Best of the Super Juniors

The Best of the Super Juniors (often abbreviated BOSJ) is an annual professional wrestling tournament held by New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW), typically in May or June. The wrestlers in the tournament are typically junior heavyweight wrestlers from promotions all over the world. NJPW has held 24 Super Juniors tournaments. Two wrestlers have won the tournament three times, Jushin Thunder Liger and Koji Kanemoto, while only one wrestler has won the tournament in two consecutive years as Tiger Mask IV won the tournament in both 2004 and 2005. Liger has participated in the most tournaments as he has wrestled in all tournaments except the 1995 and 2000 tournaments. His participation in the 2016 tournament marked his 25th Super Junior tournament.

The tournament was formed in 1988 by NJPW. It was originally called the Top of the Super Juniors. The tournament is a round-robin style tournament where a wrestler scores points. The winner, assuming they are not already the champion, receives an opportunity to wrestle for the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship not long after the tournament is over. Since 2010, the title match has taken place at June/July's Dominion event.

In 1994, the tournament was renamed to the Best of the Super Juniors. Since 1996 the tournament has been divided into a two-block system used in many other puroresu tournaments. In this format the top two scorers in each block advance to the semifinals, at which point single-elimination rules take effect. During the round-robin portion, a win is worth two points, a draw is worth one, and a loss zero; all matches have a 30-minute time limit, though in the past it has been twenty minutes.

The 1988 Top of the Super Juniors was a 12-man tournament held from January 4 to February 7. The points system at this time was different from today's, though exactly how is unclear. The two wrestlers with the most points at the end of the tournament, Shiro Koshinaka and Hiroshi Hase, faced off in a singles match to determine the winner. The winner, Koshinaka, went on to win the Junior Heavyweight Championship from Owen Hart on June 24, 1988, after failing to win the title from Hiroshi Hase twice on March 19 and May 8.

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