King of Pro-Wrestling 2018: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru of Suzuki-gun defeated Jyushin Thunder Liger and Tiger Mask in 9:51 to RETAIN the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship in King of Pro-Wrestling 2018's opening match. WrestleFile assigned C+ / 6.9. The incumbent junior team champions kept their belts; this was not the newly vacant IWGP Junior Heavyweight singles championship that KUSHIDA won from Marty Scurll near the end. Neither result should be conflated with Kenny Omega's successful IWGP Heavyweight three-way defense against Cody and Kota Ibushi in the main event. Identifying both junior title lineages and the specific winning Suzuki-gun pair makes the opening title result chronologically useful.

Great Bash Heel's Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma defeated Taguchi Japan representatives Juice Robinson and Toa Henare in 10:20 in the second match of King of Pro-Wrestling 2018. The winning pair was Makabe-Honma, not Robinson-Henare, and WrestleFile gave the standard tag C+ / 6.5. The result followed the Suzuki-gun junior heavyweight team champions retaining against Liger and Tiger Mask in the opener but carried no recorded belt stakes of its own. KUSHIDA would later win the vacant junior singles championship and Kenny Omega kept the separate IWGP Heavyweight singles title in the final. Those clearly distinct outcomes should not be attached to a short supporting tag.

Bullet Club OG's Tama Tonga, Tanga Loa, Taiji Ishimori and Bad Luck Fale defeated Bullet Club Elite's Hangman Page, Matt Jackson, Nick Jackson and Chase Owens in 12:06 in an eight-person meeting at King of Pro-Wrestling 2018. WrestleFile rated the factional bout C+ / 6.8. Recording all four participants per side is especially useful here: two rival Bullet Club groupings shared a name but not the same lineup or winning result. This third-match decision did not determine the IWGP Heavyweight Championship or the Tokyo Dome Challenge Rights Certificate, both addressed later. Nor did Bullet Club OG take the junior team titles; Desperado and Kanemaru had successfully defended those in the first match.

CHAOS's Will Ospreay, Tomohiro Ishii and Hirooki Goto defeated Suzuki-gun's Minoru Suzuki, Taichi and Takashi Iizuka in 12:10 at King of Pro-Wrestling on October 8, 2018. The saved C+ / 6.8 grade belongs to this six-person match, not a singles title defense or a meeting involving Jay White. Ospreay, Ishii and Goto are the winning three, while Suzuki, Taichi and Iizuka were on the opposing side. CHAOS was represented again later in a different four-person group that lost to Los Ingobernables de Japón. This shows why attaching a single unqualified victory or loss to the whole faction for the event would be inaccurate.

Los Ingobernables de Japón's Tetsuya Naito, SANADA, BUSHI and Shingo Takagi defeated CHAOS's Kazuchika Okada, SHO, YOH and Toru Yano in 9:30 in the fifth match of King of Pro-Wrestling 2018. WrestleFile gave the eight-person bout C+ / 6.5. The winning LIJ quartet and defeated CHAOS quartet are separate from the earlier three-man CHAOS victory by Ospreay, Ishii and Goto. Okada's presence here did not place the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at stake, as Kenny Omega was the reigning champion and later retained against Cody and Kota Ibushi. Naito's team result is best read as the specific faction matchup documented, rather than a championship switch.

EVIL and Zack Sabre Jr. finished without a contest in their sixth scheduled bout at King of Pro-Wrestling 2018. The record calls it a NO CONTEST, so neither wrestler can be credited as the winner and no unrecorded pinfall or submission belongs in the match history. WrestleFile assigns the unfinished result C / 6.3, one of the lower marks on the October card. It occurred before KUSHIDA won a vacant junior singles championship and before Tanahashi defended his Tokyo Dome challenge certificate. Both later outcomes have clear winners, contrasting with this unresolved singles meeting. No specific unverified reason for the no contest should be inserted.

KUSHIDA defeated Marty Scurll in 18:33 to WIN the VACANT IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship at King of Pro-Wrestling 2018. This seventh match was for an unoccupied singles belt, not a defense by Scurll as incumbent champion. WrestleFile scored it B / 7.8, above most of the early faction matches. Suzuki-gun's El Desperado and Yoshinobu Kanemaru had retained the separate IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship in the opening bout against Liger and Tiger Mask. KUSHIDA's victory therefore established a new singles champion while the junior team holders stayed in place, a distinction that prevents the 2018 event from being misread as one across-the-board title transfer.

Hiroshi Tanahashi defeated Jay White in 20:40 to maintain his Tokyo Dome Challenge Rights Certificate for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at King of Pro-Wrestling 2018. WrestleFile graded this penultimate match B / 7.8. The certificate preserved Tanahashi's opportunity to challenge for the title in January, not immediate ownership of the IWGP Heavyweight belt in October. Kenny Omega, the actual defending champion, still had to meet Cody and Kota Ibushi in the following three-way and successfully retained there. KUSHIDA had also won a vacant junior singles title one match earlier; these two outcomes have distinct competitive consequences. Tanahashi's victory should never be recorded as taking Omega's current title.

Kenny Omega defeated both Cody and Kota Ibushi in 34:13 to RETAIN the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in the three-way King of Pro-Wrestling 2018 main event. Omega entered as reigning champion, while Cody and Ibushi were separate challengers; the source's three sides should not be reduced to a regular two-on-one tag result. WrestleFile scored the championship bout B+ / 8.4, the best rated contest on the nine-match Tokyo card. Hiroshi Tanahashi had preserved a future Tokyo Dome challenge right against Jay White earlier, not won Omega's current belt. KUSHIDA had won the vacant junior singles title from Marty Scurll; the junior tag champions Desperado and Kanemaru retained. These distinctions protect three separate championship/certificate stories.