Takashi Sugiura reclaimed the GHC National Championship at Pro Wrestling NOAH’s ‘The Glory 2021’ and in doing so, became the first man to have held the belt twice.
In a battle of Sugiura-Gun stablemates, the now former-champion Kazuyuki Fujita was making his first title defence, having destroyed Kenoh for the belt back at The Infinity 2021.
Following his victory, Fujita and Sugiura had entered into a gentleman’s agreement regarding the latter’s title opportunity, with the two even sharing several beers at the customary press conference, just days prior to the event.
The match itself was a typically hard hitting affair, with Sugiura’s neck and upper pectoral area left a bruised, purple mess following a lengthy exchange of forearms and open hand slaps with Fujita.
However the original GHC National Champion would take a page out of his teammate’s book by blasting him with a pair of punt kicks to the temple before landing the decisive Olympic Slam for the pinfall.
In a rare sight, veteran tough guy Fujita had to be stretchered to the back, following a colossal tussle between two of NOAH’s elder statesmen.
After Fujita had been taken to the back, the new champion addressed his hometown Nagoya crowd before inviting tag team partner Kazushi Sakuraba into the ring.
The pair exchanged pleasantries before the sly MMA veteran declared that he wanted a shot at the title.
The match was decided upon by a brief game of janken (or rock, paper, scissors) which Sakuraba won, thus booking himself into a title challenge for NOAH’s May 30th show, which will be the Mitsuharu Misawa Memorial 2021 entitled, Forever In Our Heart.
Full results:
GHC Heavyweight Title Match: Keiji Muto (c) defeated Masa Kitamiya
GHC National Title Match: Takashi Sugiura defeated Kazuyuki Fujita (c)
M’s Alliance (Masaaki Mochizuki, Masato Tanaka and Naomichi Marufuji) defeat Kaito Kiyomiya, Kinya Okada and Yoshiki Inamura
GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Title Match: Stinger (HAYATA and Yoshinari Ogawa) (c) defeated Ikuto Hidaka and NOSAWA Rongai
Sugiura-gun (Kazunari Murakami, Kazushi Sakuraba and Kendo Kashin) defeat Funky Express (Masao Inoue, Mohammed Yone and Shuhei Taniguchi)
Kotaro Suzuki vs. Yuya Susumu – Double Pin
Kongo (Katsuhiko Nakajima and Nio) defeat Akitoshi Saito and Junta Miyawaki)
FULL THROTTLE (Hajime Ohara, Seiki Yoshioka and YO-HEY) defeat Momo No Seishun Tag (Atsushi Kotoge, Daisuke Harada) and Yasutaka Yano