NJPW: What Does Jay White’s Win Mean For New Japan Pro Wrestling?

The world is still buzzing about one of the most shocking title changes in recent NJPW history, as Jay White dethroned Hiroshi Tanahashi to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. It’s a big move, but what does it mean for the future of New Japan Pro Wrestling?

The scene in Osaka this past Monday was striking. Hiroshi Tanahashi, the savior of NJPW and the “Ace of the Universe”, with his bad knees and all, had his opponent on the ropes. He climbed up to the top rope as he has done countless times before to hit a variation of his frog splash finisher, the High Fly Flow, as Jay White was rising to his feet, turning it into a high cross body before going up again and hitting the real thing.

It was the same sequence that won him his record-setting 8th IWGP Heavyweight Championship at the Tokyo Dome on January 4, in the greatest match of his and nearly every one of his career, and cemented himself, even at age 42, as the driving force of the company for years to come. Except a funny thing happened this time around.

His opponent, the conniving Kiwi “Switchblade” Jay White, caught the Ace out of the air, bent him over backwards, and hit his reverse STO finisher known as “Blade Runner” before pinning Tana clean and winning the gold.

NJPW’s New IGWP Heavyweight Champion

On the surface, this result at NJPW New Beginning in Osaka is a massive shock. White, a 26 year-old who only began wrestling six years ago, came up through the NJPW Young Lions system before going on excursion to Ring of Honor in 2016. After about a year away, the Aukland, New Zealand native returned to NJPW in November of 2017 with his new demonic “Switchblade” moniker and immediately attacked Tanahashi and his then IWGP Intercontinental Championship.

Although he was bested by the Ace in the Tokyo Dome last year, his rise to power has been at breakneck speed. He quickly defeated Kenny Omega for his IWGP US Championship, and then at last year’s G1 Climax, he defeated both Kazuchika Okada and Hiroshi Tanahashi, becoming the only man to defeat Tanahashi in his victorious run, and the first to defeat both legends in the same G1 since 2013 (Satoshi Kojima and Prince Devitt).

While White was clearly being made into a key player in NJPW, even after his G1 run, nobody would have thought an IWGP title reign would be in his near future. Kenny Omega was firmly in the driver’s seat with the belt, and if anyone would take the throne next, it was thought to be his greatest rival Kazuchika Okada, or even his best friend Kota Ibushi.

While White displayed fantastic in-ring ability and exhumed charisma, two foreigners at the top of the singles card would be pushing it, even with the company’s upcoming American expansion. That changed when rumors began to fly about Omega’s future.

With the dawn of All Elite Wrestling on the horizon, the company’s expansion plans were thrown in disarray without their top foreign star. Omega losing to Tanahashi at the Tokyo Dome quickly went from unlikely to a formality as reality started to set in. While the Ace is arguably the biggest current babyface performer in the world, it was never likely that he would be trusted to carry the main event scene at age 42 and with a long injury history.

Thus, White was molded into not only the company’s top foreign star, but also its hottest heel. His betrayal of fellow Chaos stablemate Okada and alliance with fellow Okada betrayer Gedo and the Bullet Club put him in a major feud with arguably Japan’s greatest ever champion. He looked strong in a loss to Tanahashi in October for his Tokyo Dome title shot, and then at the Dome on January 4, the rockets were officially strapped to his back, as he pinned Kazuchika Okada clean with only one stroke of his “Blade Runner.”

His championship victory over Tanahashi only one month later cements the fastest rise in wrestling since Okada himself won the belt seven years ago at age 24 only one month after returning from his ill-fated TNA excursion. He will now be expected to carry the company into its biggest foreign showcases yet at Madison Square Garden on April 6, G1 Climax show in Dallas in July, its London show in August, and all the other American tours to be expected in the near future. He has taken the throne where Kenny Omega had sat for the past two years as New Japan’s chosen one for western fans.

What does this mean for NJPW’s expansion?

Except… Jay White is not Kenny Omega. There is a case to be made that Omega is the only reason the company is expanding in the first place. While they would have still had a killer product without him, it was Omega’s classic with Okada at the Dome in 2017, coupled with Dave Meltzer’s six star rating of that match, that was the catalyst for what we see today. New Japan is arguably the second biggest wrestling company in both the world and the United States largely off the back of Omega, whose matches with Okada, Tetsuya Naito, Tomohiro Ishii, The Young Bucks, Kota Ibushi, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and even Rey Fenix in Poughkeepsie, NY, changed the definition of what a professional wrestling match is supposed to look like.

