• On August 29th, Summer Struggle in Jingu Stadium will hold a four way match involving the four winners from three days prior to determine the provisional KOPW 2020 Champion
• From that point, the Championship will continue to be contested with fans voting for their choice of the involved wrestlers’ suggested stipulations; Okada stated “two out of three falls matches, steel cage matches, ladder matches” were all possible

The second announcement was to book the two top matches for their next major event, Summer Struggle 2020 in Jingu Stadium. In sum, three matches for this event are now known.

• EVIL (c) vs. Tetsuya Naito for the IWGP Heavyweight and IWGP Intercontinental Championships
• Hiromu Takahashi (c) vs. Taiji Ishimori for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship
• Four Way Match for the Provisional KOPW 2020 Championship (Participants To Be Determined