10 Wrestlers Who Became Successful Bookers
6. Jado & Gedo
During his very brief flying visit to WCW in 1997, Mike Tenay mused that Jado was "the Dusty Rhodes of Japan." It was scarily prescient.
As wrestlers, Jado & Gedo were a moderately successful tag team, claiming championships in most of Japan's big leagues, but never particularly troubling the main event spots. As bookers, they're almost single - or double - handedly responsible for the Japanese wrestling renaissance.
The pair broke into the business at the tail-end of the '80s, joining the Takeshi Puroresu Gundan stable in NJPW under the hackneyed names Punish and Crush. They only stuck around a matter of months - but would become crucial figures on their return 11 years later.
In the meantime, the duo had an itinerant career around the archipelago, earning gold as lucha libres in UWF and death match proponents W*NG, before making the the switch to Genichiro Tenryu's wonderfully named Wrestle and Romance.
Though Jado & Gedo spent four years bloodying themselves up in FMW before returning to New Japan, their propensity for splitting open their heads belied a couple of acute booking minds beneath. Luckily, long-term official Tiger Hattori caught on, and suggested the two as bookers to NJPW's new owners Bushiroad following the fall of Inokism.
The company was already showing green shoots of recovery thanks to the emergence of the supremely popular Hiroshi Tanahashi. The new pens supplemented his success by completely reversing Kazuchika Okada's fortunes, transforming him from a mid-card also-ran into the preposterous, charisma-precipitating 'Rainmaker', whilst also repackaging Tetsuya Naito into a top heel following his failed tilt as the company's new babyface and subsequent CMLL excursion.
Underpinned by the rivalry between Tanahashi and Okada, and bolstered by the cross-cultural popularity of The Bullet Club and their host of foreign superstars, New Japan emerged under Gedo and Jado's stewardship from its insipid MMA mid-2000's doldrums to become the world's second most popular wrestling promotion, achieving global prominence like never before. Cody take note: you don't have to be the best wrestlers to be the best bookers.