World's Strongest Tag Determination League
Annual professional wrestling tournament / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The World's Strongest Tag Determination League (世界最強タッグ決定リーグ戦, Sekai Saikyō Taggu Kettei Rīgu-sen), more commonly known in the West as the Real World Tag League, is an annual professional wrestling tournament held by All Japan Pro Wrestling since 1977, usually, run on the first weeks of December. The first tournament was actually called the Open Tag League, but it was renamed to its present name the following year.
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The tournament is held under round-robin rules, with 2 points for a win, 1 for a draw, and 0 for a loss; in earlier tournaments, only a time limit draw would provide the one point, with other methods (such as a Double Disqualification and Double Countouts) providing nothing for either team.
The name "Real World Tag League" was a mistranslation by AJPW promoter Giant Baba; "saikyō" in Japanese means "strongest," not "real", but Baba used Engrish for promotional material.
Between 1988 and 1994, the World Tag Team Championship was annually vacated in time for the tournament, which would be used to determine the new champions. The rule was reinstated for the 2012 tournament, but was again ignored the following year, but was reinstated in 2014. In 2000 and 2015 the vacancy was determined by separate post-tournament playoffs between the 2nd and 3rd places.
Ten-Koji (Hiroyoshi Tenzan & Satoshi Kojima) are the only team to win both the World's Strongest Tag Determination League and its counterpart in New Japan Pro-Wrestling, the World Tag League, as well as the only team to win both tournaments in the same year (2008).[1]