Karl Anderson and Luke Gallows returned to WWE on the October 10th Monday Night Raw, reuniting with AJ Styles to combat The Judgement Day. A six-man tag team match has since been booked for WWE Crown Jewel on November 5th, pitting Anderson, Gallows, and Styles against Finn Balor, Damian Priest, and Dominik Mysterio.
Although ‘The Machine Gun’, as well as ‘The Big LG’, has largely been welcomed back to the sports entertainment giant with great applause, one person is furious – Takami Ohbari, the President of New Japan Pro-Wrestling. He’s reportedly been left “angry” over Karl Anderson‘s booking for Crown Jewel, seeing as he’d previously been scheduled for NJPW Battle Autumn the same day.
The match would have seen Karl defend the NEVER Openweight Championship against Hikuleo. It was believed that Anderson would be allowed to continue his NJPW commitments, likely until he dropped the NEVER title, with both he and Gallows reportedly having agreed to NJPW dates through to January 4th’s Wrestle Kingdom 17.
His ongoing championship reign has even been acknowledged on WWE programming. During The Good Brothers’ NXT debut on October 18th, teaming with Cameron Grimes against The Schism, Vic Joseph addressed the pair having gone around the world, with Karl Anderson “even a champion still in Japan“.
Karl Anderson’s NJPW Success
Currently, New Japan Pro-Wrestling has an abundance of top gaijin performers on their books, including Zack Sabre Jr., Will Ospreay, and the current IWGP World Heavyweight Champion, ‘Switchblade’ Jay White. Previously, though, it wasn’t common for there to be so many, a period that Karl Anderson worked through.
First teaming with Giant Bernard in Bad Intentions and then with Luke Gallows in The Good Brothers, Anderson was a top international performer in the Japanese kingpin of professional wrestling for several years before leaving in 2016. He held the IWGP Tag Team Championships four times and won two World Tag Leagues.
His current reign as the NEVER Openweight Champion began at Dominion when he defeated Tama Tonga to win his first NJPW singles title.