Sean Rueter has been thinking too much about pro wrestling since at least WrestleMania I, and blogging about it for SBNation & Cageside Seats since around WrestleMania 28.
Since 2020, New Japan Pro-Wrestling shows have included the occasional women's match, featuring joshis (the Japanese term for women wrestlers) from its sister promotion Stardom. In 2022, the two Bushiroad-owned brands co-promoted their first show tgether -- Historic X-Over.
The event wasn't held last year, but Historic X-Over II is happening this year. It's in just a few weeks, in fact, on Nov. 17 in Osaka. That's why today (Nov. 8), the full card was announced.
Most of the matches are mixed tags, contested under standard mixed tag rules (men can only wrestle men, and women can only wrestle women). There is a somewhat rare IWGP Women's title defense -- this will only the 15th match for the belt since it was first awarded at 2022's Wrestle Kingdom 17 -- between long-reigning champion Mayu Iwatani and Momo Watanabe that will co-main event.
The most intriguing/outrageous match on the card is for New Japan's King of Pro Wrestling title. Current holder (KOPW is considered "provisional" during the year, with whoever's holding it at year's end the official champion for that year) Great-O-Khan issued an open challenge to any Stardom wrestler, and Suzu Suzuki stepped up. Answering the call was 22-year-old Suzu Suzuki, who's already worked numerous deathmatches at other promotions since starting her career six years ago.
And if that's not enough for you, O-Khan's beard and braid are also on the line. If he loses, he's got to cut both off.
Most of the set-up for this one happened at the Historic X-Over II press conference in late October. Here's some of New Japan's official write-up of that: