AJPW Dream Power Series 2025 - Opening Night: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

The main event is the reason the booking lands so well. All Japan had spent months establishing Jun and Rei Saito as durable World Tag champions, and the promotion explicitly framed March 9 as their ninth defense attempt. Ending the reign at Korakuen Hall against Kento Miyahara and Yuma Aoyagi creates a result that feels proportional to the champions' run. It also gives the round-number milestone of the 100th World Tag champions to a pairing with enough stature to carry it, rather than treating the number as trivia attached to a transitional team.

The card does more than protect the surprise for the last match. Miyamoto and MUSASHI both retain their singles titles, so the audience sees championship continuity before the major change. Miyamoto's fourth GAORA TV defense adds another completed checkpoint to his reign, while MUSASHI's second World Junior defense keeps that championship stable. Neither result needs to compete with the main event for historical weight. Their function is to make the show feel championship-heavy without exhausting the audience with repeated title changes.

The Asia Tag preview also produces a useful result. Hideki Suzuki submits Yuma Anzai, one half of the reigning Asia Tag champions, which creates leverage for the challengers' side without taking the belt off anyone on opening night. The earlier tags are simpler, but Yoshioka pinning Nagao and YOSHIDA pinning Omori at least create named winners instead of inconclusive tour filler. The six-match format helps the event: it reaches the championship main events quickly and gives the World Tag switch enough room to feel like the destination.

There is one restraint worth preserving in the historical evaluation. The title change is the centerpiece, but the card should not be rewritten as if every preliminary match foreshadowed it. The strongest booking is concentrated in the championship block and the Asia Tag preview. That concentration is a positive here because All Japan gives the audience a clear escalation: retained television title, faction and tryout business, a contender result against an Asia Tag champion, retained junior title, then the World Tag reign ending.

A 1,355 crowd at Korakuen Hall gives the event a credible major-stop atmosphere for this period of All Japan. More importantly, the official match-order notice documented seating categories selling out before the event. That makes the crowd context more informative than an isolated attendance figure. The company was not presenting a lightly attended opening-night placeholder; it had demand around a card built on three championship matches and a heavily promoted World Tag main event.

The pacing is unusually efficient for a modern historical file. Six matches span from the 9:27 second bout to the 24:49 main event. Only the World Junior defense and the World Tag title match exceed fifteen minutes, so the championships are allowed to grow in scale as the show progresses. Miyamoto and Doi open with a title match rather than a conventional preliminary tag, immediately telling the crowd that the card has stakes. The later eight-man then acts as a bridge into the two biggest championship matches rather than as a long interruption.

All Japan's day-of information adds another layer to the presentation. A memorial ceremony for Osamu Nishimura was scheduled before the wrestling card, and the official site listed the event for live viewing through All Japan Pro Wrestling TV with GAORA SPORTS also attached to the historical broadcast record. WrestleFile preserves those details as archival context, not as a guarantee that today's subscription terms or replay availability are unchanged. They help explain why this opening night was treated as a consequential Korakuen event rather than merely the first date on a new tour.

The World Tag title change is the durable historical marker. Jun Saito and Rei Saito were the 99th champions and arrived having completed eight successful defenses. Their attempt at a ninth ended when Kento Miyahara pinned Jun Saito after 24:49, making Miyahara and Yuma Aoyagi the 100th champions. All Japan highlighted the defense count and the 100th-team milestone before the event, so the result cannot be dismissed as a statistic attached after the fact. It was part of the match's promoted stakes.

That transition also gives the main event value beyond the names involved. The Saito Brothers had been one of the promotion's defining heavyweight teams, while Miyahara and Aoyagi were established singles headliners combining for a major tag challenge. The change therefore connects two eras of the division: a long champion team reaches the end of its run, and two top-level stars become the pair attached to the centennial reign number. When the 2025 World Tag chronology is reconstructed, March 9 is an unavoidable date.

Miyamoto's fourth GAORA TV defense and MUSASHI's second World Junior defense are smaller but useful title-history checkpoints. They make the show a three-championship record rather than a single-title event with an oversized main event. Suzuki submitting Anzai in the Asia Tag preview gives the card one more result with immediate divisional meaning, since a reigning champion is directly beaten in the match designed to advertise that title program.

The opening-night label also helps the event age well. This is not a tour closer where programs are being wrapped up after weeks of repetition. All Japan starts Dream Power Series by changing one of its major championships and creating new title direction immediately. Combined with the 1,355 crowd, the pre-event ticket demand, and the memorial presentation for Nishimura, the event has enough identity to stand on its own years later.

Its historical value is therefore concentrated but legitimate. The show does not need a tournament final, Triple Crown defense, or giant upset to qualify as an A-level archival event. A long World Tag reign ends, the 100th champions are crowned, two other champions add successful defenses, and the next Asia Tag issue receives a concrete preview result. Few six-match opening nights leave behind that many clean chronological markers.