Boltin Oleg and Ren Narita Advance to NJPW New Japan Cup Quarter Finals

By Noah Leatherland

NJPW continued the New Japan Cup in Takamatsu with another pair of second round matches. After the dust settled, the next two wrestlers heading into the quarter finals are Boltin Oleg and Ren Narita.

Satoshi Kojima filled in for Tomohiro Ishii after an injury ruled The Stone Pitbull out of the New Japan Cup. Kojima faced the NEVER Openweight Champion Ren Narita in the second round. Once again, the House of Torture ran riot to help a stablemate advance. The worst of their interference saw Don Fale splashing Kojima through a table, dealing major damage that allowed Narita to pick up the win.

The main event saw the NJPW STRONG Openweight Champion Boltin Oleg take on HENARE. As expected from a match-up between two big behemoths, HENARE and Boltin both brought the physicality.

Ultimately, Oleg managed to outlast HENARE. Oleg drove HENARE into the mat with a Kamikaze to pick up the win after the two men battered each other for over 20 minutes. Speaking in the post-match comments, Oleg was delighted with today’s win:

Thanks to everyone, I really feel I’ve grown tremendously in this New Japan Cup. I’m absolutely thrilled to have beaten HENARE today. I’ll keep pushing until the very end, win the New Japan Cup, and then I’ll go for the IWGP.

(Quote translated via DeepL)

Oleg and Narita will now face each other in the quarter finals, pitting NJPW STRONG Openweight Champion against the NEVER Openweight Champion. They are set to face-off on March 15th.

Here are the full results for NJPW New Japan Cup Day 6:

• OSKAR & Yuto-Ice def. Chase Owens & Yoshinobu Kanemaru (6:24)
• Ryohei Oiwa & Zack Sabre Jr. def. Daiki Nagai & Drilla Moloney (7:04)
• Aaron Wolf, Shota Umino & Toru Yano def. Dick Togo, Don Fale & Yujiro Takahashi (6:29)
• Hartley Jackson & Kosei Fujita def. Callum Newman & Zane Jay (5:35)
• Francesco Akira, Jake Lee & Jakob Austin Young def. Hirooki Goto, Tatsuya Matsumoto & YOSHI-HASHI (9:11)
• Shingo Takagi & Yota Tsuji def. Tomoaki Honma & Yuya Uemura (10:16)
• New Japan Cup Second Round – Ren Narita def. Satoshi Kojima (12:06)
• New Japan Cup Second Round – Oleg Boltin def. HENARE (22:11)