NJPW star Kazuchika Okada has his sights set on gold in the tag team division.
At NJPW Capital Collision, Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi will challenge the Motor City Machine Guns (Alex Shelley and Chris Sabin) for the NJPW STRONG Openweight Tag Team Championship in a match that also includes Aussie Open (Mark Davis & Kyle Fletcher).
Speaking with Justin Barrasso of Sports Illustrated, Okada stated that he wants to focus on tag team wrestling following his loss to SANADA, who beat him to win the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship at NJPW Sakura Genesis.
“For now, I want to focus on tag wrestling,” Okada said through a translator. “I think Sanada’s challenge will be to be recognized by every wrestling fan as the champion. But then again, he did beat me, so that should be easy.”
Okada and Tanahashi are both former world champions, and they have battled plenty of times in the past. As a team, there’s no doubt that their talent is practically unmatched, and the combination also introduces a new story for the two.
“I think it will be an interesting story for the two of us,” Okada said. “I just wrestled him [in February] at Battle in the Valley, and it was important to me to have a title match with Tanahashi. I feel like now I’ve wrestled him in pretty much any situation. We’ve been bettering each other since 2012; we have such a story together. I think tagging with him will be a great experience for me to grow as a wrestler.”
With a win on Saturday, Okada would become a tag team champion for the first time in his illustrious career; he is a seven-time world champion.
WrestleZone will have coverage of NJPW Capital Collision once it airs on April 15.