As a result of those efforts, the company’s streaming service NJPW World has doubled in subscriptions over one year, MSG is sold out, and hardcore wrestling fans stay up to the wee hours of the morning to experience the New Japan product for themselves when it airs live from the other side of the globe.

More from NJPW

• AEW WrestleDream event card and information
• The new Bullet Club is obnoxious and it hurts to watch
• AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door II featured two epic matches packed with storytelling magic
• AEW x NJPW Forbidden Door II Full Card Predictions: Which promotion wins the show?
• Three women’s matches that would work on Forbidden Door II

White’s recent matches with Tanahashi and Okada have been excellent, and are easily the best of his career, but he has yet to crack the coveted five star mark from Meltzer, and is unlikely to do so on his own accord. He can get there with an excellent performer like Ibushi, Okada, or Will Ospreay, but he is simply not as good of an athlete as they are, and has yet to weave a story as convincing as the company’s top tier scribes of the mat. Character-wise, his heel persona is probably more convincing than Kenny’s post Bullet Club face run from a Japanese perspective, but fans have become accustomed to the heel foreigner routine by now.

With White now on top, where does this leave NJPW’s expansion? They retain nearly all of their top performers from the past two years, including Kota Ibushi, who quashed AEW rumors by announcing a new multi-year deal with the company on Monday night. Their biggest matches can only be rivaled by NXT, especially after Will Ospreay makes his long-expected transition to the heavyweight division, and their free-flowing creative style remains the world’s most fan friendly product.

NJPW also retains a cult following in the United States, where the upcoming MSG show sold out instantly with only Okada, Tanahashi, and Naito announced, and largely with the anticipation of appearances from Omega and his Elite compatriots the Young Bucks, Cody, and Adam Page. However, with Kenny out of the picture, it leaves a lot of potential matches now out of the conversation. The anticipation of Omega’s rematch with Okada, a first-time PPV match with Naito, a rematch with Tanahashi, and what would finally be a PPV match with Ibushi are all gone, along with first time meetings  against Will Ospreay and others.

While White can go with all of them, it simply will not feel the same without someone who the fans have become so invested in, and in many cases, the reason they started watching in the first place. Other wrestlers such as Zack Sabre Jr., Tomohiro Ishii, Sanada, Juice Robinson, and others are excellent, but they would not make much of a dent stateside with the possible exception of Ospreay. Omega would have received a Steve Austin-like pop at MSG had he remained.

Now, it is likely Okada who will be the most over at the show, which is not something new NJPW president Harold Meij could have possibly anticipated. Meij’s reluctance to work with AEW to keep Omega and the Elite in the fold is seen as frustrating to many fans, as the fledgling company has already surpassed the popularity of NJPW partner ROH, with its first ever show about to draw close to three times the attendance as the largest ROH show (headlined by Omega and Cody no less).

With recent comments from Omega seemingly indicating concern about the direction of the company, one must wonder if the company is on the verge of growing stale, or worse, changing its booking style completely in order to appease western fans, not realizing that it was the uniqueness of the NJPW style that drew their following in the first place.

If the “King of Sports” wishes to deliver on its ambition, which includes two Tokyo Dome shows next year, it has little choice but to pony up to AEW. While they will have a glorious night at the Garden, it will be much harder to sustain that enthusiasm throughout a year where expansion is the emphasis. Their debut at the Cow Palace in San Francisco last year, from a business perspective, failed to live up to (albeit lofty) expectations, and after instantly selling out the Walter Pyramid in Long Beach last March, their September return only drew 69% capacity.

After the novelty of a first time event wears away, they need to be able to sustain interest. And while their Japanese stars such as Okada and Tanahashi are popular amongst hardcore fans, if they wish to fill the American Airlines Arena in Dallas in July, or any other large arena in the country consistently, they need more than just the first time novelty of their product to do so.

With Tanahashi at 42 and looking hurt after a grueling last seven months, Naito being lost in the shuffle after his loss to Okada at the Dome last year, and the company’s seeming unwillingness to pull the trigger on an Ibushi title run, it seems from the foreign perspective that New Japan may be losing momentum, and at the worst possible time as well.

If NJPW is to continue to cement itself as the top alternative to WWE in North America, they must think only for themselves in the long-term. If they ignore the cries of ROH and welcome back The Elite with open arms to capitalize on the potential AEW boom, then their expansion will likely be a rousing success. But if they stick to their guns and grow stale, then it is quite possible that their best days are well and truly behind them.