More on Katsuyori Shibata’s Match at NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 16

This past Tuesday’s NJPW Wrestle Kingdom Night One event featured a singles match between Katsuyori Shibata and Ren Narita. Prior to the start of the match, Shibata announced that the rules were changed from being a Catch style wrestling match to a regular wrestling match with strikes allowed instead.

Dave Meltzer reported in a recent episode of the Wrestling Observer Radio that Shibata’s surprise announcement of the rules being changes was not the original plans for his match. Meltzer reported that NJPW officials were also not aware beforehand of Shibata’s decision to change the direction of his match.

Meltzer stated “Everybody was freaking out backstage, nobody knew what was going on. This includes, like, the main people in the company, like [NJPW booker] Gedo and stuff like that. They didn’t know. He absolutely, 100 percent, nobody, I mean it’s possible somebody knew this, but nobody essentially knew Shibata was going to go out there and do a real match.”

Despite Shibata changing the plans on the spot, NJPW officials still went ahead with allowing his match to be held under regular wrestling rules.

Transcript h/t: F4WOnline.com