Power Struggle 2011: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

Gedo and Jado opened the first Power Struggle in Osaka by beating Tama Tonga and Killer Rabbit in 4:32. Gedo pinned Killer Rabbit following the Complete Shot; this was not a draw, and the fall did not involve Tonga. As a short opening tag, it put CHAOS-associated veterans opposite two supporting wrestlers before the show turned to longer singles contests and five championship defenses. There was no title attached to the win, so the C grade acknowledges a concise recorded result rather than inventing championship stakes or extended near-fall sequences. Gedo's decisive fall makes the outcome distinct from the second opening tag, which Tomoaki Honma finished over Takashi Iizuka.

Wataru Inoue and Tomoaki Honma beat Takashi Iizuka and Hideo Saito in just 3:42. The contemporary Japanese result credits Honma with a lariat and the winning pin on Iizuka, identifying the actual participants in the fall instead of implying that Saito was pinned. The bout was a short CHAOS-adjacent undercard contest, not an IWGP championship defense. It followed the Gedo-Jado win and preceded Yuji Nagata's singles match with Tomohiro Ishii, giving the early card two quick team results before the longer wrestling began. The C grade fits its narrow runtime and limited title consequence; it should not be described as a ten-minute feature or as a tournament elimination.

Yuji Nagata defeated Tomohiro Ishii in 9:53, with the contemporaneous result identifying a backdrop suplex hold for the decisive pin. Neither wrestler was competing for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship here; that belt remained with Hiroshi Tanahashi and was defended later against Toru Yano in the main event. The short singles contest gave Nagata a recognizable win on a crowded Osaka show before the five championship matches unfolded. The C+ evaluation credits a definite finish and two established competitors without suggesting an undocumented title change. The outcome is separate from Ishii's later career achievements, which cannot be retroactively assigned to this 2011 result or used to inflate the match's contemporary stakes.

Suzuki-gun's Yoshihiro Takayama and Taichi defeated Togi Makabe and Ryusuke Taguchi in 8:39. Takayama scored the decisive pin on Taguchi with an Everest German suplex hold, as recorded in the contemporary Japanese show results. This was a supporting inter-division tag: the Suzuki-gun label connected it to the group's later challenge for the IWGP Tag Team Championship, but Takayama and Taichi did not win those belts here. Lance Archer and Minoru Suzuki instead challenged Bad Intentions in the semi-main event and lost. The C+ score recognizes the recognizable finishing move and faction context while separating an eight-minute tag victory from the more consequential championship defense later in the program.

Davey Richards and Rocky Romero, collectively No Remorse Corps, retained the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship against Tiger Mask and KUSHIDA in 12:43. Richards pinned KUSHIDA, and contemporary records credit the Contract Killer as the setup for the fall. This was the first of five title defenses on Power Struggle 2011; the champions did not lose their belts. Richards then challenged Prince Devitt after Devitt successfully defended the separate IWGP Junior Heavyweight singles title against TAKA Michinoku. The B- grade reflects a proper junior tag title contest with a decisive result and a clear connection to the junior singles championship picture, not a fabricated change of champions or a claim that Tiger Mask took the fall.

Prince Devitt retained the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship against TAKA Michinoku in 12:13. That singles defense followed the No Remorse Corps junior tag title retention and preceded a non-title pairing involving Tetsuya Naito, MVP and CHAOS. The card therefore gave the junior division two distinct championship results in succession: Richards and Romero kept the tag belts, while Devitt kept the singles belt. TAKA's challenge did not decide the tag champions, and the short retention should not be described as a title change. The B- score reflects a meaningful mid-card defense with a recorded winner and modest duration rather than an invented finishing-move sequence. The value for someone following Power Struggle's title picture lies in separating these two junior defenses and the challenge that followed them.

Tetsuya Naito and MVP defeated Shinsuke Nakamura and Yujiro Takahashi of CHAOS in 12:18. Their non-title tag offered a different kind of attraction after two successive junior championship defenses, bringing four wrestlers associated with New Japan's heavyweight and emerging singles scenes into one match. The recorded winners were Naito and MVP, not Nakamura's CHAOS team, and no championship moved with this outcome. The C+ mark is a restrained evaluation of a compact tag match that provided variety before Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima's singles meeting. Later singles success by Naito or Nakamura does not turn this specific 2011 pairing into a historic title result. The match can be sampled to see the participants' roles on this card rather than treated as the event's central achievement.

Hiroyoshi Tenzan defeated Satoshi Kojima in a 15:49 singles encounter, placing a match between two historically associated TenCozy partners immediately before the show's run of three senior championship defenses. The result is especially distinct because these wrestlers are more often discussed as a tag team, yet Tenzan took this decision alone; neither member claimed a singles championship through it. Power Struggle then shifted to Masato Tanaka's Intercontinental title defense against Hirooki Goto, Bad Intentions' IWGP tag defense and Hiroshi Tanahashi's IWGP heavyweight main event. The C+ grade acknowledges a longer non-title match with an identifiable outcome and history between the participants without crediting it with a belt change. The surviving core results support the winner and 15:49 time; a detailed finishing sequence requires additional independent verification.

Masato Tanaka retained the IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Hirooki Goto in 9:51 at Power Struggle 2011. This was a separate title lineage from the IWGP Heavyweight Championship held by Hiroshi Tanahashi, whose defense against Toru Yano closed the Osaka show. Tanaka's victory came after the Tenzan-Kojima singles match and before Bad Intentions challenged Suzuki-gun for the IWGP tag team belts, making it the first of three successive major-title results at the end of the card. Goto left this contest without the Intercontinental belt; an account presenting the match as his title win would be mistaken. The B- grade recognizes the defended championship and the Goto challenge while noting that the recorded match lasted under ten minutes. No unsupported finishing hold is needed to establish the stakes.

Bad Intentions, Giant Bernard and Karl Anderson, retained the IWGP Tag Team Championship against Suzuki-gun's Minoru Suzuki and Lance Archer after 17:15. The defending team won, so this was not Suzuki and Archer's first IWGP tag championship on the night. It also did not reverse the earlier Suzuki-gun supporting tag result: Taichi and Yoshihiro Takayama had already beaten Makabe and Taguchi in a separate non-title match. Two different pairings from the same faction can finish differently without inconsistency. The nearly eighteen-minute tag defense provided a substantial semi-main event between Tanaka's Intercontinental retention and Tanahashi's heavyweight title defense. Its B- grade is grounded in the stakes, established tag opponents and longer runtime, not in an invented championship change or a later outcome being attributed to this show.

Hiroshi Tanahashi retained the IWGP Heavyweight Championship by submitting Toru Yano in 22:01 in the main event of Power Struggle 2011. Yano had stolen Tanahashi's title belt during their buildup, so the champion's victory also resolved the immediate dispute over its possession; it did not create a new IWGP champion. This was the fifth successful title defense on the eleven-match Osaka show, following two junior title matches, Masato Tanaka's Intercontinental retention and Bad Intentions' heavyweight tag retention. Tanahashi's match had the longest runtime on the card and provided a clear main-event result after a closing sequence of successful defenses. The B+ score and Watch recommendation recognize a consequential conclusion without inventing an undocumented finishing move or treating Yano's earlier belt theft as a legitimate title transfer.