Ok. Before anybody else has a meltdown. Longtime lurker here.
While this might reek of New Japan’s patented shiny-object hotshot booking, it’s probably the right call. If Evil, Riddle, Oka, Kenta, Chase + Nemeth are all champs heading into NJC, rest assure none of these guys are credible finalists. That’s a good thing, right? Keeps them all out of your main event scene through (at the very least) Dontaku. They can remain part of their respective title pictures for now on various cards until they lose, which would theoretically be a win for the fans and the fan favorites alike.
In fact, I’m fairly positive Finlay will get a rematch against Nemeth somewhere in the states (if not Dominion) and probably regain the title. He’s gonna want that win back. I doubt the leader of BC is just gonna shrug it off and move on. So, a longterm feud with Nemeth is better than Finlay beating all your favorite young guys instead. Riddle wrestling for 15 minutes means he’s not clogging up your big shows with full-length matches. He’s outta there in less than a half hour every show, if he’s even in Japan. But still good experience for guys like Tsuji, Fujita, Oleg, Narita, Drilla, Uemura, etc. Riddle is a great wrestler, even if he is a problematic trainwreck. If you want the young guys getting their reps in, Riddle’s a good opponent. Use him while you have him.
Maybe someone like Gabe Kidd, Henare or Taichi wins the NEVER off Evil. I see a bunch of people on this sub talking about Gabe getting strapped up and how awesome his singles match against Henare was. That really should happen again for a belt in the very near future at a high profile event in Japan. But meanwhile, they’re both injured right now after giving us like a 65-minute cage match. What do you want? Someone to hand Kidd a title while he’s in a hospital bed because…. we’re nice people? No, let those guys come back when they’re ready, challenge for a title and run that shit again on a big show.
So, if your NJC final is like Umino vs Finlay, that’s good, right? It means the winner gets Naito at SG and the runner up challenges at Dontaku. Finlay losing to Naito means he got his shot and has to move onto something else. If Umino wins NJC, he gets closer to winning a belt of his own, which is what we want, right? Then hopefully Zack challenges Naito at Dominion somehow. Maybe there’s a time limit draw during NJC between rivals Cobb + Zack, giving Finlay an undeserved semi-final bye and advantage over underdog Umino, who barely gets past a seasoned top-tier wrestler like Shingo Takagi or Tomohiro Ishii. This sets up a special singles match for SG or Dontaku between Zack + Cobb to give us a number one contender for the world title. Zack wins, walks out with TMDK in tow before Naito does a roll call at Dontaku and challenges in Japanese in front of every member of LIJ. That’d be something, right? If Zack dethrones Naito and is champ through the G1, that sets up defenses in the fall and then someone can beat him for it at WK. Shit, maybe it’s Shingo after winning the G1. Isn’t that what we want? Maybe Shingo defends his briefcase against Evil, too, since the last thing people want is Evil main eventing WK, right? Talk about a monster reaction if Shingo wins.
Also, who’s your main event scene right now anyway? Naito, Sanada, Shingo, ZSJ, maybe Finlay, maybe Umino, maybe Tanahashi, maybe Evil. Until they build up some other guys, this is what we’ve got. Stop working yourselves in to a shoot.
The only strange decision I can see is Sho beating Despy. I don’t think anybody wanted Sho vs Naito on March 6. We were okay with Despy if we couldn’t get Hiromu, but Sho is just a straight up head scratcher.
by Sad-Goal8860
