10 Best Storytellers In Wrestling Right Now
3. Gedo
Gedo, the booker of New Japan Pro Wrestling, has presided over a decade of continuous growth and, somehow, an unprecedented level of critical acclaim that continues to soar.
Consider how many stars are over and perceived as viable IWGP Heavyweight Championship contenders. It's astonishing; Kazuchika Okada, Tetsuya Naito, Kota Ibushi, and Jay White were presented as the four key headliners at this year's Wrestle Kingdom two-day event, but elsewhere, Hiroshi Tanahashi, SANADA, Minoru Suzuki, Jon Moxley, Chris Jericho, EVIL, Tomohiro Ishii, Shingo Takagi, Will Ospreay: all of these men can viably headline B-level events at a minimum.
Gedo employs a sporting framework to achieve this pristine balance. The tournament-heavy calendar boasts crucial stakes that we know irrevocably shape careers. There is an historical gravitas and forward-thinking purpose to everything. There is a 50/50 element to Gedo's booking, but it's sequenced in such a way that it never feels deadening, repetitive, nor pointless. These losses are remembered, and the losers are driven to avenge them, having been rebuilt in the meantime (see: Naito's vengeance over White on January 4). Those who lose never feel like losers. The clean win-only edict enables the loser to get over in hard-fought defeat.
Gedo knows precisely when to prolong and blow off programmes, seeing things even the most esteemed critics cannot. Virtually everybody saw Naito's January 4, 2018 loss as a waste. Two years later, his triumph recorded NJPW's best ever accumulated gate, and in the meantime, Kenny Omega got over huge by dethroning Okada, by that point built as a God.
And if it all feels functional, a clinically-assured exercise in to-the-minute formula, and it can - Taichi going 30 minutes does not a headliner make, just because headliners go 30 minutes - Gedo leaves his stars to express themselves as they see fit in the post-match pressers. Incomprehensible to some but always authentic, Zack Sabre, Jr. last year blamed his poor form - in a Japanese promotion - on the British Prime Minister. Jon Moxley cut a deep dive into WWE creative's asinine thought process. In a Japanese promotion.
And they get over, because they do so on their own instinct and improvisational class.