Shinsuke Nakamura is on his way to World Wrestling Entertainment, and as such has been stripped of his IWGP Intercontinental Title. This all but confirms his departure, as performers being stripped of titles outside of injury is a rarity in New Japan Pro Wrestling. In fact, this is the first time that the Intercontinental Title has been vacated since it was introduced in 2011. The belt was initially a prop to get MVP over, as he beat Toru Yano in a tournament final to become the first champion. Interestingly enough, in the first round of said tournament MVP defeated the man who currently stands atop of NJPW, Kazuchika Okada. Since MVP's run there have been a total of seven champions, including Hirooki Goto, Hiroshi Tanahashi and Bad Luck Fale. Unlike WWE, this secondary championship isn't really secondary at all. Shinsuke Nakamura began his first reign in July 2012 by defeating Hirooki Goto, and the whole game changed. Nakamura introduced the white belt design we know and love today, and embarked upon on a title reign that lasted almost a year and spanned eight defences, which was more than the three champions prior had managed combined. Nakamura is the man responsible for the IC belt being every bit as strong as the IWGP Heavyweight Champiobship, and for the first time since 2012 he is going to be out of the picture. A number of names could take this ball and run with it, but who are the top choices? Here are five men whose names should be on Gedo and Jado's whiteboard as we speak.
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.
