Time Limit 2023 Year In Review: SANADA's Two-Act Play As Champion
He started strong, but has struggled in recent months. How should his title reign be talked about?
Before the end of the year, Time Limit will present a series of articles looking back at 2023. Over the next four days, the blog will showcase “Year In Review” stories, providing a critical look at recent months from NJPW and TJPW. After that, we’ll also have a five-part Time Limit Awards series, recognizing the best from both promotions. I’m very excited to present these articles to you, and I hope you enjoy them! Let’s get started.
What would New Japan Pro Wrestling’s (NJPW) year look like if it was translated into a match? It would probably be a performance that started hot, grabbed the attention of fans but fizzled out near the end and felt sort of lackluster down the final stretch. Maybe it would be a match that starts with eye-grabbing moves, like a dive to the outside or a fast sequence where the two wrestlers are countering each other. It would possibly end with a wrestler hitting their finisher for the third straight time, leaving some head-scratching fans wondering what had made them so excited 20 minutes before.
NJPW’s year might best be described as a play in two parts. Things started strong in 2023, as many on and off-screen maneuvers played out well. Early in the year, there were lots of decisions that seemed to be working.
Some moves made sense immediately: The promotion’s plan to maintain the U.S. as a priority but scale back from their ambitious weekly web show made sense. Putting the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship back on Hiromu Takahashi allowed him to go on a workhorse run with it, putting on many of the top matches in NJPW this year. Bringing in Mercedes Mone and allowing her to go on a short-term run was also a wise, easy decision to make which created some solid memories.
Other moves didn’t immediately make sense but were certainly smart decisions. I’m willing to admit that I was hesitant about Zack Sabre Jr. joining TMDK, which was a pretty cold faction last year. However, that move allowed him to have a leader role in the promotion after the disbandment of Suzuki-gun. I was not totally on board with the numerous names that joined Bullet Club this year, as the wave of wrestlers that were brought into the group were basically newcomers to the main spotlight in NJPW. But that has proven to be a savvy move that has given the group a fresh look, which was arguably needed after Jay White’s exit in February.
One topic that keeps coming back to me is what I would classify as the most interesting move from NJPW this year, which was pushing SANADA and making him the leader of the newly-formed group Just 5 Guys. This decision and the months that followed it can almost be mirrored to NJPW’s two-part year, with a strong start and a struggling second half. Was this change — which gave the company a new face and altered the title picture — a risky success, or a failure?
After spending numerous years as a secondary member of Los Ingobernables de Japon, SANADA decided to leave and join a start-up faction that was formed after the dissolution of Suzuki-gun. At the start of the New Japan Cup, when SANADA announced his departure from the faction, it became clear that he was going to become one of the top names in NJPW. The move was major and overshadowed the story of David Finlay joining Bullet Club and becoming their new de facto leader, which in other cases would likely be the top storyline from a tour.
SANADA’s New Japan Cup run was quite entertaining. With strong performances over Taichi, Naito, Mark Davis, and Finlay, it gave him the momentum that warranted a title match against Kazuchika Okada. And in the mind of many, including myself, it justified him pulling off an upset win and dethroning Okada as well.
SANADA becoming a champion in NJPW was undoubtedly a risky move for the promotion. They were giving someone with only a few minor singles title runs the biggest belt in the promotion. Once you put the top title on someone, they become one of the few names in the company who are relied upon to put together long, intricate main event matches. In the past, SANADA was not known as a big-match wrestler, per se.
This was a risk, but one that the promotion was willing to take on. It would give the NJPW hierarchy a shake-up, which was probably a good idea in the top title picture after Okada started his seventh major singles title run at the start of the year. After his New Japan Cup run, there was certainly interest to see how SANADA would do in that position.
SANADA won the title in April, dethroning Okada with a well-received 26-minute match as part of Sakura Genesis 2023. It was an exciting booking decision at the time, as it started a new era for the promotion. However, it was exactly that: a start. As much as SANADA’s sudden turn against Naito and quest towards a title was a huge success, the goal of making the title run intriguing and exciting relies on much more longevity than that.
For the next couple of months, this wasn’t a worry. It looked as if the move to thrust SANADA to the top was a smart one. In May, he faced Takahashi in a champ-versus-champ matchup. It was the first time since leaving LIJ that he wrestled a former factionmate in a singles bout. Going 27 minutes in total, their match was an entertaining main event for Wrestling Dontaku.
After that, returning talent Yota Tsuji challenged SANADA for his belt. Tsuji had been on excursions in recent years, competing in CMLL and RevPro. The match was a major test for SANADA, who had worked many of his high-profile matches in recent memory against experienced names who have highly documented experience in major storylines. This time, he was tasked with giving a wrestler not only their first-ever NJPW main event but their first NJPW match since their official debut.
