Tiger Mask already had his big goodbye. New Japan gave him a formal retirement ceremony at Korakuen Hall back on July 7. But Monday night in Brooklyn, at PRODUCE Vol. 3: Azucar, he laced up one more time, and it’s looking like the actual last time.
Okada Shows Up With Flowers
Late in the show, Kazuchika Okada made a surprise appearance to honor Tiger Mask, walking out with a bouquet of flowers and embracing him in the ring after the match. It’s a gesture that carries real history behind it. Okada and Tiger Mask crossed paths constantly over the years, almost always in tag or multi-man matches, with exactly one singles meeting between them, a bout Tiger Mask actually won, back in Osaka in 2009.
Tiger Mask’s Brooklyn send-off came in the show opener, teaming with Dynamite Kid against Black Tiger IV and Black Tiger IX, a lineup that leans directly into the Tiger Mask/Black Tiger/Dynamite Kid rivalries that defined so much of his legacy in the first place. As of now, there’s nothing else on his schedule. Barring a surprise, this was it.
Working Down the Rest of the Card
PRODUCE Vol. 3: Azucar, curated by Rocky Romero and streamed live on MyAEW from Pioneer Works, packed a lot into one night beyond the Tiger Mask farewell:
- Cowboy Way (1 Called Manders and Thomas Shire) retained the RevPro Undisputed British Tag Team Championships over Violence Is Forever (Dominic Garrini and Kevin Ku).
- Gabby Forza beat Dark Sheik. Karl Greco-Malenko beat Tim Bosby.
- Team Stardom (Fuwa-chan, Hazuki, and Ranna Yagami) got the win over The Limit (Janai Kai, Jordan Blade, and Nixi XS).
- Persephone beat Skadi.
- Josh Barnett beat The Butcher.
- Allie Katch, Emersyn Jayne, and Syuri beat Billie Starkz, Johnnie Robbie, and Steph De Lander.
- And in one of the night’s biggest singles matches, Hechicero, the reigning CMLL World Heavyweight Champion, beat Minoru Suzuki in his PRODUCE debut.
Jeff Cobb Returns, and He Doesn’t Go Down Easy
The $25,000 King of New York Royal Ranbo, a 30-man battle royal packed with independent stars, delivered the show’s other big surprise. Jeff Cobb showed up as a surprise entrant, his first match of any kind since his WWE release in May, with his 90-day no-compete clause having just expired. Cobb didn’t just show up to lose immediately either. He racked up multiple eliminations before the rest of the field had to gang up on him just to get him over the top rope. Jonathan Gresham went on to win the whole thing.
Mistico Closes the Show, and the Crowd Gets Loud
The main event brought its own moment. Mistico beat Rocky Romero to close the show, and his entrance carried extra weight when his signature song, “Me Muero,” originally by La Quinta Estacion and adopted as his entrance theme years ago, was sung live for the Pioneer Works crowd. It’s the same song that’s become a full-blown lucha libre anthem in its own right, the kind of moment that turns a walk to the ring into an event unto itself, and Brooklyn got the full version live.
Between Tiger Mask’s likely final bow, Cobb crashing a battle royal, and a live-sung entrance for the guy closing the show, PRODUCE Vol. 3 packed a full year’s worth of moments into one Monday night in Brooklyn.
Fans unable to attend live can watch the replay on MYAEW.com
