New Japan's Tag Divisions

[Psycho666Soldier]

This has been bothering me for a while. The heavyweight Tag Division has maybe 4 official teams(if you count The Kingdom) and the Jr Tag effectively has 3(TimeSplitters is probably close to done), and we've seen them all wrestle plenty of times already. I think NJPW needs to shed the tradition and combine the two. It would provide plenty of fresh match-ups and give a renewed sense to whoever becomes the unified champs. The division would actually have depth and you could keep it interesting for longer without changing the belts every major show. That would be able to hold them over long enough to get other teams to keep it fresh instead of trying to add one team at a time and thinking that will save the division. I highly doubt NJPW would actually do this, but I think it would be the best business move unless we want to see Young Bucks and reDragon trade the belts every other month.

Thoughts?

[Cewsh]

I'm not saying it's inherently good or bad, but to do that abruptly out of the blue would create culture shock. Big guys don't lose to small guys except for in certain circumstances where small guys who are at the absolute peak of their field train for months in order to have a chance and then lose repeatedly until they finally bulk up, earn respect and develop a supermove to use on big guys. This is the historical precedent that defines not only the difference between the weight divisions, but the way that young boys progress.

[DDT]

We touched this on twitter, but this is a not good idea, mostly for every reason Cewsh had said. When heavy's lose to Juniors who aren't on their 'heavyweight journey' it is seen as a major embarrassment, and may mark the downsizing of their career. The difference is less 'two professional athletes of differing sizes' and more 'small child playing with daddy's boxing gloves'. Add to the fact that juniors are routinely paired with a heavyweight mentor (Kobashi/KENTA, for example) this would just be a slap in the dick to the whole maturation process.

[Defrost]

They sorta experimented with this a few years ago when Apollo 55 went to the Finals of the Tag League and lost to Bad Intentions I think. Nothing came of it. If they were to try again it'd have to be the Time Splitters because KUSHIDA is really the only Jr over enough to even attempt it.

[Gibby]

I'm for it. Imagine Sho Tanaka and Yuji Nagata as a team as an arbitrary example. Sho goes up in exposure, Nagata gets some meaningful matches, eventually Sho shows some fire and gets a pin, place erupts. Let's say Komatsu pins Nagata one day in a tag - yes it marks the downsizing of Nagata's career, but guess what? He's nearly 50 and that's his gig now.

Tag teams that are two juniors might struggle but just put them over as great TEAMS. You can't tell me that The Young Bucks hitting MBFYB on a heavy wouldn't be credible. It works in DDT, it worked in WWE, it works in Dragon Gate, the only obstacle is obduracy.

An idea: do it in NOAH first. That's your playground now, Kidani. Try ideas out there.

[Cewsh]

I'm for it. Imagine Sho Tanaka and Yuji Nagata as a team as an arbitrary example. Sho goes up in exposure, Nagata gets some meaningful matches, eventually Sho shows some fire and gets a pin, place erupts. Let's say Komatsu pins Nagata one day in a tag - yes it marks the downsizing of Nagata's career, but guess what? He's nearly 50 and that's his gig now.

Tag teams that are two juniors might struggle but just put them over as great TEAMS. You can't tell me that The Young Bucks hitting MBFYB on a heavy wouldn't be credible. It works in DDT, it worked in WWE, it works in Dragon Gate, the only obstacle is obduracy.

An idea: do it in NOAH first. That's your playground now, Kidani. Try ideas out there.

DDT may as well be on Pluto for as relevant as it is to the rest of Japanese wrestling, Dragon Gate is an entire promotion of Juniors and WWE is totally irrelevant, (though I would argue that it follows very similar rules to puro, and just isn't as forthcoming about it.) Very simply, fans rarely get invested in jrs at all because it's difficult for them to be taken seriously. When they are taken seriously it is almost always because they do fewer flips and develop more mat skills.

[Gibby]

As evidenced by your 'that's just the way it is' argument, the only obstacle remains obduracy. Wrestling changes. Someone like Ibushi would never have been considered a legit Dome semi-finalist 25 years ago. In the face of an absence of people who matched the template of what had gone before, they took a shot on someone different and it worked. Ibushi is taken very seriously, too. Styles and tropes change and evolve and its time to apply this to the tag division. There is nothing happening in New Japan's heavyweight tag division whatsoever. It is moribund. The matches have been bland for the best part of 10 years, whilst the Jrs have had good matches, but against the same 3 teams. It is far more insufferable than 'omg KUSHIDA just tapped Nakanishi' could ever be.

I don't even accept the full extent of your counter to my pointing out it works in DDT and Dragon Gate. The former is serious about its tag division and just had Sekimoto and Okabayashi as champ lose to Ibushi and Sasaki in a very good, very serious match. Dragon Gate has a weight split, just lower than the usual.

[DDT]

Dragon Gate's wight limits are laughable given that all but maybe 5 people on the roster can qualify for it at any time. DDT's titles are Openweight, and makes it's mark by being "silly" WWE style. I love it, but I'm not going to pretend that they are anything other than their own little bubble. Using an example of two bigger juniors against two 'smaller' heavyweights is not a very convincing example, considering that's already been established by puro as 'acceptable'.

