Wrestling Dontaku 2016: WrestleFile Historical Verdict

Bad Luck Fale and Yujiro Takahashi opened Wrestling Dontaku 2016 with a 2:26 Bullet Club victory over Juice Robinson and Captain New Japan. The brevity is a defining feature of the result: there is no title at stake and little reason to compare this match's scope with the six championship contests that follow elsewhere on the card. It still documents which two wrestlers appeared together for Bullet Club and who lost opposite them. The C / 6.3 score treats the pairing as an opening item, not a centerpiece. A viewer tracing Robinson or the faction's early-May roster can preserve the result, but a replay built around the event's title developments should start with Sydal and Ricochet's junior tag match.

The CHAOS quartet of Will Ospreay, Gedo, YOSHI-HASHI and Kazushi Sakuraba defeated Ryusuke Taguchi, Tiger Mask, Jay White and David Finlay in 7:23. This eight-man assembled junior names and more experienced wrestlers into separate teams, providing a precise snapshot of the May 2016 roster without resolving any championship. The winner is the four-person CHAOS team; it would be inaccurate to attribute the result to Taguchi's side or treat it as a junior singles defense. WrestleFile's C / 6.3 indicates a short second match before the card shifted to successive championship contests. People following Ospreay, White and Finlay's New Japan chronology have a distinct meeting to reference; title-focused viewers have stronger material immediately afterward.

Matt Sydal and Ricochet defeated defending champions Roppongi Vice, Beretta and Rocky Romero, in 16:26 to win the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. This was the first title change on the May 3 Fukuoka card and belonged to the junior tag division, not the singles championship KUSHIDA defended against Jushin Thunder Liger later. The new pairing of champions was Sydal and Ricochet; Roppongi Vice were the outgoing titleholders. A B- / 7.1 review gives the contest legitimate championship value without putting it on the same tier as the 30-minute Naito-Ishii main event. It is one of the necessary replays for tracking which belts changed hands during Wrestling Dontaku 2016.

The Elite's Kenny Omega, Matt Jackson and Nick Jackson beat Hiroshi Tanahashi, Michael Elgin and Yoshitatsu in 14:03 to win the NEVER Openweight 6-Man Tag Team Championship. That adds a second championship switch to the card immediately after Sydal and Ricochet took the IWGP junior tag belts. The distinction is important: these were different belts, different teams and separate results, not one victory recounted twice. Omega was on the winning three-person side here, whereas the IWGP junior singles title later stayed with KUSHIDA. WrestleFile's B- / 7.1 gives the six-man title change solid mid-card standing. Viewers tracking the Elite's 2016 title history should place this specific win ahead of the Guerrillas of Destiny's subsequent successful heavyweight tag defense.

The Guerrillas of Destiny, Tama Tonga and Tanga Loa, retained the IWGP Tag Team Championship against Great Bash Heel's Togi Makabe and Tomoaki Honma in 12:12. That result interrupted the run of title changes established by the Sydal-Ricochet and Elite victories: these defending heavyweight tag champions kept their belts. It was not the junior tag championship, despite both contests involving teams on the same show. The B- / 7.1 mark places this defense among the solid supporting title bouts, below the evening's 30:33 heavyweight singles main event. Pair it with the earlier junior tag title switch for an accurate picture of how differently the two IWGP tag divisions finished on May 3.

Yuji Nagata defeated defending champion Katsuyori Shibata in 11:53 to win the NEVER Openweight Championship. This was a singles championship change, separate from the Elite's earlier six-man NEVER title victory. The fact that both carry the NEVER name should not blur the title lineage: Nagata acquired the one-person Openweight belt, while Omega and the Young Bucks had already won the trios version. WrestleFile's C+ / 6.9 rates the contest a little below several longer B- title matches despite the consequential result. A viewer tracing only titleholders still needs this match, even if the editorial score does not place it alongside Naito's heavyweight defense as the show's strongest sustained encounter.

KUSHIDA defeated Jushin Thunder Liger in 14:37 to retain the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship. On the same event, the junior tag titles had changed hands when Sydal and Ricochet beat Roppongi Vice; KUSHIDA's singles belt did not. Liger was the unsuccessful challenger here, and the result should not be confused with his earlier title victories at January Tokyo Dome events in WrestleFile's archive. The B- / 7.1 grade gives this defense its own replay value within a card carrying six different championship contests. For a compact account of New Japan's junior division that spring, this defense and the third-match junior tag switch provide complementary evidence rather than duplicate outcomes.

EVIL defeated Hirooki Goto in 9:53 in the eighth match of Wrestling Dontaku 2016. This was a non-title singles result in the closing sequence, preceding Kazuchika Okada against SANADA and then Naito's successful heavyweight title defense. Goto had been central to the previous year's Fukuoka Intercontinental finale, but his May 2016 match did not move that championship or the IWGP heavyweight belt. WrestleFile scores the contest C+ / 6.8, keeping a nine-minute win distinct from the longer title contests on this card. Anyone following Goto and EVIL's rivalry can retain the victor and date while avoiding unsupported claims about a title opportunity or an unrecorded finish.

Kazuchika Okada defeated SANADA in 15:11, placing a substantial non-title singles match immediately before Tetsuya Naito defended the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Tomohiro Ishii. Okada's win is a separate result; he was not the title challenger or champion in the finale. SANADA's appearance opposite Okada also follows EVIL's win over Hirooki Goto, giving the last three matches three distinct pairings. WrestleFile's B- / 7.1 places this contest above several short undercard entries but below the B+ / 8.4 Naito-Ishii main event. It is a reasonable full-match addition for fans tracking the Okada-SANADA history, although the definitive title defense should lead a selective viewing order.

Tetsuya Naito retained the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against Tomohiro Ishii in 30:33 to close Wrestling Dontaku on May 3, 2016. This B+ / 8.4 main event confirmed Naito as defending champion at Fukuoka, a different stage of his title story from the prior month's Invasion Attack, where he had defeated Kazuchika Okada to WIN the championship. The event also featured multiple other title outcomes: the Young Bucks' rivals Sydal and Ricochet won the junior tag belts, the Elite captured NEVER six-man gold, Yuji Nagata took the NEVER singles belt, and Guerrillas of Destiny retained the separate heavyweight tag championship. Naito's own match was a retention, not one more change of holder. Its thirty-minute duration and leading critical score make it the event's clear full-watch recommendation. The historical account should distinguish opponent Ishii from April's Okada and avoid merging two separate title matches into a single result.