SPOTLIGHTED PODCAST ALERT (YOUR ARTICLE BEGINS A FEW INCHES DOWN)...
The expression “It’s a great time to get in” is somewhat overused. I have often heard it when listening to people on podcasts trying to sell their colleagues on watching “Survivor.” More often than not, it really isn’t a good time to get in.
For New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), though, the cliche now actually holds true. A confluence of calamities has forced the promotion to start building up its next generation apace and, as luck would have it, their traditional calendar lines up well with this sudden (although somewhat predictable) need to revamp their pecking order. Several of their top-tier wrestlers will be touring North America for the next little while, so having some background knowledge on who they are will help you enjoy them more. You’ll also be able to get in on the ground floor so that when the next generation of big names inevitably signs with AEW or WWE, you can say you know all about them.
(Sorry, I know it’s too soon, but I could not resist.)
Will I enjoy New Japan?
A great question. The NJPW style does not appeal to everyone, but it super-serves those to whom it does appeal. You might have heard of “strong style,” especially in reference to Shinsuke Nakamura in WWE. NJPW is the home of strong style. If you like hard-hitting matches with moves that look great and dangerous at the same time, you will enjoy NJPW matches. The term “fighting spirit” is another common one, and it refers to the ability to temporarily shake off the effects of a move to hit a big move of your own. It’s not quite the same as no-selling a move – because there is usually a sell, it’s just delayed – and it’s reflective of Japanese culture in that desire to keep going no matter what.
New Japan is also a much more competition-oriented product. While there are storylines, promos are rare during the show and even more rare in-ring. Video packages are limited to big matches. It’s very rare that personal issues are brought into the equation, and “sports entertainment” angles are almost non-existent.
What’s the framework of the promotion?
If you are coming to NJPW from North American wrestling, you will very quickly notice some major differences in presentation. The most obvious one is that the ring announcing and video packages are in Japanese. Generally this does not have an impact on your enjoyment; often there is translation available after the fact online or live on the English commentary broadcast. All of the major shows will have English commentary provided by Walker Stewart, often joined by Chris Charlton (who speaks fluent Japanese and provides translations), but occasionally with an English-speaking wrestler on color commentary.
There are also no weekly episodic shows to follow. Instead, NJPW follows a seasonal touring model where each tour leads up to a major show. Sometimes the tours will host a tournament, which is another big aspect of the NJPW presentation. There are five big tournaments every year that each have their own tours and unique rules: G1 Climax, Best of the Super Juniors, World Tag League, Junior Tag League, and the New Japan Cup. We will go into detail about those in the next section. The shows on the tour tend to be titled “Road to X” where X is the name of the tour-ending major show.
While it might seem like this means less to follow and keep up on, it can actually get a little overwhelming when there are four or five shows in a week. Fortunately those situations are rare, and a lot of the time you can safely skip some of the matches on those “Road to” cards.
The cards in NJPW are structured in a unique way. For most shows there will be eight to ten matches. Five or more of those will be multi-person “preview” tag matches involving people who will be competing against each other later in the tour. You’ll often see limited interaction between those competitors, both to whet your appetite for what’s to come and to let them get used to each other. Occasionally there will be story development in those multi-man tags, but it’s usually safe to skip them. Our team here at PWTorch will always point out if anything noteworthy happens in those matches, so you can go back and watch if necessary.
How do these tournaments work?
With fewer singles matches between contenders, NJPW will often use tournaments to set up feuds and title matches. Each tournament has a different structure and something that makes it unique, but the differences are small enough that they are not hard to follow. There is a lot of history behind some of these, and each one could easily be its own article (maybe someday I will write those…), but for now here is an overview.
The G1 Climax
Usually just called the G1, this is the most prestigious of New Japan’s offerings. Technically the G stands for Grade, but it’s almost never used. Traditionally, the event takes place in July and August, spread over several shows. Wrestlers are divided into groups and will wrestle each person in their group round-robin style. Wins get you two points, draws and no contests are worth one point. With a 30-minute time limit on the round-robin matches, draws can and do happen. You can usually expect at least one a year. The top points-getters from each group move on (usually four people), and the winner of the final gets a world title shot at Wrestle Kingdom in January. That event is the biggest show of the year for NJPW, their equivalent of WrestleMania.
It might surprise you to learn that the world champion takes part in the tournament, along with all the top heavyweights in the company. If the world champion wins the tournament (it has happened twice, though the last time was in 2000), he gets to choose his opponent for Wrestle Kingdom.
Though not officially a rule, anyone who beats a champion during the tournament tends to line up a title shot against that champion later on. In recent years, the winner of the tournament has also defended their guaranteed title shot against anyone who beat them in the round-robin. As there is a long stretch between the end of the G1 and Wrestle Kingdom, this helps fill the time and build anticipation. And you thought the gap between the Royal Rumble and WrestleMania was long!
Occasionally competitors from other promotions or freelancers will compete in the tournament, but rarely have they had much success. An outsider has never won the G1.
