Pro Wrestling Guerrilla has finalized the line-up for the 2023 Battle of Los Angeles.
Konosuke Takeshita was announced as the sixteenth entrant. This will be his BOLA debut, but he’s worked two PWG shows in the past. He defeated Aramis at PWG Delivering The Goods on May 1 of this year, then came up short against PWG World Champion & ROH Pure Champion Daniel Garcia, with the title on the line, at PWG Nineteen on July 3.
AAA Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo was announced as the seventeenth and final entrant for the BOLA 2023 tournament. This will be his PWG debut.
It’s interesting that the tournament has 17 competitors this year. PWG has ran the Battle of Los Angeles since 2005, with the exception of 2020 and 2021 due to COVID-19, but this is only the second year where they have just 17 participants. It’s possible that they go with a similar direction used in 2008. Instead of 8 singles matches in the first round, there was 1 Three-Way Dance that year where Masato Yoshino defeated Nick Jackson and El Generico (Sami Zayn) to advance. Yoshino ended up losing in the second round to Low Ki, who won the whole tournament that year.
The winner of the tournament will receive a future title shot from Garcia, who won the PWG World Title from Bandido back in May after winning the 2022 BOLA earlier this year. Garcia took to Twitter and reacted to the final line-up.
“This will be the best BOLA of all time,” he wrote.
The final list of participants for the 2023 BOLA tournament now looks like this:
* Michael Oku
* Shun Skywalker
* Masha Slamovich
* Mike Bailey
* Komander
* NJPW Strong Openweight Tag Team Champion & Impact World Tag Team Champion Alex Shelley
* Jonathan Gresham
* Aramis
* Titus Alexander
* Impact World Knockouts Champion Jordynne Grace
* Lio Rush
* Black Taurus
* Latigo
* PWG World Champion & ROH Pure Champion Daniel Garcia
* Bandido
* Konosuke Takeshita
* AAA Mega Champion El Hijo del Vikingo
PWG’s Battle of Los Angeles 2023 will take place on Saturday, January 7 and Sunday, January 8 from the Globe Theatre in Los Angeles, CA.
Below is the aforementioned tweet from Garcia:
This will be the best BOLA of all time
— Daniel Garcia (@GarciaWrestling) December 10, 2022
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