Kota Ibushi is an anomaly, benefiting by being larger than most juniors and an athletic freak of nature. HARASHIMA is someone I rate higher than Ibushi, certainly more charismatic and better mic work, but he'd never get the chance that Ibushi is getting. I'd also point out that he currently doesn't have the most impressive win-loss streak. Look to that to change when he starts trading in flips for more strikes and 'serious' matwork. Frankly, Ibushi is more an example to our point (a junior 'graduating' to heavyweight) than to yours (junior facing heavyweights as an equal while staying a junior).

The heavyweight division is stale because they don't have dedicated 'main event' tag teams. No one thought Misawa teaming with Kawada, Kobashi, Akiyama, or even Ogawa couldn't main event a big show, why can't they have Tanahashi has part of a dedicated tag team? And not just a one-off partner, I mean an actual TEAM. The way Goto and Shibata are...were....maybe....no idea. There would be far more motivation if the belts were treated as anything other than Bullet Club property.

The junior division has a similar problem, in that the whole division is shallow. It would take a dedicated 're-stocking' of the division for that to change. There's far more a chance of that happening then Nick Jackson convincingly trading strikes with Kojima.

[Gibby]

I don't think looking into All Japan in '80s and '90s and hoping to revive someone else's glory days is the way forward. Besides, this overlooks some of the excellent stuff that was done paring larger and smaller workers - Kobashi and Kikuchi, Misawa and Ogawa, then a bit later Shinzaki co-held with Hayabusa. Sure, the smaller guys here are good-to-great, but that's the point. Put the title on smaller good workers when they deserve it. Could KUSHIDA draw as a unified tag champ? I think so. Could Rocky Romero? Probably not.

If this isn't a road NJPW will go down then fine. I just think it makes sense to freshen everything up. There are some heavyweight teams you could have: Fale and Tonga maybe could go for it. GBH could have a run when Makabe drops the NEVER with Honma as Ricky Morton. Sakuraba and Yano perhaps? YOSHI-HASHI and Ishii? Naito and a permanently drafted-in CMLL worker?

I really like tag team wrestling and I don't think the booking theories that apply to singles heavyweight action translates automatically. If someone said The Young Bucks defeated Tenkoji by running rings around them I'd buy that. Likewise if someone said they isolated a Jackson and chopped the shit out of him and lariatted him to death, I'm up for that too. The idea of seeing Tenkoji just running at Bullet Club again makes me want to change channel.

[Defrost]

Add to the fact that juniors are routinely paired with a heavyweight mentor (Kobashi/KENTA, for example) this would just be a slap in the dick to the whole maturation process.

How badly did NOAH fuck that up though? KENTA was the most over guy they had for years. He could have done all of the work for Kobashi if they were made tag champs. All Kobashi would have had to do was get a hot tag and hit a few chops and suplexes and the crowd would have eaten it up, and NOAH gets a few years out of Kobashi in high profile tag team title bouts which keeps the company going far longer than it did.

[Hero!]

So, New Japan have posted their Destruction cards and peep this:

Destruction in Hiroshima


Tokyo Dome IWGP Title Shot match: Kenny Omega (c) vs. YOSHI-HASHI
Non-Title match: Kazuchika Okada vs. Bad Luck Fale
Adam Cole vs. Will Ospreay
IWGP Tag Team Championship unification match: The Briscoes (c) vs. The Young Bucks
Michael Elgin, Hiroshi Tanahashi, KUSHIDA & Juice Robinson vs. Tetsuya Naito, SANADA, EVIL & BUSHI
Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens vs. Hirooki Goto & Tomohiro Ishii
Guerillas of Destiny vs. Roppongi Vice
Katsuyori Shibata, Yuji Nagata, Manabu Nakanishi & Tiger Mask vs. Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish, Ryusuke Taguchi & David Finlay
Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima, Ricochet & Matt Sydal vs. Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma, Yoshitatsu & Captain New Japan

Destruction in Kobe


IWGP IC Title match: Champion Michael Elgin vs. Tetsuya Naito
Kazuchika Okada, YOSHI-HASHI, Jado & Gedo vs. Naomichi Marufuji, Toru Yano, Atsushi Kotoge & Daisuke Harada
Hiroshi Tanahashi, KUSHIDA & Juice Robinson vs. SANADA, EVIL & BUSHI
Kenny Omega, Bad Luck Fale & Guerrillas of Destiny vs. Hirooki Goto, Tomohiro Ishii & the Briscoes
NEVER 6-Man Tag Championship match: Satoshi Kojima, Matt Sydal & Ricochet (c) vs. Adam Cole & The Young Bucks
Katsuyori Shibata & Yuji Nagata vs. ReDRagon
Togi Makabe, Tomoaki Honma & Ryusuke Taguchi vs. Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Manabu Nakanishi & Tiger Mask
Yujiro Takahashi & Chase Owens vs. Yoshitatsu & Captain New Japan
Will Ospreay, Rocky Romero & Beretta vs. David Finlay, Henare & Teruaki Kanemitsu


:panic: OMG IT'S HAPPENING