10 Things That Must Happen In NJPW In 2018

8. Rebuild The NEVER Openweight Championship

Shibata Ishii
NJPW

Sticking with Suzuki, his run with the NEVER Openweight Championship has been poor at best. The idea of Suzuki with the midcard title makes a lot of sense, but almost all of his defences have been plagued by the interference mentioned above. Why does Minoru Suzuki, one of the baddest men on the planet, need TAKA Michinoku and Takashi Iizuka to do his work for him?

The NEVER Openweight Championship has taken an almighty hit in 2017. The title was made important by Tomohiro Ishii and Katsuyori Shibata, but Suzuki’s reign has wasted all the hard work of the two hard-hitting stars. Suzuki will defend the title against Hirooki Goto at Wrestle Kingdom 12, and no title in wrestling needs to change hands more than this one.

Whether Goto is the right choice for the title or not remains to be seen (more on him shortly), but 2018 needs to see this unique championship built back up to its former glories. There is plenty of young talent waiting for the showcase afforded to Suzuki in 2018.

It is time for the belt to move on.

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Contributor
Contributor

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.