NJPW reveals full card for Southern Showdown in Melbourne

NJPW has announced the full card for their Southern Showdown event in Melbourne, Australia.

The show will be headlined by a tag team match, with Kazuchika Okada & Hiroshi Tanahashi facing Jay White & Bad Luck Fale. As was announced at Dominion, new IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Will Ospreay will defend his title against Robbie Eagles in Melbourne.

Ospreay, who won this year’s Best of the Super Juniors tournament, defeated Dragon Lee to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight title at Dominion. Ospreay then went to the English commentary table and said that he wanted his first defense to be against Eagles.

IWGP Tag Team Champions Guerrillas of Destiny will face Juice Robinson & Mikey Nicholls in a non-title match in Melbourne, and Rocky Romero is taking on El Phantasmo in a Best of the Super Juniors rematch

Southern Showdown in Melbourne is taking place at Festival Hall on Saturday, June 29. It will air live exclusively as an iPPV on Fite TV, then it will be uploaded to New Japan World 72 hours later.

NJPW’s Michael Craven explained why the show isn’t airing live on NJPW World: “Expanding into a new market brings with it new challenges; while we did not have the infrastructure in place in Australia for the quality of stream World viewers deserve, FITE have stepped up and offered their world class production and distribution expertise for the event.

“We realize how important it is that NJPW World has complete coverage of every single major event we put out, but also want to accommodate those fans that want to watch live, and that’s what drove us to go with FITE for the timed exclusivity deal.”

NJPW has also announced the card for their house show in Sydney, Australia on June 30.

Here’s the full lineup for the Melbourne event:

  • Kazuchika Okada & Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Jay White & Bad Luck Fale
  • IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion Will Ospreay defending against Robbie Eagles
  • Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa vs. Juice Robinson & Mikey Nicholls
  • Rocky Romero vs. El Phantasmo
  • Tomohiro Ishii & YOSHI-HASHI vs. Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens
  • Toru Yano, SHO & YOH vs. Taiji Ishimori, Gedo & Gino Gambino
  • Slex vs. Aaron Solow
  • Toa Henare, Shota Umino & Ren Narita vs. Mark Tui, Andrew Villalobos & Michael Richards