King of Pro-Wrestling is considered NJPW's biggest event between August's G1 Climax and the January 4 Tokyo Dome Show.

[11][12][13] Following Dominion 7.5, both Okada and Styles entered NJPW's annual premier tournament, the G1 Climax, where they wrestled in separate blocks.

Styles won the match for his team by scoring a direct pinfall over Okada and afterwards posed with his IWGP Heavyweight Championship belt.

[24][25] Over the summer, Naito had joined Los Ingobernables, a stable based in the Mexican Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) promotion, which led to him debuting a new villainous persona in NJPW.

Kenny Omega would defend the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship against former Dragon Gate and WWE worker Matt Sydal.

[33] Meanwhile, the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions reDRagon (Bobby Fish and Kyle O'Reilly) would defend their title against Roppongi Vice (Beretta and Rocky Romero).

[19] This match stemmed from Destruction in Kobe, where Roppongi Vice attacked reDRagon after they had successfully defended their title against Time Splitters (Alex Shelley and Kushida).

[33] King of Pro-Wrestling also featured a six-man tag team match between the Bullet Club trio of Bad Luck Fale and IWGP Tag Team Champions Doc Gallows and Karl Anderson and the trio of Kazushi Sakuraba, Shinsuke Nakamura and Toru Yano, which builds to a future IWGP Intercontinental Championship match between champion Nakamura and challenger Anderson.

[19] The first title match of the event saw reDRagon make their second successful defense of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship against Roppongi Vice.

[1] The match was ended early as a result of a botch, when Rocky Romero was late in breaking up a pin attempt made by Kyle O'Reilly.

[2] In the second title match, Kenny Omega made his first successful defense of the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship against Matt Sydal.

Meltzer also noted that several wrestlers, most notably Hiroshi Tanahashi, Shinsuke Nakamura, Tomoaki Honma and Tomohiro Ishii had not recovered from the G1 Climax, while highlighting what he considered "elementary booking issues", such as booking back-to-back junior heavyweight title matches with all foreign wrestlers and the final two matches being "Americanized" with ref bumps and outside interference.