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Ren Narita (2018)

54 Pts.



In his first full year in wrestling Ren Narita (who debuted back on July 4th of 2017) did a lot of typical New Japan young lion things, which is to say he lost an awful lot (he had a -44 fall differential) and got beat up by Minoru Suzuki and other random NJPW heels. On the other hand two of his young lion seniors, Tomoyuki Oka & Hirai Kawato, both left for excursion during the year, and two more young lions debuted to replace them in Yuya Uemura and Yota Tsuji. This finally gave Narita someone he could beat up on, leading to the first victories of his career. Because of this Narita actually ended up with a positive 8-6-2 record in singles matches, with seven of his eight victories coming over either Uemura or Tsuji (the eighth came over indie wrestler Shunsuke Sayama from the tiny Asuka Project promotion on a Lion’s Gate Project show).

However Narita was unable to topple his rival Shota Umino (who debuted just three months prior in April 2017), as Umino won all three of their singles matches. All of those matches came early in the year as Umino seemed to transition into a feud and then partnership with Kaientai Dojo import Ayato Yoshida, which kind of left Narita feeling left behind as the year wrapped up. With Umino seemingly destined for a heavyweight track and Narita looking very much like a junior at this point, that’s probably by design.