Major NJPW Star Suffers Bad Injury
One of NJPW’s top stars has suffered an injury that caused matches on the company’s US tour to be changed at the last minute.
Hiroshi Tanahashi has been a major star in NJPW for two decades. He is one of the company’s most decorated and reliable stars, and as a result has been wrestling at a high level for an incredibly long time.
But not even Tanahashi can reverse the effects of time. He has been injured many times before, but as he gets older and still tries to wrestle in the same taxing style, those injuries appear to be happening more often.
Such was the case a few days ago during NJPW’s Capital Collision show. Tanahashi was in the main event in a three-way tag match alongside Kazuchika Okada against Aussie Open and the Motor City Machine Guns. Not only did Tanahashi and Okada lose that match, but according to a press release from NJPW, Tanahashi left that match with a broken rib.
Shortly afterwards, Tanahashi confirmed the injury via Twitter.
昨夜、病院に行きました。肋骨が折れていました。すみません。
I went to hospital last night. My rib is broken. Sorry. #njpw
— 棚橋 弘至 (@tanahashi1_100) April 16, 2023
Because this injury occurred on the first night of a two-night tour, the second night’s card got changed. Aussie Open defended their NJPW Strong Tag Team Titles against the ream of Lio Rush and Tomohiro Ishii while Tanahashi was part of the meet-and-greet and didn’t do any wrestling.
As of this writing, neither NJPW nor Tanahashi have given a timeframe for how long Tanahashi will be out of action.