When Dave Finlay involved himself into the program with Will Ospreay and Jon Moxley, and then destroyed both the IWGP United States and the unofficial UK championship blets, and then it was announced that there would be a new title announced to replace them outright, I held my breath with hopes that it would be a sweet design.
The IWGP World championship that looked like the X-Men’s Phoenix Force emblem was kind of a letdown in my opinion, and came at the cost of merging out the old Intercontinental championship in the process. The NJPW World Television championship that they unveiled was without question one of the worst blet designs I’d seen in a while. The IWGP Women’s championship looked like a repurposed Jr. Heavyweight blet from 1996.
And to be fair, as much as I liked how flashy and gaudy it was, I know that the US championship that Finlay destroyed was also not really that well received by lots of smarks and blet aficionados, but I was still a fan, and was sad to see them go, although I understood why they were doing it; Ospreay brought in a variant of it, plus he was on his way out, so the company had to do something to consolidate the blet’s position in the company.
Frankly, I was really hoping they’d just bring back the Intercontinental championship, because much like in the WWE, the IWGP Intercontinental was often seen as the workhorse blet, that usually the most talented worker gets, and has been held by so many greats, most recently from Kenny Omega, Shinsuke Nakamura, Chris Jericho to Tetsuya Naito.
So when they unveiled the IWGP Global Championship in preparation of Wrestle Kingdom, I have to say that my knee-jerk reaction was that of kind of a push. It wasn’t bad by any stretch of the imagination, but at the same time, my breath wasn’t taken away when seeing it.
Now I’m not saying all new blets need to be radical and unique, but I thought the Global blet was kind of vanilla. The hard squared plates in the center and the fairly generic globes as the side plates. It’s funny because I think AEW lifts a lot of design cues from NJPW’s blets, but the hard vertical lines of the Global make me think that they borrowed cues from AEW for a change.
What I really liked about the old Intercontinental blet is that it was nearly a clone of the old World championship, in terms of the centerplate. It had fairly generic side plates as well, but the fact that the centerplate was fairly similar to the World, it was metaphorically stating its position as a blet close to the tier of the World championship.
The IWGP Global championship, most definitely looks like a tier below the World championship now. Make no mistake, this is a true #2 blet, and a guy like David Finlay holding it is still very much a #2-tier talent, even in an absolutely decimated roster like New Japan’s current state is. Even Dolph Ziggler Nic Nemeth showing up to immediately put his name in contention for this new blet couldn’t save the fact that it still seemed kind of mid.
I don’t think I’m doing a great job of articulating it, but it just doesn’t really look or feel like a big deal, like the #2 blet in New Japan Pro Wrestling really should feel like. The design is classic, but it’s safe and kind of boring. It feels like a blet that’s going to be passed around by guys who get over with character work, tenure and obligations to free agent acquisitions, like David Finlay, TJP or Jeff Cobb, and doesn’t seem like it’s going to be held by guys who seem like they’re on the rise to greatness, and would be the guys to elevate the title, like Nakamura and Naito did with the old Intercontinental.
Overall, the blet is fine. But compared to the relatively short histories of prior #2 blets in the company, it already looks and feels like it will never be more than a true #2, and not one of those blets where it can someday feel like the guy holding it really does seem like they’re on the cusp of becoming great. It’s like with the recent roster decimation recently, it’s apparent that NJPW is headed for a downswing, but it’s also as if they prepared for such by introducing a downwardly-safe and vanilla championship for the promotion to wield, and for an inherently prideful and honorific Japanese company, such just seems kind of mediocre in the big picture.
