The Spring Booking Slump
We are staring down the barrel of April, which means New Japan Pro-Wrestling is gearing up for Sakura Genesis. The full lineup just dropped via BodySlam.net, and I have to be completely honest here. This card is a frustrating read.
It feels like Gedo is throwing darts at a wall while blindfolded. We have some incredible talent on the roster right now. The younger generation is visibly ready to take the reins and run with them. Yet, the booking heading into the spring feels entirely stagnant.
New Japan usually uses the New Japan Cup and Sakura Genesis to set the table for Dominion. It is supposed to be the launching pad for the second half of the year. Instead, we are getting a lot of rematches and thrown-together tag bouts that belong on a random Road To show in a high school gymnasium.
I love this promotion. I really do. But you cannot look at this lineup and tell me everything is clicking behind the scenes. Let's break down the biggest problems and the few bright spots on this upcoming card.
The Main Event Dilemma
The IWGP World Heavyweight Championship picture should be the hottest thing in professional wrestling right now. Instead, we are getting another frustrating holding pattern. The company has spent the last two years trying to figure out what to do with the Reiwa Three Musketeers.
Yota Tsuji has the loudest crowd reactions in the entire company. He looks like an absolute megastar, wrestles with ridiculous intensity, and carries himself with an undeniable swagger. Why is he still taking pins in meaningless multi-man tags? It makes zero sense.
We are looking at a main event scene that still leans way too heavily on the old guard. Tetsuya Naito is a bona fide legend. His knees are also held together by athletic tape, prayers, and pure willpower. Asking him to carry thirty-minute epics at this stage of his career is unfair to him and the audience watching at home.
Then you have Sanada. His title run was fine, but it lacked the killer instinct needed to elevate the belt back to its previous glory. Putting him back into the immediate title mix feels like hitting the rewind button on a movie you didn't really enjoy the first time. The fans want forward momentum.
Shota Umino is trying his absolute best, but the forced comparisons to Hiroshi Tanahashi are doing him absolutely no favors. Let the kid figure out his own identity. He needs a defining feud that does not involve brawling with House of Torture in slow motion for six months.
The Midcard Purgatory
Let's talk about the NEVER Openweight Championship. This belt used to be the ultimate workhorse title. It was the guaranteed banger of the night featuring two guys beating the absolute hell out of each other until their chests turned purple.
Shingo Takagi can still go with the best of them. Put him in the ring with Tomohiro Ishii or Gabe Kidd, and you have instant magic. But the booking around the title has been incredibly inconsistent lately. Titles change hands so frequently that they completely lose their meaning.
Gabe Kidd has been an absolute revelation over the last twelve months. His promos are unhinged in the best way possible. He brings an aggressive, ugly brawling style that stands out drastically from the heavily choreographed main events. He should be holding singles gold right now. Instead, he is buried in a generic eight-man tag match on the Sakura Genesis undercard.
The NJPW World Television Championship is another strange case. Zack Sabre Jr. gave that belt instant credibility when it debuted. Now? It feels like a total afterthought. Matches end in exactly 14 minutes almost every single time, making the fifteen-minute time limit completely predictable and stripping away any real drama.
You cannot build a functioning midcard if the fans know the titles do not matter. Guys like Ren Narita and Yuya Uemura need meaningful singles matches to grow and experiment. You learn by sinking or swimming on your own, not by tagging with Evil and Dick Togo while the referee takes a nap.
The Tag Team Wasteland
I feel like a broken record talking about the IWGP Tag Team Championships. Every single year, we beg for a dedicated, competitive tag division. Every year, we get two singles wrestlers thrown together for a brief run before dropping the belts back to Bishamon.
Hirooki Goto and Yoshi-Hashi are a great team. They are incredibly reliable hands. But they have held those belts so many times that the matches completely blur together in my mind. We need fresh blood in this division desperately before it completely rots away.
TMDK is right there waiting. Mikey Nicholls and Shane Haste are a legitimate, experienced tag team who travel the world. They have excellent chemistry and cool double-team moves. Why are they not the undisputed focal point of the division? It genuinely baffles me.
And what about the Bullet Club War Dogs? Alex Coughlin retiring was a massive blow, but Clark Connors and Drilla Moloney have been killing it in the junior tag division. The heavyweight tag scene needs that exact same chaotic energy.
