Real Reason The Young Bucks Won NJPW Titles

A new report has lifted the lid on NJPW’s decision to have The Young Bucks win the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Titles.

At Wrestle Dynasty on January 5th, The Young Bucks won the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championships for the second time, marking a triumphant return after six years away from the Japanese promotion. In a Triple Threat bout, the duo defeated United Empire’s Great-O-Khan & Jeff Cobb and Tetsuya Naito & Hiromu Takahashi of Los Ingobernables De Japon.

However, the reign wasn’t to last long, as Matthew & Nicholas Jackson were defeated at The New Beginning in Osaka by the LIJ pair only 35 days after winning the gold in the Tokyo Dome. On Wrestling Observer Radio, Dave Meltzer has explained why their title run happened in the first place, saying it was part of New Japan’s plan to get Naito and Takahashi over as a tag team.

“The whole thing was to get over Naito and Hiromu as a team because Naito, who is the biggest star they’ve got, can be in championship matches on a championship team because he’s got Hiromu, who’s really freakin’ good, to carry the matches.

“So it’s a way to keep Naito in the spotlight and use Naito’s name and make the tag team titles mean something.”

The Young Bucks Ready To Return To AEW

Speakign after their title loss, The Young Bucks announced it was “time to come back to work” in AEW. Matthew Jackson admitted returning to NJPW was something the brothers felt they had to do “to make things right” with the company after they left to form AEW in 2019. Now they have achieved that closure, they plan to return AEW, although they stopped short of giving an exact timeframe for their comeback.