The New Beginning (2012)

The New Beginning (2012)
The New Beginning (2012)
	Promotional poster for the event, featuring Minoru Suzuki, Shinsuke Nakamura, Hiroshi Tanahashi, Hirooki Goto and Tetsuya Naito.
Promotion	New Japan Pro Wrestling
Date	February 12, 2012
City	Osaka, Japan
Venue	Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium
Attendance	6,200
Pay-per-view chronology
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The New Beginning chronology
← Previous; The New Beginning (2011)	Next →; The New Beginning (2013)

The New Beginning (2012) was a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) promoted by New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW). The event took place on February 12, 2012, in Osaka, Osaka, at the Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium. The event featured eight matches, four of which were contested for championships.^[1]^[2] The event was the first major event held by NJPW after the promotion had been sold to Bushiroad.^[3] It was the third event under the New Beginning name.

Production

The New Beginning featured eight professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in the scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.^[4]

In the third match of the event, the No Remorse Corps (Davey Richards and Rocky Romero) recaptured the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship from Apollo 55 (Prince Devitt and Ryusuke Taguchi), while Tencozy (Hiroyoshi Tenzan and Satoshi Kojima) successfully defended the IWGP Tag Team Championship against previous champions Bad Intentions (Giant Bernard and Karl Anderson).^[1] This would turn out to be the final match of Bad Intentions, the longest reigning IWGP Tag Team Champions in history, as the following month, Giant Bernard returned to WWE as "Lord Tensai".^[5] The event featured two title changes; in the first Hirooki Goto captured the IWGP Intercontinental Championship from Masato Tanaka, while in the main event Kazuchika Okada, who had just the previous month returned from a twenty-month American excursion, defeated Hiroshi Tanahashi to win the IWGP Heavyweight Championship for the first time.^[1] NJPW called the result of the main event the "upset of the century".^[1]