KAIRI Becomes First Ever IWGP Women’s Champion

Kairi (Sane) has made history by becoming the first women’s champion in New Japan history.

At Historic X-Over, which took place on November 20th, KAIRI won the finals of a tournament to become the inaugural IWGP Women’s Championship.

“IWGP” stands for “International Wrestling Grand Prix”, which is the governing body that oversees all of NJPW’s titles and sanctions all title matches.

With this win, KAIRI becomes the first woman to hold a title sanctioned by New Japan in that company’s 50-year history.

KAIRI beat STARDOM’s Mayu Iwatani in the main event of Historic X-Over to win the title. And since the title bears the ‘IWGP’ name, there’s a good chance KAIRI will defend it on future New Japan events, including the upcoming Wrestle Kingdom Tokyo Dome Event on January 4th.

Aside from this title, KAIRI has won multiple titles in both STARDOM and in WWE. She won the NXT Women’s title once, the WWE Women’s tag titles once, and the 2017 Mae Young Classic tournament.

In STARDOM, she has won their world title, their secondary singles title, multiple tournaments, and both the four-and six-woman tag titles.

Other highlights from Historic X-Over include:

• Will Ospreay retaining his IWGP United States title against the recently-returned ‘Roughneck’ Shotei Umino;
• Kazuchika Okada teaming with The Great Muta in one of Muta/Muto’s last matches;
• Hiroshi Tanahashi and Utami Hayashishita beating Hirooki Goto and Maika;
• Zack Sabre, Jr. and Guilia defeat Tom Lawlor and Syuri