Just went through this post and the comments praising this year's "unpredictable" G1 booking, I disagree with pretty much everything and consider the "unpredictable" booking to be the biggest weakness of this year's G1. By setting the bar at 5-4 to qualify, while it does allow 6-7 guys to be alive on the final day and makes things unpredictable and exciting, giving everyone close to 50:50 booking means that no one really stands out. Yes, it is exciting that even the mid-card talent gets involved in the conversation for qualifying for the finals but this comes at the cost of diluting the push of the main eventers who are supposed to be top stars of the company.
My concern is not just an empty theory has a lot of historical weight behind it. In 2013, NJPW opted for a similar style of booking in G1 23 with 5-4 as the benchmark for qualification and 6+ guys being alive on the final day with highly complex tiebreaker scenarios. G1 winner Tetsuya Naito won his block on a 6-way tiebreaker with a record of 5-4 and the IWGP World Champion Okada didn't even get to a 50% win rate, finishing his campaign with a W-D-L of 4-1-4
During that time, both Okada and Naito were relatively unproven as main eventers and they desperately needed a strong G1 in order to convince the fans that they were on the same level as the two biggest stars of the time: Tanahashi and Nakamura. And there is no doubt that their lackluster booking in that year's G1 played a part in the fans not buying Okada vs Naito as a credible WK main event and turning on it.
I think this applies to this year's G1 as well. If it so turns out that the the winner of this year's G1 is someone from the new generation, they will be the "weakest" G1 winner in a long time due to their relatively short time on the roster (weakest in the sense of how proven they are at a main event level). For this reason, NJPW needed to book them strong in order to sell them to the fans as a main event level star who is worthy of headlining the Tokyo Dome alongside Tetsuya Naito and barely scraping through their G1 block potentially on a tie-breaker is not a good way to do so.
The bigger concern for me is that while G1 23 was an isolated case of 5-4 booking with the booking in the later years creating a separation between the main event and the mid card talent, this might not be the case this time. With the new play-offs format I fear that this type of booking is here to stay.
I expect most people to disagree with this post because people love "unpredictability" in pro-wrestling even though historically, the golden eras of all pro-wrestling companies (including 2016-2020 NJPW) has been based on identifying 2-4 talents and pushing them far above everyone else.
by Randomdude04080918
