FTR retain IWGP Tag belts, remind Tony Khan ‘we still work for you, book us’

New Japan made their first visit to the United Kingdom since 2019 this weekend with the two night Royal Quest II at London’s Crystal Palace Indoor Arena. Oct. 1 & 2’s shows were sold out but not broadcast live; they are slated to appear on the NJPWWorld streaming service in the future.

Saturday’s main event, and reportedly the best match of the weekend, saw IWGP Heavyweight Tag champs FTR take on Aussie Open. It was their first defense of the belts Dax Harwood & Cash Wheeler won back in June at Forbidden Door, and their first straight-up tag match against Kyle Fletcher & Mark Davis after the two teams were on opposite sides of two trios bouts.

The top guys retained, and still hold the Ring of Honor, AAA & IWGP straps. Harwood delivered a couple messages after the match. He told Fletcher & Davis that Aussie Open are the future of tag wrestling — and might be the best team in the world right now. He also jokingly reminded AEW head honcho Tony Khan to “book us, brother.” FTR haven’t had a two-on-two match on television for their home promotion since May*, and have been lobbying for a chance to add the AEW Tag titles to their collection as they’ve been the top ranking challengers since April.

Outside of that, the big takeaways from Royal Quest II were Jazzy Gabert winning the first match in the tournament to crown the first-ever IWGP Women’s champ (she’ll face KAIRI in round two on Stardom’s Oct. 23 show in Japan), and Tetsuya Naito beating Zack Sabre, Jr. for a future IWGP United States title match.

Here are all the results from London:

Night One

• Gabriel Kidd def. Dan Moloney

• Michael Oku & Ricky Knight Jr. def. The Great-O-Khan & Gideon Grey

• Alex Windsor & Ava White def. Kanji & Jazzy Gabert

• Los Ingobernables de Japon (Hiromu Takahashi, SANADA & Tetsuya Naito) def. Suzuki-Gun (DOUKI, El Desperado & Zack Sabre Jr.)

• Tomohiro Ishii & Kazuchika Okada def. Bad Dude Tito & Zak Knight

• Jado, Hikuleo, Hiroshi Tanahashi & Tama Tonga def. Bullet Club (Doc Gallows, Karl Anderson, Gedo, and Jay White)

• Will Ospreay def. Shota Umino by referee stoppage

• FTR (Dax Harwood and Cash Wheeler) def. Aussie Open (Kyle Fletcher and Mark Davis) to retain the IWGP Tag Team titles.

Night Two

• Douki & El Desperado def. Robbie X & Michael Oku

• Hiromu Takahashi & SANADA def, Luke Jacob & Ethan Allen

• Jazzy Gabert def. Ava White to advance in the IWGP Women’s championship tournament

• United Empire (Will Ospreay, Great-O-Khan, Gideon Grey & Aussie Open) def. FTR, Shota Umino, Ricky Knight Jr. & Gabriel Kidd

• Hiroshi Tanahashi, Tama Tonga, & Hikuleo def. Bullet Club (Karl Anderson, Doc Gallows & Jay White)

• Kazuchika Okada def. Bad Dude Tito

• Tomohiro Ishii def. Yota Tsuji

• Tetsuya Naito def. Zack Sabre Jr. to earn a future IWGP United States title shot

* The May 25 ROH Tag title defense against Roppongi Vice, to be exact. They did wrestle in the three-way tag where they won the IWGP titles at Forbidden Door, and delivered another classic against The Briscoes in a two-out-of-three-falls tag on the TK-booked ROH Death Before Dishonor PPV in July.