McGuire’s Mondays: Wrestle Kingdom 19 exposed how far NJPW has fallen, but it’s not all their fault

By Colin McGuire, ProWrestling.net Staffer

Imagine you’re messing around in one of those NBA2K video games and you boot up your season to find the computer has proposed a trade. It looks like this.

You receive: Konosuke Takeshita.

You give up: Kenny Omega. Will Ospreay. Jay White. Kazuchika Okada. Future considerations.

Anyone with a working brain wouldn’t be able to find the “decline” button quick enough. The talent level is lopsided. What you gain could never compete with what you’re giving up. And, by the way, what exactly does “future considerations” mean?

It’s a silly exercise, but one that came to mind as I considered this year’s installment of Wrestle Kingdom Nights One and Tw … er … Wrestle Kingdom and Wrestle Dynasty (not to be confused with AEW Dynasty, which was introduced last year as the company’s April pay-per-view). There was a day – and not all that long ago, to boot – when Wrestle Kingdom was every mainstream wrestling nerd’s WrestleMania. Maybe you didn’t keep up with New Japan Pro Wrestling’s day-to-day happenings, but you always checked in around the first of the year to see what they were cooking up.

There was Okada vs. Ospreay. There was Switchblade vs. Ibushi. There was Omega vs. Tanahashi. And these were just some of the main events in the 2020s. The prestige surrounding NJPW and Wrestle Kingdom has only grown with age. The Tokyo Dome. The entrances. The pomp, circumstance, and 45-minute Picasso paintings that came to life with each chop. I’m probably romanticizing it a bit too much – but not by a lot. Wrestle Kingdom has earned its place as an institution when it comes to major pro wrestling events outside of North America.

But this year? Eh.

For the first time in a long time, Wrestle Kingdom has come and gone and the only thing fans of this stuff are talking about is what happened at a weekend Tokyo Dome show that was not called “Wrestle Kingdom,” and in fact was called “Wrestle Dynasty.” Kenny Omega vs. Gabe Kidd. A star-making performance was had by the latter while the former returned from a long layoff to fabulous fanfare just to remind everyone that he is, indeed, still Kenny F’n Omega. The match was gritty, compelling, believable and unmatched when it came to the weekend festivities.

Above all, it overshadowed anything that appeared on Wrestle Kingdom proper the night before. That’s because the night before was headlined by IWPG World Heavyweight Champion Zack Sabre Jr., a wonderful 15-18-minute-match technical wrestler, defending the company’s top prize against Shota Umino, a promising upstart who has potential but hasn’t been able to break through to the next level. They went almost 45 minutes. It should not have gone 45 minutes. It should not have been a Wrestle Kingdom main event. It was not worthy of the Tokyo Dome main top slot. And yet, it happened.

How did we get here? That’s what I wondered as I considered the contrast between Night One’s main event and the best match of the weekend, which didn’t even go down under the Wrestle Kingdom banner. Part of it is something I’ve been whining about for years in this very space: In hindsight, maybe opening the Forbidden Door as much as all parties have opened said Forbidden Door wasn’t best for business on a macro level. Seeing people pop up in other promotions has lost its luster and in some cases, it’s become hard to associate one wrestler with only one company, which in the long term, takes the piss out of the gimmick. But you don’t need to hear all that again. There are 197 other McGuire’s Mondays where you can find those diatribes.

Instead, I got to thinking about the creation of AEW. There is a train of thought out there that subscribes to the notion that AEW and Tony Khan have essentially killed NJPW by poaching its biggest stars, defining most of them down from where they stood at the top of important New Japan cards, and in the meantime, hid behind the famous guise AEW created that goes, “Where the best wrestle.” I’m not going to go that far – not in a hundred million years do I believe Khan or anyone in AEW would or could consciously try to devalue the Japanese wrestling scene – but I will wonder aloud about the one thing that has historically compromised the pro wrestling business, dating all the way back to everyone’s favorite alleged sex pest maniac, Vincent Kennedy McMahon. And that one thing?

Greed.

