NJPW crowns 2024 World Tag League winner

Tetsuya Naito and Hiromu Takahashi are the winners of NJPW’s 2024 World Tag League and will face each other at Wrestle Kingdom.

They defeated Gabe Kidd & SANADA in the tournament finals today in Kumamoto. The finish of the match saw Takahashi get a three-count off a pinning combination on SANADA.

Typically, winners of the World Tag League would earn the right to challenge for the IWGP Tag Team titles at Wrestle Kingdom. However, champions HENARE and Great-O-Khan will likely be forced to vacate the belts due to a knee injury suffered by HENARE.

After today’s World Tag League finals, Naito turned to his partner and issued a challenge for them to face each other on January 4 at Wrestle Kingdom. The match was supposed to happen in March 2020 but didn’t due to the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. Takahashi accepted the challenge and closed the show by thanking Naito for all that he’s taught him through the years.

Takahashi and Naito took an odd route to get to the finals. After O-Khan and HENARE were forced to withdraw from the tournament, three teams found themselves tied atop the group after the final night of round-robin action. With the teams all tied 1-1 against each other in the round-robin, a triple threat was scheduled immediately, with Takahashi and Naito defeating House of Torture and Oleg Boltin & Toru Yano to advance to the finals.