Wrestling Dontaku 2012: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

CHAOS's Jado, Tomohiro Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI defeated Tama Tonga, Captain New Japan and Strong Man in 7:12 to open Wrestling Dontaku 2012. This was a six-person result, not an IWGP team-title defense. WrestleFile gave it C / 6.3, the lowest saved assessment among this particular card's opening three matches. The early contest establishes an exact CHAOS trio and its three opponents before the major singles and tag championships later in the show. For a shorter historical replay, the later Low Ki victory over Prince Devitt and the Yano-Iizuka win over Tencozy offer a stronger explanation of what changed on May 3. The opening team result should be preserved as a victory for Jado, Ishii and YOSHI-HASHI, not misapplied to those subsequent titles.

Suzuki-gun members Taichi and TAKA Michinoku defeated KUSHIDA and Ryusuke Taguchi in 8:16 in the second bout at the 2012 Fukuoka event. This was a standard two-team contest, and WrestleFile's C+ / 6.5 treats it as useful faction context rather than a championship switch. Taguchi would appear in other junior title matches in his career, but this particular recorded result contains no IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship change. The actual singles junior title moved when Low Ki defeated Prince Devitt in match four. Retaining those distinctions preserves both the day's Suzuki-gun win and the separate champion-versus-challenger decision, while avoiding an invented team-title stake.

Jushin Thunder Liger and Tiger Mask defeated CHAOS representatives Gedo and Rocky Romero in 7:50. Their victory closed the first three supporting matches before the 21:01 Low Ki-Prince Devitt IWGP junior heavyweight championship contest. WrestleFile's C / 6.3 evaluation marks it as a short historical pairing, not a belt-winning team title match. Liger and Tiger Mask formed the winning side; Gedo and Romero were the opposing pair. A reader tracing junior wrestler appearances can distinguish this veteran victory from Low Ki's later individual title change on the same event. There is no need to add a fictional extra participant, disputed outcome or unreported title condition to give the match its own identity.

Low Ki defeated defending champion Prince Devitt in 21:01 to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship at Wrestling Dontaku 2012. This was the first of the event's two documented title transfers, and WrestleFile's B / 7.5 ranks it among the important full-replay choices. Devitt entered with the singles junior belt; Low Ki left as the new champion. That outcome is distinct from the short Suzuki-gun and veteran junior tag matches earlier in the running order, neither of which awarded the singles championship. The next match would feature another transfer, this time in the IWGP heavyweight tag division, while Okada's IWGP Heavyweight defense in the main event kept the top singles belt with its incumbent.

Toru Yano and Takashi Iizuka, identified as CHAOS, defeated defending IWGP Tag Team Champions Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima in the fifth match of Wrestling Dontaku 2012 to take the belts. The result records a championship transfer from Tencozy to Yano and Iizuka, not a successful Tencozy defense. WrestleFile's B- / 7.1 score evaluates this heavyweight team match separately from Low Ki's B / 7.5 junior singles victory immediately before it. The two title switches created the card's mid-show turning point, but they did not extend to the main event: Okada retained the IWGP Heavyweight singles championship against Hirooki Goto later in the program. Tracking all three outcomes precisely is central to an accurate May 2012 title history.

Minoru Suzuki and Yoshihiro Takayama defeated Togi Makabe and Yuji Nagata in 13:43 on the May 2012 Fukuoka card. This Suzuki-gun tag win came immediately after CHAOS's Toru Yano and Takashi Iizuka had captured the IWGP heavyweight tag championship from Tencozy. Neither Suzuki nor Takayama received that title in their own bout, and the match was not a junior singles championship contest. At C+ / 6.8, WrestleFile's evaluation places this match between supporting faction history and the late-card programs. Keeping the two pairs and their outcomes separate prevents the nearby championship switch from being assigned to the wrong team.

Shinsuke Nakamura defeated Karl Anderson in 12:15 in the seventh match of Wrestling Dontaku 2012. The two singles competitors were placed between Suzuki-gun's victory over Makabe and Nagata and the later six-person tag involving Tanahashi and Naito. WrestleFile rated the result B- / 7.1, one of the higher non-title grades on the nine-match program. Nakamura did not take Kazuchika Okada's IWGP Heavyweight Championship in this bout; Okada remained champion after beating Hirooki Goto in the main event. The Nakamura-Anderson match works as an independent singles replay for their career histories rather than a substitute for the documented title decisions.

Hiroshi Tanahashi and Tetsuya Naito defeated Complete Players members Masato Tanaka and Yujiro Takahashi in 13:59. The penultimate match was a standard two-on-two tag, and neither Tanahashi nor Naito won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship at Wrestling Dontaku 2012. That belt was defended by Kazuchika Okada against Hirooki Goto in the next contest. WrestleFile assigned the tag B- / 7.1, matching Nakamura's previous singles result rather than the B+ score reserved for the title main event. For a reader tracing Naito or Tanahashi's 2012 appearances, this pairing is distinctive without making it a nonexistent championship result.

Kazuchika Okada defeated Hirooki Goto in 24:55 to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Championship in the closing match at Fukuoka Kokusai Center on May 3, 2012. Okada entered as the titleholder and left with the belt, which is the opposite of the two earlier title switches: Low Ki took the junior singles championship from Prince Devitt, while Toru Yano and Takashi Iizuka took the heavyweight tag belts from Tencozy. The saved B+ / 8.1 score is WrestleFile's top individual grade for this card and supplies the strongest full-match recommendation. The distinction between retention and title transfer keeps Okada's reign chronology intact and prevents crediting Goto with a victory he did not achieve.