The Secret Ugly Truth Of Wrestling Bookers
What the bleak precedent of booking means for its future - and if the past truly dictates it...
Or: What The History Of Booking Tells You About Its Future...
New Japan Pro Wrestling's Gedo made his latest blunder in the New Japan Cup last week.
He installed Jack Perry in the terrible, past-it House of Torture faction, and while western fans are reliably informed that HoT are actually big in Japan, the unit is still terrible, the easiest and most artless cheap heat generator imaginable, and you are lying to yourself if you think NJPW stands a chance of recovering its position as the King of Pro Wrestling any time soon. "The House of Torture are actually more over than you think" is hardly some flex. It's bargaining, really. New Japan is on its absolute arse, and the "some of the matches are still really good" defence is not robust. Every promotion of renown puts on good matches these days,
It's almost a testament to how good Gedo once was that his latest blunders are treated as some shocking mistake, as opposed to the norm. The man strapped up Evil four years ago. Four years!
He has spent almost as much time moulding SANADA into a top star, much like clay, without realising that SANADA might as well be clay, for all intents and purposes. He does not emote at all.
Gedo has failed in the same way every other wrestling booker fails: by running out of ideas and doing more of the same to diminished returns. The House of Torture is essentially the Bullet Club without the foreigner element. They run the same interference spots; they just do more in an over-correction of the fact that they aren't as over. Gedo still mandates the cardio-driven reversal-strewn 25-40 minute main event, even though current IWGP World champion Tetsuya Naito's body is telling him that he can no longer do it. Will Ospreay had to literally hold Naito's hand through last year's G1 Climax semi-final. He screamed the finish in Naito's face. It was the saddest scene to have inexplicably been received as a classic match. At The New Beginning In Sapporo recently, Naito just kept falling over during the big counters down the stretch; a bleak, fitting visual of NJPW's wider collapse.
Gedo is far from alone. Every pro wrestling booker is fated to fail.
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