While Anzai has won the Triple Crown already, he’s yet to fully take the “Ace” mantle that still lies with Kento Miyahara. However, Anzai’s “ascension” to that position is almost assured.

The promotion has already set up several people as rivals that Anzai can feud with over the years to come: Yuma Aoyagi, Jun Saito, Ryuki Honda & Ren Ayabe. I’d like to break down his relationship with each of them.

Aoyagi: the man who has most consistently had Anzai’s number, be it in singles or tag matches. The man partly responsible for Anzai’s training (along with Suwama & Yuji Nagata). The man who ended Anzai’s first run with the Triple Crown. In many ways, Anzai’s entrance into the promotion can be said to have ended Aoyagi’s own quest to become the next “Ace” of the promotion (as Aoyagi has spent much of his career trying to take that spot from Kento), so that also fuels their dynamic. It should be said that while the two are of similar age (Aoyagi only 4 years older), their experience level is vastly different (Aoyagi having about a decade on Anzai in that regard).

Ryuki Honda: the man most tied to Anzai, as both tag partner and in-ring opponent. While there has been nothing personal in their matches against one another, the two always bring out extra intensity in one another, unwilling to give their ground to the other. These two continue to tag from time to time and do it quite well. There’s the added dynamic of Anzai actually being the older man (about a year older) but Honda being the more experienced (having debuted in 2018 in WRESTLE-1).

Jun Saito: the other man of this current “generation” (despite being far older than his contemporaries) who had a significant Triple Crown title reign, like Anzai. Saito is everything AJPW has historically valued in a Heavyweight main-eventer: tall, strong and charisma to match. While he and his brother Rei are undoubtedly the top tag team in the promotion (and have been the top tag team in Japan for some time now), Jun has also made himself a big presence in the singles scene to boot.

Ren Ayabe: perhaps the other younger man that AJPW has really gotten behind, in terms of the booking and presentation. While Ayabe has yet to hold the Triple Crown as Anzai has, he has been presented as a future star ever since he came into the promotion (even beating Kento Miyahara in one of his first significant singles matches); Ayabe also was given a dominant Tag Title run with Talos as the TITANS OF CALAMITY, which further solidified his status as a future top guy.

- Ayabe has promised to bring “despair” to Kento.

- Kento says that he’s a “superstar” who will rise above Ayabe’s “despair”. Kento also says he has Ayabe’s biggest moves scouted, the “Death Roulette” and “Iron Maiden”. Ayabe’s response is that he has much more in his repertoire than these two big moves (shown when he pinned Kento with a bridging Dragon Suplex).

- This will be just Ayabe’s second challenge for the Triple Crown, as he previously challenged Yuma Aoyagi for the Belt in 2024.