Kota Ibushi set to miss Wrestle Grand Slam; officially replaced by former IWGP Heavyweight Champion for title match

Hiroshi Tanahashi has officially replaced Kota Ibushi for the main event of NJPW Wrestle Grand Slam only a few hours before the show. In the lead-up to the event, Ibushi was originally set to challenge Shingo Takagi for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship.

However, after recently being diagnosed with aspiration pneumonia, Kota Ibushi's status for Wrestle Grand Slam was already in question. NJPW decided to give it some time before making an official decision regarding The Golden Star's status for the promotion's Tokyo Dome return.

Taking to Twitter, NJPW confirmed that Takagi will now defend the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship against Tanahashi. The announcement can be seen below:

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Despite the cancelation of the Takagi vs Ibushi match, Tanahashi is definitely the perfect replacement one could ask for. It wasn't too long ago when The Ace faced Takagi and defeated him to win the NEVER Openweight Championship after a match that lasted over 30 minutes.

With that being said, Tanahashi now has the opportunity to repeat history and take another belt off The Dragon.

Kota Ibushi is set to miss one of NJPW's biggest shows of 2021

While things haven't been going in the planned direction for New Japan Pro Wrestling this year, the promotion has been doing its best to put together some world-class matches amid the ongoing pandemic.

After all the ups and downs in recent months, Kota Ibushi was once again set to challenge for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship. The title was initially vacated by Will Ospreay, who was set to face Kazuchika Okada in the original main event of the show, but that match was also forced to be canceled due to Ospreay's injury.

The vacant title was then captured by Takagi who beat Okada to win the strap and was set to put his belt on the line against Kota Ibushi. Unfortunately for The Golden Star, he was forced to withdraw from the match at the very last minute.

About the author

Soumik Datta is a professional wrestling journalist who has been following the business for more than a decade.

In 2017, Soumik joined the Sportskeeda Wrestling team and is best known for his work with the WWE team. He has previously contributed to the Sportskeeda AEW, MMA, and the football team where he specifically covered the Major League Soccer.

In 2024, Soumik crossed 50 million reads for Sportskeeda WWE. While working under Sportskeeda MMA, he interviewed prominent UFC fighters, including Justin Gaethje, Sean O'Malley, and Cory Sandhagen, among others. He is also being followed by John Cena on X (formerly Twitter).

Apart from his love for professional wrestling, Soumik also watches Football and has been a lifelong follower of Liverpool FC and Mohun Bagan. He has also been following the Indian Super League and remains the only content creator to have traveled across India to watch 7 ISL Matches in 7 Days, a video which currently sits at 26K views on his YouTube channel. His channel currently amasses over 120K views.

As aforementioned, Soumik also likes to make content for his YouTube channel and travel to various places either with family, friends, or solo, or go on road trips.

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Edited by Arjun Kumar