NJPW: 3 reasons Chris Jericho shouldn’t win the IWGP Heavyweight Title

The IWGP Heavyweight Title Deserves A Full-Time Champion

We’ve all seen what part-time champions can do to a company, its shows, and its championships.

The past several years with Brock Lesnar on top of WWE have been an incredible chore to experience, even as an outlier who only tangentially follows that company.

Lesnar was able to use his hoss-like wiles and convince Vince McMahon to back trucks full of money up to his house to wrestle a handful of times each year in matches ranging from very bad to very good largely depending on the opponent.

What made the Lesnar experience so miserable was the disregard he seemed to have for the Universal Title and WWE as a whole.

Now, on this Brock and I can agree – why would I watch the show, Paul? It’s the same thing week after week and when your main champion isn’t on the show regularly, it’s hard to find that driving force to build toward your big shows every month.

That sort of reprehensible behavior belongs nowhere near NJPW and the IWGP Heavyweight Title.

Comparing Lesnar to Chris Jericho isn’t a one-to-one comparison, as I’m sure Jericho would aim to do far more with and for the IWGP Heavyweight Title than Lesnar ever did for the WWE Universal Title.

These are two incredibly different wrestlers with incredibly different mindsets about the wrestling business as a whole.

So, no – I don’t think Chris Jericho becoming IWGP Heavyweight Champion would be a complete disaster, but it also wouldn’t be great.

We all know that Jericho’s main obligation lies in the US with All Elite Wrestling.

With a TV deal expected to be announced sooner than later, Jericho and AEW will be busy promoting and then building their brand as they inch closer to a weekly television program.

Chris Jericho simply won’t have time for New Japan the way the top champion in the company should.

To a lesser extent, Kenny Omega already ran this course with the IWGP Heavyweight Title. Toward the end of his reign, he was hard to find on any New Japan shows. While Tanahashi, Okada, Naito, and the rest of the top names were on all of the minor shows, Omega seemed to only show up at the named events at the end of each tour.

Along with the storyline of Omega running down the Japanese talent for not trying hard enough or having a high enough work ethic, he began to rub a lot of fans the wrong way.

For someone whose IWGP Heavyweight Title win was an emotional, cathartic moment for many, his dethroning at the hands of Tanahashi was emotional and cathartic in a much different way.

Tanahashi taking the championship from Omega meant that New Japan was ready to shift focus away from a champion who was busy at conventions and on cruise ships and onto someone who was devoted to the company. Tanahashi, of course, dropped the title shortly thereafter but he, his successor, and his successor’s successor have been steady players in NJPW.

At this point, with so much shifting happening around the top of the card and coming off of a relatively fresh situation where Omega was absent as champion, New Japan needs a champion who will be available at all times. They need someone who can be called upon to be on the smaller shows just as they would be expected to appear at the larger shows.

Kazuchika Okada is that man. Plus, he’s already proven that he can run a successful cruise and stay active in New Japan at the same time.

The choice is clear.