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Tetsuya Naito (2018)

208 Pts.


Tetsuya Naito is the greatest wrestler in the world. That’s the opinion of the author of this profile, anyway. So when you have the greatest wrestler in the world in your employment, a man who quite literally can make men, women, and children alike scream themselves hoarse just with his mere presence, you should probably find more compelling things to do with him than New Japan Pro Wrestling found in 2018. Let’s just go ahead and recap it all, and you can let me know at the end if you disagree.

Naito’s 2018 opened in the main event of the biggest Wrestle Kingdom in many years, so that was good. Of course no one reading a New Japan 2018 Year in Review e-book needs to be told what the result of that main event was, but Naito lost and Kazuchika Okada retained his title. In a vacuum you can debate this result endlessly, but let’s stick to what it means for Naito here. After winning the previous year’s G1 Climax (his second G1 win) and making it his goal to dethrone the unbeatable champion, Naito came up short. He quickly turned his attention to…..YOSHI-HASHI and Taichi. No, really, those two bottom of the card guys were his next two feuds. He beat Taichi on January 23rd on Taichi’s own produce show, and then defeated YOSHI-HASHI on February 10th at New Beginning in Osaka. Taichi came for revenge which necessitated a singles rematch, this time on an actual NJPW event, the March 6th anniversary show. Naito again came out victorious, but this meant the first two-plus months of his year were spent feuding with the very bottom of New Japan’s heavyweight division. Whatever you thought of the decision for him to lose at Wrestle Kingdom, this certainly wasn't thrilling stuff.

Naito followed that up with his second “big match” of the year, a New Japan Cup first round matchup with Zack Sabre Jr. that once again saw him come up short. This was quickly becoming a pattern for him, as he seemed further away from the IWGP Heavyweight Title than ever before. After the NJC he somewhat surprisingly shifted into a feud with Intercontinental Champion Minoru Suzuki. If you’ll recall from Naito’s 2016-17, he not only had no interest in the “white belt” but he actively detested the title (which made perfect sense when you remember that the Tanahashi-Nakamura IC title match had robbed him and Okada of the Wrestle Kingdom main event back in 2014), abusing it at every turn while it was in his possession. So it seemed more than a little awkward to have him just back to chasing said title again. To Naito’s credit, he sort of made this work by making the focus of the feud a personal distaste for Suzuki, and the two of them did some really great promo work together (Suzuki basically calling Naito a phony that only little kids liked while Naito disingenuously called Suzuki his own “ou-sama”, or king, nickname). Their wild brawls leading up to the title match wowed crowds who went nuts for them throughout the tour stops. And then came the actual title match. On April 29th in the main event of the small Wrestling Hinokuni show, Naito defeated Suzuki to win the IWGP Intercontinental Title for a second time. The match went 30+ minutes in front of a mostly dead crowd and was widely panned by critics. It was tough to call a win in a match that everyone seemed to hate, for a belt he didn’t want, on a show that didn’t matter anything resembling a “big win”. For Naito and indeed for his fans everywhere, we were now four full months into his year with virtually nothing to show for it. It was a stunning come down from an excellent 2017.

Naito reconciled his previous hatred of the IC belt in a little more of a mature way this time, as rather than carry it with him and abuse it constantly he simply vowed to leave the belt in the back unless it was a title match. It was a subtle shift but one that reflected his more babyface attitude and role versus a year earlier. His first defense would come on June 9th, and it would be against an international superstar in Chris Jericho. Jericho had actually attacked Naito way back at New Year Dash on January 5th, incensed that Naito had complained about his and Omega’s co-main event billing the night before. Things went radio silent for months from both sides however as rumors flew about New Japan and Jericho being at a negotiation impasse, and Jericho even made an appearance on WWE’s first of two odes to a murderous theocracy (he would later deadpan that had he known how much money WWE was actually getting for the event at the time he would have asked for a lot more as well). But Jericho would finally return on the second of two Wrestling Dontaku shows on May 4th, laying Naito out in a surprise attack and bloodying him in the process. The image of Naito sitting in the back just absolutely covered in his own blood, smiling as he noted that Jericho attacked him because he was special, became one of the most iconic ones of New Japan’s entire year. So June 9th at Dominion was Naito’s chance at revenge for these attacks as he put his title on the line…..and was defeated by Jericho, who became the new Intercontinental Champion. If you’re keeping score at home, that makes Naito 0-3 in the big match in 2018.

But Naito had little time to dwell on that defeat, because the G1 Climax was just around the corner. Naito’s G1 would start out with a rematch of the 2017 finals; the man he had beaten to win that G1, Kenny Omega, went to Dominion and finally ended Okada’s IWGP Heavyweight Title reign, so it was a chance for Naito to get a win over the new champion. Instead Naito once again was defeated, making him 0-4 in big matches. He responded to this by managing to rattle off 4 wins in a row (albeit against the likes of Tomohiro Ishii, Tama Tonga, Hirooki Goto and Toru Yano, none of whom would be confused with true main eventers) and was right in the mix heading into Osaka and a big main event against Kota Ibushi. The two tore the house down, much as Naito was doing in the entire tournament….but Naito lost again. 0-5.

He followed that up by managing to defeat his stablemate SANADA on the penultimate B block show in Yokohama, which some maybe would argue should count as his first big win. I don’t really agree that beating your lower ranked stablemate should qualify, but it did keep him alive going into the final night of B block action. Naito needed both a win for himself and then for the Ibushi-Omega main event to go his way as well to make it to the final. He was matched up against the same man who eliminated him in the first round of the New Japan Cup, and to the shock of the live crowd Zack Sabre Jr. beat him again. Naito had walked into the final B block night of the G1 with a chance to go to the finals, and instead he choked and lost yet again. That made him, you guessed it, 0-6 in big matches in 2018. At least he finally had his first real streak of important, high quality bouts of the year- dating back to the excellent Jericho brawl at Dominion and then following it up with perhaps his best in-ring performance in the G1 in his career- but the fact remained that Naito’s 2018 was making him look like kind of a loser.

At Destruction in Beppu on September 17th Naito had another singles match with Minoru Suzuki that was divisive; some seemed to hate it even more than their first match, some seemed to think it was just OK, and others (this author included) thought it was a massive improvement and a legitimately great match. The fact remained though that the match was happening for virtually no reason, with it almost feeling like Naito was still defending a “phantom IC title” that didn’t actually exist. It didn’t help that Jericho, the actual Intercontinental Champion remember, had been nowhere to be seen since Dominion.