The One Thing WWE & AEW MUST Learn From NJPW

Hiroshi Tanahashi was already a four-time IWGP Heavyweight Champion by the time Gedo took the pencil in late 2011 but not yet the company's era-defining ace. Under Gedo and Jado (the 'Complete Fighter's' co-booker until 2015), Tanahashi ascended, growing as the charismatic, gifted franchise player New Japan needed to help carry the promotion towards a new era prosperity.

Even today, with the ace title his only in name, Tanahashi remains a huge, crowd-popping draw. He is immortal.

Kazuchika Okada was built alongside the 'High-Flying Star.' Returning from an excursion in 2012, the 'Rainmaker' challenged Tana to an IWGP Heavyweight Championship match on his first night back. Thus began one of the most acclaimed (and important) rivalries in Japanese wrestling history, peaking, after four masterful years, with Okada fighting off Tanahashi's title challenge to effectively claim his ace role at Wrestle Kingdom 10. Gedo took everything he'd built with Tana and mirrored it with Okada, his new centrepiece. The story is still going on today.

Tetsuya Naito is another success story, though he's very much the 1B to Okada's 1A at the moment. In him, Gedo has built a wrestler so over he's effectively bulletproof, hence his middling win/loss records in 2018 and 2019. The booker knows Naito's popularity and drawing power are too strong to be harmed in defeat. His crowning moment will come, though. It always does.

But great wrestling booking is about more than having a core group of strong headliners. Establishing the next guy up is just as vital, which is part of why Vince McMahon's Q1 statement iwa such a self-own.

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