10 Precise Moments Wrestling Bookers Lost Their Minds
2. Gedo
The omens were rumbling in 2019, despite a G1 Climax tournament so awesome, productive and stirring that it was felt Gedo had done it yet again: he had lost a top star, in Kenny Omega, and still weaved his booking magic.
The decision to no-sell the G1 to expand Wrestle Kingdom 14 to two nights was perplexing, to be very generous. It was almost a waste of time in retrospect. Any copium-laced notion that it was some teething struggle natural to a new experiment was obliterated by 2021, when Kota Ibushi lost the G1 briefcase to Jay White but was suddenly allowed to challenge for the IWGP Heavyweight Title regardless across January 4 and 5.
Sadly, by this point, such nonsensical booking had become par for the course. The creeping notion that everybody had already worked together countless times wouldn't go away, and while Ibushi, Will Ospreay and Shingo Takagi stepped up, Gedo's "staggered trilogy" formula felt worn. Strapping up EVIL as the double champ at Dominion 2020 underscored everything; perhaps sensing that much had grown stale, the technically sound if bland charisma vacuum EVIL was pushed as the top heel of a promotion in which booing had been outlawed. NJPW, already devoid of ideas, had become inexplicable. Gedo corrected that weird relaunch, to an extent, but the best of the promotion is familiar, and the worst (House of Torture) is actively horrendous.
NJPW is still capable of greatness, but then, so was WWE in the mid-2000s.