Youth And The World Championship: How 10 Top Wrestling Companies Book New Stars

Now it could be very easy to accuse NOAH of not knowing how to build new stars when 58 year old Keiji Mutoh has just won their top prize, but excluding him as an outlier, NOAH's average first World Champion age is just 32, which would place them at #3 for this list. With him included though, the average bumps up considerably to 35.

Early years of the promotion veered towards established stars such as Misawa and Kobashi, with a champion under 30 not occurring until 2006 with Noamichi Marufuji, though this could be attributed to business decisions in establishing NOAH as a viable competitor to AJPW and NJPW (which it would eventually become).

Youth and experience would trade the World Title thereafter for a number of years, with the likes of Takeshi Morishima (29), Go Shiozaki (27), Minoru Suzuki (46) and Yuji Nagata (45) all etching their name in the history books.

2016 would begin the most noticeable changes in an archetypal GHC Heavyweight Champion that would eventually lead to 22-year-old Kaito Kiyomiya defeating Takashi Sugiura for the title in December 2018, going on hold to hold the strap for over a year to considerable acclaim from the NOAH faithful.