NJPW Invasion Tour 2011

The tour was first announced on October 3, 2010, when American promotion Jersey All Pro Wrestling (JAPW) announced it had reached a deal with NJPW to host the promotion's first ever tour in the country; NJPW had previously held a stand-alone show in 1996 at the Los Angeles Memorial Sports Arena in Los Angeles, California. NJPW officially announced the "NJPW Invasion Tour 2011: Attack on East Coast" tour on January 4, 2011, during Wrestle Kingdom V in Tokyo Dome, announcing that the events would be taking place on May 13 in Rahway, New Jersey, May 14 in New York City and May 15 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. NJPW also announced that during the tour the promotion would introduce its fifth active title, the IWGP Intercontinental Championship. Most of the wrestlers taking part in the tour were NJPW regulars, however, several JAPW workers, who were not regulars with NJPW, also took part in the tour; namely Charlie Haas, Dan Maff, Homicide, Josh Daniels, Low Ki and Rhino. Daniels was a late replacement for a NJPW regular Tama Tonga, who was sidelined with an injury. Hideo Saito and Kazuchika Okada, two NJPW contracted wrestlers, who were at the time on learning excursions to Puerto Rico and American Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) respectively, also returned to take part in the tour. The official cards for the events were released on May 4. The day before the start of the tour, NJPW held a press conference at the Ramada hotel in Newark, New Jersey. The conference mainly featured wrestlers talking about their feelings about working in the United States, but also featured a storyline development, where Rhino interrupted Togi Makabe and threatened to destroy him, setting up a storyline rivalry between the two, which lasted for the entire tour. ==Events==

Rahway The first event on the NJPW Invasion Tour 2011: Attack on East Coast tour took place on May 13, 2011, at the Rahway Recreation Center in Rahway, New Jersey. The event featured eight matches and was the only event on the tour to not include any championship matches. Prior to being announced at Basketball City, the event was scheduled to be held in Brooklyn. The event featured eight matches, three of which were contested for championships. MVP was a member of Kojima-gun, but had not chosen sides in the conflict up until the event. In the second title match of the event, Apollo 55 (Prince Devitt and Ryusuke Taguchi) made their fifth successful defense of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship against the Strong Style Thugz (Homicide and Low Ki). The event concluded with a hardcore rules match between Rhino and Togi Makabe, playing off the history of the former ECW Arena. Makabe ended up winning the final match of the tour over the former ECW and WWE wrestler. ==Aftermath==

MVP held the IWGP Intercontinental Championship for five months and successfully defended it twice in rematches against Toru Yano, before being defeated by Masato Tanaka on October 10, 2011, at Destruction '11. Following the Invasion Tour, Prince Devitt held the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship for another month, before losing it to Kota Ibushi in his eighth defense on June 18 at Dominion 6.18. Apollo 55 held the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship for another five months and successfully defended it two more times, before losing it to the No Remorse Corps (Davey Richards and Rocky Romero) at Destruction '11. Five of the six JAPW regulars who took part in the tour did not make another appearance for NJPW. The only exception was Low Ki, who joined NJPW in April 2012, and concluded his return tour by defeating Prince Devitt for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship on May 3 at Wrestling Dontaku 2012, in a rematch of their title match in New York City. Lance Archer, however, did become a regular for NJPW following the tour, joining Suzuki-gun and winning the 2011 G1 Tag League at the end of the year alongside the stable's leader, Minoru Suzuki. Hideo Saito ended his excursion with the tour and returned to NJPW at Dominion 6.18, attacking Yuji Nagata and joining the Chaos stable. Kazuchika Okada meanwhile returned to Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and did not return to NJPW until January 2012. Repackaged as the "Rainmaker", Okada received a strong push and just a month later at The New Beginning defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to end his thirteen-month reign as the IWGP Heavyweight Champion and become the new champion in what NJPW called the "upset of the century". NJPW eventually returned to the United States in May 2014 under a working arrangement with the Ring of Honor (ROH) promotion. ==See also==