Potential long term booking impact:
Its gonna be epilogue of Goto’s story vs Prologue of new generation story.
Tsuji is pretty popular now so it’s self explanatory.
Goto, since joining CHAOS on 2016 after losing to Naito in NJC final (Naito then went on to beat Okada to win the championship Goto never has), has been slowly fading in the single championship’s scene for many.
As a prior G1 winner and 3 times NJC winner, most ppl these days doesnt even remember his singles accomplishment. Aside from a few Never Openweight reign, he is mostly active in tag scenes, WTL, Tag team champion, Never 6-man tag, u name it.
So how about his part in CHAOS? His next chapter in joining his rival Okada? We all knew what happened, Okada is THE top star, Goto never win any of the company’s top 2 Single belt since he joined CHAOS (although he used to hold the Intercontinental Belt), and the year he joined CHAOS – 2016, proved to be the year of directional change for him vs Naito.
On Jan 2016 Goto defeated Naito in WrestleKingdom, then on Mar 2016 Naito defeated Goto in NJC final.
Goto has since joined CHAOS and fought Naito more times then we remember, with (almost) each time ending with one loss after another to Naito.
It was until during G1 2022 Goto finally get back a single win against Naito since 2016, Naito then ‘returned the favour’ in G1 2023 by beating Goto.
So will Goto win NJC this round, prove that his decision to join CHAOS worthwhile, and win the belt from Naito’s hand? (Thats what Goto mean by ‘prove my existence in joining CHAOS’ during his interview)
So does Gedo want to write this 6 years epilogue esp since Okada left New Japan?
Tonight the result will tell us where we are heading to!!
by Gladiolz