The Terrifying Decline Of NJPW
The promotion is firmly locked in two states that each mirror the worst of two developments that unfolded in the west in the same decade of Gedo's triumph.
NJPW enjoyed its most recent success when visited by AEW's Kenny Omega and Bryan Danielson across the last two Wrestle Kingdom events. Something not too dissimilar to WWE's "part-timer" phase is happening. In parallel, looking at the absolute state of the recent New Beginning tour, NJPW is also in its Total Nonstop Shin Nihon era. Nick Nemeth and Matt Riddle both emerged with gold at the New Beginning recently. Nemeth to his credit really seems to want it, but...come on. Belting up an ageing veteran synonymous with WWE is such a TNA cliché. The optics are terrible. It was difficult enough to invest in the Musketeers, dwarfed as they are in the shadow of their predecessors; now, a desperate Gedo would rather go the short-term route rather than believe in his young crew.
Maybe that young crew does have the potential to star, and Gedo simply isn't the man to promote them. He is devoid entirely of new ideas. He's scrambling. He isn't bold enough. He's getting stubborn, too, looking at the House of Torture. He's backing the wrong talent. He deserves credit for being great for longer than the rest, but like every wrestling booker ever, he has lost the plot.
The title of this editorial isn't hyperbolic.
Every long-established market-leading promotion will at some point or another enter a cold period, even a tailspin, and recover. WWE was thrashed by WCW once upon a time. AAA once threatened to unseat CMLL, the oldest promotion on the planet. That seems impossible, but it happened. NJPW itself experienced a tumultuous period throughout the 2000s.
This latest cooling off is more scary, though, because the knock-on effect of the pandemic was exponential. The right thing to do often comes at a cost, and this was literally true of Japan's approach to COVID. The economy was annihilated.
There's very little big money to be made in Japan now as, in parallel, the two US majors have never had more of it to throw around. As Dave Meltzer first pointed out, a Japanese star on Okada's level has never left Japan to star in the US. The new economic reality is so brutal that it has uprooted the very culture of loyalty at the core of Japanese pro wrestling. At this rate, Forbidden Door 2023 will look remarkably like the WWF lending Smoky Mountain Wrestling a hand in the mid-'90s. The only way out is the long route. The memories of New Japan's seminal resurgence are too vivid for anything to look worthy in contrast. NJPW is haunted by its own brilliance.
NJPW might have to endure a very sh*tty present for its future, through perspective alone, to feel anywhere as vital as the past.