The full lineup and schedule for the 2018 Best of the Super Juniors has been released. The tournament will kick off May 18th, 2018 and the finals will be held on June 4th.
Previously, 13 names had been leaked through promotional advertising but today the final lineup and blocks were also revealed.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8tafGUf3xE
Best of the Super Juniors 2018 Lineup
Block A
- Tiger Mask
- Yoshinobu Kanemaru
- ACH
- Flip Gordon
- Yoh
- Bushi
- Will Ospreay
- Taiji Ishimori (Bone Soldier)
Block B
- Dragon Lee
- Sho
- Ryusuke Taguchi
- El Desperado
- Kushida
- Chris Sabin
- Hiromu Takahashi
- Marty Scurll
This will be the 25th version of the event. It will also be an important tournament for last year’s winner, Kushida. 2 of the last 3 BOSJ have been won by Kushida. Only two wrestlers in history, Jushin Liger and Koji Kanemoto, have ever won 3 BOSJ tournaments.
Current IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion, Will Ospreay, won the tournament in 2016. He also recently defended his title successfully against Kushida at Wrestling Dontaku last week.
Chris Sabin returns to New Japan Pro Wrestling for this tournament. Sabin had previously competed for the promotion in 2009-2010. The Motor City Machine Guns won the IWGP Junior Heavyweight tag-team titles from Yujiro Takahashi and Tetsuya Naito at WrestleKingdom III in the Tokyo Dome. After successfully defeating Apollo 55 (Prince Devitt and Ryusuke Taguchi) once, they would drop the following two matches and the belts in a trilogy to them.
Taiji Ishimori was recently announced as Bullet Club’s new Bone Soldier. Ishimori resigned from Pro Wrestling Noah earlier this year in order to become a free agent. He has also been wrestling for impact and is a former X Division Champion. He lost the title to Matt Sydal and also lost his rematch on last week’s episode.
Finally, Flip Gordon will make his Best Of The Super Junior’s debut this year as well. The youngster has been making a name for himself as of late on the Being the Elite YouTube series and in Ring Of Honor.
