Youth And The World Championship: How 10 Top Wrestling Companies Book New Stars
5. New Japan Pro-Wrestling
New Japan's IWGP Heavyweight Championship tends to follow a fairly strict trajectory since its inception in 1987, following its tournament-style precursor: sign up as a rookie (the modern-day Young Lions), some kind of excursion abroad, return and work your way up the card. This rooted dynamic dates back to the likes of Tatsumi Fujinami, The Great Muta and Shinya Hashimoto and is broken up by international gaijins such as Vader, Bob Sapp and Salman Hashimikov (though it would become more recurrent in recent years).
Whilst this does make for great character building and storytelling, it does require a wrestler to put the years in before getting the 'big one'.
The MMA-intense 'Inokism' years of the early 2000s actually brought the average down slightly from the title's formative years, with 30s and under crowd Sapp, Brock Lesnar, Kazuyuki Fujita and the 'Super Rookie' Shinsuke Nakamura all becoming new World Champions.
Inoki’s IGF break-away in early 2006, closely followed by NJPW's global expansion resulted in rewarding long-serving talent, such as Togi Makabe and Manabu Nakanishi, before exploring fresh talent and more international imports, such as AJ Styles, Jay White and Kazuchika Okada, results in an average age of 34 for a new IWGP Heavyweight Champion.