King of Pro-Wrestling was an annual NJPW event that was held every October and considered not only NJPW's biggest event taking place between August's G1 Climax and the January 4 Tokyo Dome Show, but traditionally was one of NJPW's biggest shows of the year. It was created by Bushiroad, a card company and the current majority owner of NJPW, named after a card game the company created in 2012.
The event took place annually starting with 2012 on the second Monday of October, the day of the Japanese public holiday known as Health and Sports Day. The event was held at Tokyo's Ryōgoku Kokugikan, and was nicknamed "Autumn Showdown at Ryōgoku". Traditionally, King of Pro-Wrestling was stacked with top-tier matches and main evented by the final defense of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship before the January 4 Tokyo Dome Show.
King of Pro-Wrestling 2015 continued that tradition, as Kazuchika Okada defended his IWGP Heavyweight Championship against AJ Styles. Both men had singles wins over each other up to this point. Styles defeated Okada for the championship in May 2014 and successfully defended it against him later that month. Okada regained the championship by defeating Styles in July 2015. So their match at King of Pro-Wrestling could have gone either way.
Other matches on the card include:
"IWGP Heavyweight Title #1 Contendership", match
Hiroshi Tanahashi
vs.
Tetsuya Naito
NEVER Openweight Championship
Togi Makabe (NEVER Openweight Champion)
vs.
Tomohiro Ishii (former NEVER Openweight Champion)
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship
Kenny Omega (IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion)
vs.
Matt Sydal
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship
reDRagon: Bobby Fish & Kyle O'Reilly (IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions)
vs.
Roppongi Vice: Beretta & Rocky Romero (former IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions)
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