10 Things That Must Happen In NJPW In 2018

2. Give Tetsuya Naito A Decent IWGP Championship Run

Tetsuya Naito Champ
NJPW

Tetsuya Naito is going to defeat Kazuchika Okada on January 4. He has to, right?

Okada has been champion for well over 500 days, and his reign has been one for the ages. Each title defence has been different, and some of the matches have been all-time classics. Okada’s matches with Kenny Omega have been well documented, but his bouts with Shibata, Cody, EVIL are others were top drawer as well.

With that in mind, it is time for a change. The fall and rise of Tetsuya Naito has been the story in NJPW over the last couple of years, and it must end with an IWGP Championship win on January 4. It is important that New Japan capitalises on Naito’s popularity too. His reign doesn’t need to be 500 plus days, but it needs to be more substantial than his 70 day run back in 2016.

There are a mass of fresh championship matches waiting for Naito, and a lengthy title reign for the leader of Los Ingobernables de Japon is a must. It could well be the making of the Stardust Genius. It will also be fascinating to see how Kazuchika Okada copes without the title he has practically owned over the last few years.

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Born in the middle of Wales in the middle of the 1980's, John can't quite remember when he started watching wrestling but he has a terrible feeling that Dino Bravo was involved. Now living in Prague, John spends most of his time trying to work out how Tomohiro Ishii still stands upright. His favourite wrestler of all time is Dean Malenko, but really it is Repo Man. He is the author of 'An Illustrated History of Slavic Misery', the best book about the Slavic people that you haven't yet read. You can get that and others from www.poshlostbooks.com.