On March 1, 2020, NJPW suspended all future live events due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Because of this, many of their annual tours and tournaments, such as the New Japan Cup, Best of the Super Juniors, and a summer tour scheduled in Hokkaido, in place of where the G1 Climax would normally be (which was moved to September, due to the upcoming, now postponed 2020 Tokyo Olympics) were canceled.[1][2][3] To make up for the lost dates, on June 26, 2020, NJPW announced the Summer Struggle tour to run from July 27 to August 29.[4] On July 25, 2020, NJPW announced the culmination of the Summer Struggle tour to take place in Meiji Jingu Stadium, the first NJPW event inside the stadium since 1999 with last event being Jingu Climax.[5]
On July 25, at Sengoku Lord in Nagoya, during a post-match interview, Kazuchika Okada teased a "controversial announcement". Three days later, during a press conference, NJPW chairman Naoki Sugabayashi alongside Kazuchika Okada announced the creation of a new title, the KOPW Championship, as well as a tournament to crown the inaugural champion.[10] Instead of a conventional professional wrestling championship, the KOPW Championship is represented by a trophy with only one wrestler per year being recognized as the champion. At the beginning of a new year, the title is inactive, with a provisional champion being determined. At the end of the year, the winner of a final title defense is officially recognized at that year's KOPW Champion. While NJPW has historically been focused heavily on traditional matches, KOPW Championship matches focus exclusively on non-regular stipulations, with the fans voting the stipulation of the match. The tournament, which would begin on August 26, featured four first-round singles matches, where the winners would face each other in a four-way match to determine the provisional champion on August 29. On August 6, Okada and Yujiro Takahashi were announced as the first participants for the tournament. The following day, Okada and Takahashi announced their match stipulations for their match. The rest of the participants for the tournament were announced on August 10. On August 17, NJPW announced a fan vote on Twitter to decide the stipulations of the first round matches, while Sho and Sanada both agreed to face each other in a submission match.[11] On August 24, the stipulations were decided.[12]
