The NEVER Openweight Championship is a professional wrestling championship owned by the New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) promotion. NEVER is an acronym of the terms "New Blood", "Evolution", "Valiantly", "Eternal", and "Radical" and was a NJPW-promoted series of events, which featured younger up-and-coming talent and outside wrestlers not signed to the promotion.[1][2] The project was officially announced on July 12, 2010,[2] and held its first event on August 24, 2010.[3]
There have been 42 reigns shared among 22 wrestlers with one vacancy. Masato Tanaka was the first champion in the title's history. He also holds the record for the longest reign in the title's history at 314 days during his only reign. Tomohiro Ishii has the most reigns, with six. Michael Elgin's only reign of 8 days is the shortest in the title's history. Minoru Suzuki is the oldest champion when he won it at 52 years old while Will Ospreay is the youngest champion at 25 years old.
Evil is the current champion in his third reign. He defeated Tama Tonga in a Lumberjack match on January 20, 2024 at The New Beginning In Nagoya in Nagoya, Aichi, Japan.
No. | Overall reign number |
---|---|
Reign | Reign number for the specific champion |
Days | Number of days held |
Defenses | Number of successful defenses |
+ | Current reign is changing daily |
As of February 2, 2024.
† | Indicates the current champion |
---|
Rank | Wrestler | No. of reigns |
Combined defenses |
Combined days |
---|---|---|---|---|
1 | Tomohiro Ishii | 6 | 6 | 514 |
2 | Hirooki Goto | 5 | 7 | 424 |
3 | Shingo Takagi | 3 | 5 | 362 |
4 | Minoru Suzuki | 2 | 4 | 322 |
5 | Masato Tanaka | 1 | 4 | 314 |
6 | Katsuyori Shibata | 3 | 6 | 309 |
7 | Togi Makabe | 2 | 2 | 207 |
8 | Karl Anderson | 1 | 2 | 206 |
9 | Tama Tonga | 4 | 1 | 196 |
10 | Jay White | 1 | 1 | 194 |
11 | David Finlay | 1 | 1 | 159 |
12 | Evil † | 3 | 2 | 140+ |
13 | Tetsuya Naito | 1 | 2 | 135 |
14 | Kenta | 1 | 2 | 127 |
15 | Yujiro Takahashi | 1 | 1 | 106 |
16 | Hiroshi Tanahashi | 1 | 1 | 93 |
17 | Will Ospreay | 1 | 1 | 92 |
18 | Taichi | 2 | 0 | 84 |
19 | Yuji Nagata | 1 | 0 | 47 |
20 | Jeff Cobb | 27 | ||
21 | Kota Ibushi | 26 | ||
22 | Michael Elgin | 8 |