By Chris Vetter, ProWrestling.net Contributor (@chrisvetter73)
New Japan Pro Wrestling unveiled the annual New Japan Cup brackets on Monday. This year’s field is comprised of 28 wrestlers, not 32, and will run March 6 through March 20.
NEW JAPAN CUP 2024 BRACKET REVEAL!
March 6~March 20!28 entrants in the spring classic!
Four prior winners receive byes!
Jack Perry makes NJPW debut and more!https://t.co/EZNuSjhrMj#njpw #njcup pic.twitter.com/xJKFJo2nJU
— NJPW Global (@njpwglobal) February 26, 2024
Vetter’s Thoughts: Jack Perry is officially headed to NJPW to compete in the first night of the New Japan Cup in a first-round match against Shota Umino on March 6. Sanada, EVIL, Hirooki Goto, and Zack Sabre Jr. have received first-round byes (one can only assume those were ‘randomly drawn’ byes, as there is no reason for Goto to get a bye otherwise).
Mikey Nicholls is in but TMDK teammate Shane Haste is not, which seems unusual. Good to see Tanga Loa is in, as I wondered about his future with Tama Tonga now gone. Obviously, no IWGP champion Tetsuya Naito, either. It would have been nice for El Desperado to get a slot. I was hoping for another AEW wrestler or perhaps another unexpected wild card from the U.S. indies, Mexico or UK, but outside of Perry, the entire field are NJPW regulars.
The obvious first-round matches to watch will be Umino-Perry and Cobb-Tsuji and Shingo-Uemura and Narita-Taichi; those four matches are in different brackets and I presume those will be the headline matches of each night. TJP is great and appears to be the only junior in the field; while he won’t win, him vs. David Finlay should be really good, too. If Taichi advances, he would face long-time teammate Zack Sabre Jr. in the second round.
Correction: The byes were given to four previous tournament winners.
Agreed, they should have put in El Desperado.
A week later and you haven’t changed this. They aren’t random byes. It says the reason in the tweet
It wasn’t random. It says right in the tweet that 4 previous winners received byes. Goto won in 2009