Ranking Wrestling’s Greatest Friendships: Can Anyone Top The New Day?
By Laura Mauro
7. Roppongi 3k
Along with their mentor Rocky, Sho and Yoh are still relative newcomers to the NJPW tag scene – they made their debut almost a year ago at King of Pro-Wrestling. Before that, Sho and Yoh had a brief stint at Ring of Honor as the dubiously monikered Tempura Boyz, and still before that they were the first Young Lions to be sent on excursion to CMLL in Mexico since the team of Tetsuya Naito and Yujiro Takahashi in 2009. What I’m saying is: these boys have been friends for a long time.
It wasn’t always plain sailing between Sho and Yoh, though. In their Young Lion days they were fierce rivals, engaging in a series of spirited bouts which served to raise both their profiles, eventually leading to their forming a full-time tag team in 2015. Whether at home or abroad on excursion, they’ve been together ever since, and in that time they’ve turned their tag team act into a fine art. Sho’s power and finesse compliments Yoh’s speed and precision perfectly.
Under Rocky Romero’s tutelage Roppongi 3k have gone from grass-green rookies to a pair of confident, synchronised contenders, and while lasting championship success has eluded them at this point they’re nonetheless a force to be reckoned with as far as NJPW’s Junior Tag Team division is concerned.
And while it’s perhaps naive to hope they’ll still be fast friends in years to come – at some point a singles rivalry is surely on the cards – Sho and Yoh have so far resisted attempts to pit them against one another.
The recent G1 saw the Roppongi boys split up and frequently teaming with other members of the Chaos faction. All was well until Sho and Yoshi-Hashi came up against the somewhat fractious team of Yoh and Jay White.
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It could have gone horribly wrong. Jay White had spent most of the G1 trying to coax consummate babyface Yoh over to the dark side. The potential for discord made for enormous amounts of pre-match tension – would Jay’s attempts to poison Yoh bear fruit?
Thankfully, the power of friendship won out in a match which saw Yoh place himself between a chair-wielding Switchblade and his best friend. No, you’re crying.
As for Rocky? Well, he spent the entirety of the G1 steadfastly refusing to choose between his ‘boys’. As any mentor worth his salt should.