![\"\"](\"http:\/\/totfc.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/tsuji_IWGP.jpg\")
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Among the other things that happened at Wrestle Kingdom 20 aside from Hiroshi Tanahashi\u2019s final match everrrr, was IWGP Global champion Yota Tsuji defeating AEW\u2019s Konosuke Takeshita for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship, thus creating a scenario where there is a unification of titles.<\/span><\/p>\n The thing is, it hasn\u2019t been that long since the current winged design IWGP World Heavyweight championship came into fruition, barely five years prior, when Kota Ibushi won a winner-take-all match and decided to unify the WHC with the IWGP Intercontinental championship, and the winged blet was created, much to the dismay of fans and industry folk alike.<\/span><\/p>\n Sure, New Japan Pro Wrestling has been in a bit of churn over the last few years, with their rosters having been gutted a few times, a little bit of scandal, and just questionable management at times.\u00a0 And chaos tends to lead to reactionary changes, but five years seems like a really short amount of time before the championship array of a promotion needs to come into play; it\u2019s like late 1999 WCW and current AEW kind of scrambling if they\u2019re deciding to start unifying off titles that have barely existed, in the grand spectrum of the industry.<\/span><\/p>\n To make matters more complicated, Tsuji exorcised his right as a new World champion by declaring the winged IWGP WHC now defunct, and immediately brought back the universally beloved V4 of the IWGP World title, to which then opened up the question on if he would be willing to break the unification, and allow for NJPW to reinstate the also-beloved IWGP Intercontinental championship.<\/span><\/p>\n Tsuji said no, and we\u2019re left in this fuzzy situation where NJPW has a number of championships with questionable lineages and little direction on what lies ahead for the company as a whole.\u00a0 I\u2019m trying to wrap my brain around their title hierarchy, and writing all this shit down might help gain some clarity.<\/span><\/p>\n And as if NJPW needed any more titles in spite of their proportionately small roster, they still have:<\/span><\/p>\n So for those keeping count, NJPW has 18 titles in circulation, which is pretty high considering their roster is like, 25 full-timers, about as many in their dojo system, and heavy reliance on outside collaborations.<\/span><\/p>\n The bottom line is that it was a good thing that the Tanahashi farewell really took center stage at Wrestle Kingdom, and has all of the NJPW Universe occupied with tributes, because once all the emotion and sentiment have died down, the reality is that the company is kind of in this churning clusterfuck, and for blet buffs like myself, wondering just wtf they\u2019re doing to do to justify all these blets and unifications and rebrands.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n They\u2019ve clearly been taking notes from AEW on how to really devalue championships, and it sucks for a company as renown as NJPW, and all the history they have behind some of their own championships.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Among the other things that happened at Wrestle Kingdom 20 aside from Hiroshi Tanahashi\u2019s final match everrrr, was IWGP Global champion Yota Tsuji defeating AEW\u2019s Konosuke Takeshita for the IWGP World Heavyweight championship, thus creating a scenario where there is a unification of titles. The thing is, it hasn\u2019t been that long since the current … Continue reading WTF is NJPW doing #082<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[151,100,45,83,54,49],"class_list":["post-51014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-brog","tag-blets","tag-comparison","tag-fail","tag-observations","tag-wrestling","tag-wtf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=51014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51016,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51014\/revisions\/51016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/totfc.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n
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