Wrestling Dontaku 2015: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

Liger, Tiger Mask, Máscara Dorada and Yuji Nagata won an 8:29 four-on-four opener against KUSHIDA, Ryusuke Taguchi, Manabu Nakanishi and Captain New Japan. The match assembled junior-weight names and established veterans in one teams contest, making the lineups more informative than the C+ score alone. There was no championship at stake and no advancement in a tournament bracket; the documented outcome is simply the Liger-led quartet's victory. Its place before the Ibushi-Naito tag makes this a starting-point roster snapshot rather than a defining match of Wrestling Dontaku 2015. Fans tracking these eight individuals can note the exact team split, while those following the card's decisive title history should begin with the two junior championships or the Goto-Nakamura finale.

Kota Ibushi and Yohei Komatsu defeated Tetsuya Naito and Sho Tanaka in 11:55, giving the second match a different emphasis from the eight-man opener. Two pairs of wrestlers, rather than large faction units, received meaningful time without a championship involved. Naito and Ibushi were on opposite sides, and the winning pairing was Ibushi with Komatsu; assigning this result to Naito would reverse the event record. The C+ evaluation acknowledges an identifiable singles-oriented set of performers working in a tag format, but the contest did not move the junior tag, junior singles or Intercontinental titles that would appear later. Readers tracing the early 2015 career paths of Komatsu and Tanaka have a concrete lineup to work from; a title-only rewatch has stronger choices ahead.

Tencozy's Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima joined Tomoaki Honma to defeat Bullet Club representatives Tama Tonga, Bad Luck Fale and Cody Hall in 8:57. The named factions and partners define this match's archival value: the veteran Tencozy team and Honma took the victory over a three-man Bullet Club side. It did not decide either junior championship and was not the later AJ Styles-Yujiro Takahashi meeting with Okada and YOSHI-HASHI. WrestleFile's C+ / 6.5 captures its supporting role on an evening where two singles and team titles had different outcomes. If following Bullet Club's whole appearance at this Fukuoka show, include this loss alongside the Kingdom six-person result and the late Styles victory instead of treating every faction match as the same result.

The Young Bucks, Matt and Nick Jackson, defeated both defending champions Roppongi Vice, Beretta and Rocky Romero, and reDRagon, Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly, to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. This was a 17:17 three-way contest, not a straight two-team match, so both challenging teams belong in an accurate result. The reigning champions were Roppongi Vice; the Bucks left with the junior tag belts. That transfer gives the middle portion of Wrestling Dontaku 2015 a tangible division-level consequence before Kenny Omega's separate successful junior singles defense. The B- / 7.1 grade places the title change below the Intercontinental finale but makes it a priority replay for anyone tracing the junior tag title lineage.

Kenny Omega retained the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship against Alex Shelley in 16:07. The placement immediately after the Young Bucks' junior tag title win is the useful distinction: the tag belts changed hands, while Omega's singles championship stayed with its incumbent. These were different divisions, opponents and outcomes, not two victories by the same championship team. Shelley challenged unsuccessfully, and the result does not document an additional title being won. The B- grade gives the 16-minute defense a supporting championship role without equating it to Hirooki Goto's later Intercontinental title victory over Shinsuke Nakamura. For a focused viewing order, pair this with the preceding three-way to see the two junior title stories side by side.

The Kingdom's Matt Taven, Michael Bennett and Maria Kanellis defeated Bullet Club's Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson and Amber Gallows in 8:09. This six-person confrontation has an especially distinctive roster split, separate from the earlier Tencozy-Honma versus Bullet Club match. The result belongs to the Kingdom trio, not Gallows and Anderson, and no IWGP title change is recorded in this contest. The short runtime and C+ / 6.5 assessment place it below the championship matches surrounding the middle of the card. Its strongest reason to revisit is to identify the exact participants in this phase of the Kingdom-Bullet Club feud, rather than to assume that a non-title six-person match altered the heavyweight tag championship lineage.

Hiroshi Tanahashi, Togi Makabe and Katsuyori Shibata beat the opposing combination of CHAOS wrestlers Tomohiro Ishii and Toru Yano with Kazushi Sakuraba in 15:52. This later six-man match lasted far longer than several undercard tags, providing a distinctive veteran-heavy pairing before the Styles-Okada-related tag and the Intercontinental finale. The winning side had Tanahashi, Makabe and Shibata; the losing side included Ishii, Yano and Sakuraba. The bout did not transfer the IWGP Intercontinental belt, which Shinsuke Nakamura still held until the evening's last contest. WrestleFile's B- / 7.1 assigns stronger replay appeal than the short opening faction matches, especially for viewers following the wrestlers' alignments that spring.

Bullet Club's AJ Styles and Yujiro Takahashi defeated CHAOS's Kazuchika Okada and YOSHI-HASHI in 13:20 immediately before the Intercontinental Championship main event. This is a specific two-on-two result, not Styles winning an IWGP Heavyweight Championship or Okada capturing a singles belt that night. The tag's placement gave the two faction pairings a prominent final stretch, while Hirooki Goto's win over Shinsuke Nakamura still supplied the card's concluding title switch. At B- / 7.1, the result is a useful companion for anyone examining the Styles-Okada rivalry and faction configuration, but the 20:53 Goto-Nakamura title change receives the higher B+ review and is the stronger one-match selection.

Hirooki Goto defeated reigning IWGP Intercontinental Champion Shinsuke Nakamura in 20:53 to win the title in the final match of Wrestling Dontaku 2015. WrestleFile grades their Fukuoka championship encounter B+ / 8.1, the most highly rated bout on the nine-match card. Goto entered as the challenger and left holding the Intercontinental belt; the result should not be described as another defense by Nakamura. Earlier on the same event, the Young Bucks had captured the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship in a three-way involving Roppongi Vice and reDRagon, while Kenny Omega successfully retained the separate junior singles belt against Alex Shelley. Those junior-division outcomes are distinct from Goto's headline Intercontinental victory. The penultimate Styles-and-Yujiro versus Okada-and-YOSHI-HASHI tag did not itself decide the title. A focused viewing order should prioritize Goto-Nakamura for the actual main-event championship transition rather than recounting the whole show as interchangeable faction matches.