As is the case with most anything in life, there’s a Natural Order to how stuff should be. Everything serves a purpose. Think of independent wrestling like minor league baseball or punk rock house shows. You learn, you grind, not everything comes easy – and that’s OK. If superstardom in any form of entertainment came easy, we would all be doing it. The same goes for the rungs of ladders one has to climb to achieve maximum potential. For years, the notion of “going to Japan” to hone your craft or learn a new skill set has been not just romanticized, but encouraged. It’s a badge of honor. Go main event the Tokyo Dome. Then, let’s talk.

Well, who benefited from that ideal this year? Nobody. There was no star-making moment on Wrestle Kingdom proper. Shota isn’t clicking and Sabre, as great as he is – and don’t twist this around; he is really great – kind of/sort of got exposed as a guy who maybe isn’t in a position to lead a company forward, no matter how much he yells about hating capitalism. Meanwhile, what’s left of Tanahashi went 15 minutes with Evil and Takeshita added to his belt collection all while announcing he’s now going to be affiliated with NJPW (remember that proposed trade I mentioned at the beginning of this?). The most memorable moment of this year’s Wrestle Kingdom came in El Phantasmo winning the NJPW TV title after battling through a cancer scare earlier last year. Good for him. And yet for as feel-good as that moment was, it was the fourth match on the show and it had no chance of lifting a Wrestle Kingdom up to where it should be.

So, what gives? New Japan’s roster is depleted and even if the company had time to build new stars because it knew that people like Okada and Ospreay were on their way out one way or another, it wasn’t able to accomplish that goal by the time the stars left. Is that NJPW’s fault? Maybe. But what greener grass did these stars find by leaving the company so easily? Was it so Jay White can be caught in four-way matches we know he’ll never win? Or so Okada can take the word “bitch” to new heights? Or so Ishii can toil away in Ring Of Honor title matches?

Counter to what might be popular opinion, sometimes leaving well enough alone is an OK thing to do. There is a universe where Kenny Omega still feels like a gigantic deal and that universe is placed squarely in Japan. Watching him wrestle Gabe Kidd brought back all the thoughts, feelings and emotions that made him unparalleled in the pro wrestling universe for a handful of years as he made a name for himself over there. He’s like Slash. In Guns ‘N Roses, that guy is one of the best hard rock guitar players ever. Check him out on a small stage with his solo band and he’s just another really good guitar player who wears a funny hat. In AEW, Kenny Omega is touring his solo project. In New Japan, he’s ripping the “November Rain” solo to shreds in front of 90,000 people.

And perhaps, it was supposed to stay that way. Perhaps the case of Kenny Omega in AEW, even as he is one of its founders, is indicative of what AEW has done to the state of professional wrestling outside of the evil empire that is WWE. Trying to build AEW has somewhat torn down other parts of the pro wrestling world. Don’t get me wrong. Nobody can fault Khan for signing talents like Okada, Ospreay, White, Omega and the like. And there’s absolutely no reason to believe WWE would have known what to do with any of them to get them to superstar status – look at what’s happened to Shinsuke Nakamura since he signed his deal with the Stamford devil.

But this year’s Wrestle Kingdom served as a slap in the face to those of us who used to get excited for Wrestle Kingdom. More so, it exposed how far New Japan has to go in order to get its mojo back. I hope Gabe Kidd isn’t lying when he talks about never wanting to leave NJPW. Ditto for Sabre because even though he didn’t quite deliver in his first shot at a Tokyo Dome main event, he’s certainly got the potential to develop into That Person someday. Before that someday comes, however, he needs to be a pillar for a company that has fallen victim to a company that wants to be Where The Best Wrestle and a handful of talents who (rightfully) sold out to deals they couldn’t refuse.

Because if I’m New Japan Pro Wrestling and I give up Kenny Omega, Will Ospreay, Jay White. Kazuchika Okada and future considerations to eventually receive only Konosuke Takeshita in return, I’d want to take a long look at what my vision for the future is. Because as it stands now after Wrestle Kingdom 19, that vision doesn’t look great.