The match between SANADA and Tsuji exceeded expectations, providing a performance that both gave the champ a win and provided a huge shine to a new name that deserved the spotlight. It was at this point that SANADA stock was very high. He proved himself in a trio of title matches that were all well-received. He had a fresh gimmick and a strong leader image in his new faction.
It was hard to believe at the time that SANADA’s reign would lose steam, but that’s exactly what happened. It wasn’t one singular event that caused this to happen, but instead a long series of booking missteps and forgettable matches.
When NJPW collaborated with AEW for Forbidden Door 2, a sold-out event in Canada that ended up being one of the top events for both promotions that year, SANADA had a brief, low-key 10-minute match against Jack Perry. It was not a notable part of the show, despite the fact that he held the most prestigeous belt in the lineup.
Then in the G1 Climax tournament, SANADA produced just a couple of memorable matches among his eight appearances. He departed the tournament with a painful quarter-final loss to EVIL, which ended up not being a match that the public enjoyed.
As much as NJPW’s style of matchmaking — which often grants title matches to anyone who can beat a champion in a non-title fight — can be one of the strong points of the product, they can sometimes dig themselves into a hole as well. EVIL defeating SANADA during the G1 quarter-finals justified a chance for him to receive title shot eventually. Two months later, a rematch between EVIL and SANADA was booked for Destruction In Ryogoku. After a lengthy build on their tour with EVIL’s House of Torture using the repetitive heel tactics that have caused many to groan for years now, their second match did not do well either.
SANADA’s two-match run against EVIL was forgettable at best. However, by October, it was in the rearview mirror. With NJPW down to just their final few tours of the year, the focus shifted to his January 4th Wrestle Kingdom match against Naito.
On paper, it was the perfect setup for a Tokyo Dome match. SANADA drove off in the face of Naito in March, abandoning their partnership to instead chase a title. After a couple of years of Naito not accomplishing much, he took another huge hit with the loss of an ally. It’s possible though that the loss of SANADA was just enough to motivate him to climb to the top of the promotion once again. Naito caught back up to SANADA and now has the chance to show him that he had a reason for being the leader of LIJ during all those years.
That’s a great story for a Wrestle Kingdom match. But, in the few matches where they built up their rivalry, it just felt like a spark wasn’t there. Something about their feud just didn’t feel too heated or big. This only became worse in early November, when right eye surgery stopped Naito from wrestling in matches that would help build to their Tokyo Dome event. Naito missed more than a month of NJPW programming and just returned recently. We’re now just weeks away from the eventual meeting between them at the Tokyo Dome.
SANADA’s title run started hot and had a strong few months. However, it has lost steam and flamed out during the most crucial part of the year. Recent months have turned a championship campaign from a bold decision turned big success to a storyline that possibly overstayed its welcome and lost its luster after a few bad moves.
How 2023 for NJPW will be remembered will very likely align with how SANADA’s title reign was perceived. Sure, there are a lot of other big storylines and topics to discuss, all of which we will get into in the coming days of the Year In Review. But at the end of the day, whatever happens with the top title in the promotion is the main focus of the year.
As we reflect on SANADA’s 2023, we’re also approaching the first real chance where a challenger for his belt could dethrone him. Naito has a strong storyline that could justify a win in January, a scenario quite unlike anyone else SANADA has faced since capturing the belt in April. When considering this, it’s possible that not only are we discussing the year that SANADA had, but we could also be looking back on the title reign as a whole. Of course, we don’t know this yet, though it is a possibility.
There have been more disastrous champions in NJPW history. And let’s be clear, I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to classify SANADA’s time as a champ as a disaster. However, it hasn’t been incredible. When assessing the top champions in other top promotions, SANADA is not in the running for best reign in 2023 among them. It’s not fair to live on either side of the extreme when talking about this run. The truth is somewhere more down the middle: that SANADA, like NJPW, had a year that started strong but gradually lost momentum as the year crossed over into the second half.
One thing that benefits NJPW is their schedule. Since their largest event of the year, Wrestle Kingdom, comes at the very start of January, it allows them to set a tone at the start of the year that they can ride for months to come. They can have a somewhat fresh start, getting themselves away from errors made in months past. The obvious question heading into 2024 is how much will they do that?
Will NJPW start 2024 by having Naito dethrone SANADA, ending the test that they first started in March? Or will SANADA prevail, presenting a vote of confidence from the promotion that they have not abandoned him as champion just yet? And how will the match quality play into the reception that the match outcome will receive? These are the questions everyone is asking right now, and the answers could give us an idea about how the new year could be.
Good piece. I’m only a fairly sporadic watcher of NJPW, but SANADA has never struck me as having the charisma of a ‘top guy’.