WWE, NXT, New Japan, ROH highlight busy weekend

Wrestling fans will be glued to their TVs for what is setting up to be the biggest weekend in the squared circle all year.

Things get started Friday night with Ring of Honor’s Summer Supercard, available on the Honor Club app, the highlight being an ROH world title match with champ Matt Taven defending against Alex Shelley.

New Japan Pro Wrestling will host the final two nights of its annual G1 Climax tournament, which means early-morning viewing live on the East Coast, beginning at 5 a.m. on Saturday with a lineup that includes action in the A block, highlighted by Kazuchika Okada facing Kota Ibushi and Hiroshi Tanahashi meeting up with Will Ospreay.

Sunday at 5 a.m. Eastern has the final night of action in the B block, highlighted by Juice Robinson vs. Jon Moxley and Tomohiro Ishii vs. Taichi.

The winners of the two blocks meet in the final early Monday morning – 2 a.m. East Coast time.

The top contenders for that spot: probably the winners of the Okada-Ibushi and Robinson-Moxley matches.

The G1 Climax winner gets a title shot at Wrestle Kingdom in the Tokyo Dome in January.

All of the action is available on the New Japan Pro Wrestling app. Saturday’s show will also be presented on AXS TV beginning at 9 p.m. Eastern Saturday night.

Also Saturday night, NXT presents its Takeover: Toronto show. The featured match is NXT champ Adam Cole defending against Johnny Gargano. NXT women’s champ Shayna Baszler defends against Mia Kim, and there’s a three-way match for the NXT North American title, with champ Velveteen Dream defending against Roderick Strong and Pete Dunne.

That show starts at 7 p.m. Eastern and is available on the WWE Network app.

Finally, we get to SummerSlam, Sunday at 7 p.m. Eastern, with a pre-show beginning at 5 p.m. Tons of matches on this card, highlighted by a Universal title match, with champ Brock Lesnar defending against Seth Rollins, WWE champ Kofi Kingston defending against Randy Orton, and way too many other matches to list here.

Available on the WWE Network. It will be a long night, at the end of a long weekend.

Actually, you might be able to time it out that you watch SummerSlam until about midnight, then convince yourself to stay awake until 2 a.m. to catch the G1 Climax final, which I suspect will be Okada vs. Moxley, and if that’s the match, it’s the match of the weekend.

Enjoy.

Story by Chris Graham