Instead, Sakura Genesis gives us another completely forgettable three-way tag match. It is incredibly lazy booking. It is a cheap way to get twelve guys on the card without having to write a compelling storyline for any of them.
The Junior Heavyweight Bright Spot
If there is one redeeming quality to this upcoming lineup, it is the junior heavyweights. They continually save these major cards from being total disasters. Hiromu Takahashi and El Desperado are the undisputed heart and soul of this promotion right now.
Their rivalry is the best thing NJPW has produced in the last decade. It literally never gets old. Whenever they share a ring, the intensity ramps up immediately and the crowd wakes up from their slumber.
But we also need to look at the next wave of talent. Master Wato was finally clicking with the audience before his unfortunate injury. Robbie Eagles is incredibly consistent and reliable. TJP has reinvented himself perfectly with the United Empire and feels incredibly fresh.
The IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match at Sakura Genesis is the only bout on this entire card with real, tangible heat. Taiji Ishimori is a flawless heel who understands ring psychology better than almost anyone. His work over the last few months has been tremendous. He dissects opponents with terrifying precision.
Sho and the House of Torture nonsense drag the division down sometimes, but when the juniors are allowed to just go out there and wrestle, they deliver. I fully expect them to steal the show here and embarrass the heavyweights.
Hopefully, they get more than 12 minutes to tell their story. Too often, the junior title matches are totally rushed to make room for a bloated heavyweight main event that goes way too long.
The Faction Problem
We need to have a serious, uncomfortable conversation about the faction system. It used to be the defining, coolest trait of New Japan. It created natural alliances, betrayals, and rivalries. Now, it just feels bloated and utterly confusing.
There are simply too many factions operating at once. Chaos barely exists as a cohesive unit anymore. You have guys teaming up who have zero on-screen chemistry simply because they wear the same logo on their t-shirts. Bullet Club is split into three different sub-groups depending on what continent you are currently standing on.
The House of Torture stuff brings every single match to a screeching halt with endless, repetitive interference. We have seen the exact same ref bump spot fifty times this year. United Empire has completely lost its identity without Will Ospreay leading the charge and delivering five-star classics.
David Finlay has done a decent job reinventing himself as the leader of the War Dogs. He is vicious, calculated, and believable as a violent unhinged leader. But he needs signature wins to cement his main event status. Beating up midcarders on the Road To shows is not enough. He needs to decisively win major feuds against top-tier opponents.
Los Ingobernables de Japon remains wildly popular, but they feel increasingly disconnected from the rest of the company's core narrative. Shingo Takagi and Yota Tsuji are doing the heavy lifting in the ring while Naito physically breaks down before our eyes. It is genuinely tough to watch sometimes.
Just 5 Guys is still a terrible, embarrassing name. I do not care how many matches they win or how many cool towels they sell at the merch stand. You cannot build a dominant, serious group with a name that sounds like a group text chat between dads arranging a golf trip. Taichi deserves way better than this midcard purgatory.
Looking Ahead to Dominion
Sakura Genesis is supposed to set up the major storylines for Dominion in Osaka. Based on this lineup dropping today, I have absolutely no idea what the company is planning for the summer. The creative direction is completely opaque and baffling.
Are we getting Naito versus Tsuji? Is Zack Sabre Jr. finally going to get his sustained main event run holding the top prize? What on earth happens to the tag division when the same four guys keep trading the belts back and forth?
Gedo has pulled rabbits out of his hat before. He is a legendary booker for a very good reason, having orchestrated some of the greatest long-term stories in wrestling history. But the magic has clearly been missing lately. The product feels cold. The attendance numbers in the regions outside of Tokyo reflect that massive hesitation from the hardcore fanbase.
They need a homerun show. They need a card that gets people talking on social media for the right reasons. A show that makes you immediately text your friends and tell them they need to watch this main event. This Sakura Genesis lineup does not feel like a homerun. It feels like a sacrifice bunt in the third inning of a blowout game.
I will still watch. I will still stay up until an ungodly hour to see the main event live because I am broken inside. But the days of blindly trusting the booking process are totally over. The talent is clearly there. The locker room is packed with hungry, incredible athletes.
The execution from the front office is just severely lacking right now. Hopefully, the wrestlers take this mediocre card and completely over-deliver in the ring. They usually do. But they really shouldn't have to fight upstream against their own creative direction just to put on a memorable wrestling show.
