NOAH The New Year (2023)

Promotional poster for the event, featuring Kaito Kiyomiya and Kenoh

**NOAH The New Year (2023)** was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event promoted by Pro Wrestling Noah (Noah). The event took place on January 1, 2023, at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo, Japan. The event was the second NOAH The New Year event, which is Noah's biggest annual event and as their equivalent to NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom and WWE's Wrestlemania. This was the second puroresu show to be held in the New Year's Day.

The event was headlined by The Great Muta facing WWE's Shinsuke Nakamura, as part of Muta's retirement tour. Another high-profile match, also included Kaito Kiyomiya defending the GHC Heavyweight Championship against Kenoh.

Three other title matches included Takashi Sugiura and Satoshi Kojima defending the GHC Tag Team Championship against KENTA and Naomichi Marufuji, AMAKUSA defending the GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship against Junta Miyawaki and Kzy and YO-HEY defending the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship against Eita and Yoshinari Ogawa.

Due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the event had some restrictions in attendance, following the declaration of the State of Emergency in Japan. The event aired live on AbemaTV online linear television service and CyberFight's streaming service Wrestle Universe in both English and Japanese commentaries.

## Production

### Background

In 2021, NOAH set a goal for the promotion to return to the Nippon Budokan on January 1, 2022 at New Year's Day. Since 2022, Noah began annually producing shows in the Nippon Budokan the NOAH The New Year, which became the first puroresu show to be held in the New Year's Day, becoming Noah's biggest annual event and as their equivalent to NJPW's Wrestle Kingdom and WWE's Wrestlemania. The first show ended up being a financial success, leading Noah to announce a second show in the following year in the NOAH The New Year.

The event featured a special appearance by Shinsuke Nakamura, who is set to wrestle his first Noah match in nearly a decade against The Great Muta. The match will mark Nakamura's first match outside of WWE since 2016. Nakamura previously worked in Noah in 2013, with his last Noah match before NOAH The New Year taking place on October 5, 2013. With Muta announcing his retirement in June 2022, according to *Tokyo Sports*, after a disagreement at first, Nakamura persisted in negotiating with WWE's new regime after Chairman and CEO Vince McMahon retired in July, to have a match with Muta, with the final agreement being reached on October 26, leading him to receive permission from WWE to do the match.

### Storylines

NOAH The New Year featured professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.

The event will be headlined by The Great Muta facing WWE's Shinsuke Nakamura. On June 12, 2022 at CyberFight Festival, Keiji Mutoh announced his retirement from professional wrestling. Afterwards, it was announced that Mutoh would take part in a trial series, before his retirement. On October 30, Noah made a surprise announcement, reporting that Shinsuke Nakamura would returning to Noah to face The Great Muta in his retirement tour on January 1, 2023 at NOAH The New Year. According to Nakamura, he described the match as a miracle, calling it the opening of a real "Fоrbidden Dооr". On December 24, due to the notoriety of the match, NOAH changed the main event of the show, awarding it to Muta and Nakamura.

In the GHC Heavyweight Championship match, Kaito Kiyomiya made his third title defense against Kenoh. On November 10 at Global Honored Crown, Kiyomiya defeated Timothy Thatcher to make his second sucessful title defense of the GHC Heavyweight Championship. Afterwards, Kenoh who berated his efforts, seeing parallels between Shinsuke Nakamura and The Great Muta's match, Kenoh challenged Kiyomiya to a title match at NOAH The New Year. The challenge was quickly accepted by Kiyomiya, with Kenoh aiming to surpass Nakamura and Muta. As part of the build-up to the title match, Kiyomiya scored a direct pinfall over Kenoh, before their match, leading Kiyomiya to berate Kenoh. On December 24, changed the status of the match and awarded the main event of the show to Muta and Nakamura. Kenoh stated that he was disappointed with the decision, adding that he was sorry for previous holders of the title Mitsuharu Misawa, Kenta Kobashi, Jun Akiyama and all the seniors who competed for the title, subsquently apologized, as he admitted they were no match for the global recognition of Muta and Nakamura.

On November 23 at Noah the Best, Naomichi Marufuji and Takashi Sugiura faced off in a six-man tag team match, where Marufuji teamed with Masato Tanaka and Masaaki Mochizuki and Sugiura teamed with his Sugiura-gun stablemates Kazuyuki Fujita and Timothy Thatcher. Marufuji won the match for his team by scoring a direct pinfall over Sugiura and afterwards challenged him and Satoshi Kojima to a title match at NOAH The New Year, with his partner being KENTA, leading Sugiura to accept the title match. Marufuji later revealed he had not asked KENTA to team with him, but he wanted to do something interesting for the event. Both Marufuji and KENTA, where trained by NOAH's dojo and since the formation of the promotion, the duo established themselves as one of the prominent figures of NOAH's, both holding all of NOAH's championships, including the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship together and having multiple highly acclaimed matches. Leading to their match, Sugiura dismissed Marufuji and KENTA as a threat as going into the match, as neither were on the best of terms.

In the GHC Junior Heavyweight Championship match, AMAKUSA defended the title against Junta Miyawaki. Miyawaki joined the NOAH dojo in August 2017 and worked for the promotion until May 2022, when he left for an indefinite learning excursion to Mexico. Miyawaki returned from his excursion on December 23, confronting and challenging AMAKUSA after he had defeated Dante Leon to win the GHC Heavyweight Championship. Later that day, NOAH officially announced the match between AMAKUSA and Miyawak for NOAH The New Year.

Also on December 23, Kzy and YO-HEY defeated Atsushi Kotoge and Seiki Yoshioka to win the GHC Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship. Afterwards, they were confronted by Eita, who challenged them to a title match, with YO-HEY asking him the identity of his patner. Eita shockingly announced that his partner would be Yoshinari Ogawa, with whom he had been mostly feuding with.