Best of the Super Juniors
The junior heavyweight version of the G1 follows the same structure. Called the Best of the Super Juniors (BOSJ), in this tournament, junior heavyweights are not restricted by age but by weight; they must weigh in under 100 kilos (220 pounds). There has been some creative scale management in the past, though not as part of a storyline.
Traditionally, the tournament is held in May and June. The Junior Heavyweight Champion competes in the event, as do the Junior Tag Team Champions. As with the G1, defeating a champion is likely to earn you a title shot down the road. One neat feature of this tournament is that the barricades around ringside are removed, allowing for safer aerial attacks to the outside from the ring. Given that a couple of people have been injured by those barricades in recent months (most recently Douki, who was the defending Junior Heavyweight Champion at the time), that’s a good idea.
As with the G1, competitors from outside New Japan will sometimes fill the ranks of the tournament. In recent years there has been a tendency for more of these competitors to come in than with the G1, and multiple outsiders have won the event.
ARTICLE CONTINUED BELOW…
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New Japan Cup
A simple single-elimination tournament that traditionally happens in March or April. The number of competitors varies, and in recent years it has been a 24-person field with eight randomly-selected wrestlers getting first-round byes. The winner receives a title shot of their choice, which has been used to challenge for the world title every year but one. As the winner can technically challenge for any title, singles champions do not usually compete in the tournament.
The NJ Cup has recently been used as a trial balloon for a bigger push for the winner. They might not win the title in their first attempt, but the tournament win tends to elevate them up the card and signal that they are moving up the ranks. Zack Sabre Jr. was the best example of this, and Yota Tsuji is widely tipped to be the next exemplar of the theory.
World Tag League and Junior Tag League
I grouped these together because there has been a recent trend to hold both events at the same time. As the names suggest, they are the tag team versions of the G1 and BOSJ tournaments. They are round-robin events with the winners receiving title shots (usually at Wrestle Kingdom) that take place in the lull period between the end of the G1 and the build to Wrestle Kingdom.
It’s an unfortunate side-effect of the NJPW calendar that often leads to the Tag Leagues being underappreciated. The G1 crams a lot of wrestling into a relatively short period, and once it is over it can lead to people feeling somewhat burned out. The lack of depth in the tag division in the last couple of years certainly exacerbated this problem. Hopefully some visiting talent and a bigger gap between the G1 and the leagues will fix this issue.
What else should I know before watching?
There are a few small things that NJPW does differently that aren’t immediately obvious.
You will hear a lot of references to “IWGP” while watching shows. It stands for International Wrestling Grand Prix, which is the kayfabe governing body for NJPW’s titles. This is a common trope in Japan, with Pro Wrestling Noah also naming their titles after an ostensibly external body.
There is a 20-count on the outside before a wrestler is counted out. The referee has tremendous discretion about when to start that count. In a similar vein, referees rarely disqualify competitors. Anything that happens outside the ring (including chairshots) tends to be fair game, although the referee sometimes refuses to count a pin if it immediately follows something illegal on the outside. With that said, titles can change hands on a count-out or disqualification, and often have.
There are no women’s matches on NJPW cards, with the occasional exception of Wrestle Kingdom. Even then, only the last two years have involved a women’s match. The promotion has no women’s division, though Stardom is a “sister promotion” and has its own IWGP Champion.
What NJPW alumni have I heard of?
You might be surprised how many of today’s major names had strong runs in Japan. In the last 20 years, the promotion has been very receptive to overseas talent, and some of them had great success. It’s not a stretch to say that of the consensus top ten in-ring performers in North America right now, seven or eight have been through (or are still in) New Japan.
For WWE fans, the obvious name is Shinsuke Nakamura. However A.J. Styles is a former IWGP Champion. Finn Balor was a founding member of Bullet Club, an NWO-style faction that largely contained non-Japanese wrestlers. Cody Rhodes, Tama Tonga, and Tanga Loa were also part of Bullet Club. Bronson Reed was getting a big push in New Japan right before he signed with WWE. The Motor City Machine Guns both had runs in the company, though it’s not clear if they were contracted to the company. There are even a couple of NXT competitors with NJPW experience, namely Eddy Thorpe and Nathan Frazier.
As you might expect, AEW is home to many more NJPW alumni. Jon Moxley, Will Ospreay, Kenny Omega, Jay White, and Kazuchika Okada are all former IWGP Champions. Juice Robinson, Lance Archer, Katsuyori Shibata, Kyle O’Reilly, Lio Rush, The Young Bucks, Mark Briscoe, and several others have held titles in New Japan. Adam Cole, “Hangman” Adam Page, and Ricochet had runs in the upper card or deep tournament runs. Honestly, you would be hard-pressed to find an AEW talent who hasn’t competed for New Japan at some point.
I’m interested, so is there more?
Oh yes, much more. This first installment is just a primer. I plan to do more in this series, with an article on the current champions, one on the factions in the company, and one on the names to watch as we head into the G1 season. New Japan can feel impenetrable to the average fan, even one who loves AEW, so hopefully these articles will help you get through that outer layer and help you to enjoy some of the best in-ring action on the planet.
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