The top title in New Japan Pro Wrestling is the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. With only 70 champs across the decades since its establishment in 1987, the title carries a lot of prestige across the wrestling world. These days, if a wrestler has won the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, that means they’ve reached the pinnacle of pro wrestling, and that the NJPW front office trusts them enough to be at the top of the company.
There aren’t a lot of flat-out terrible matches as far as the IWGP Heavy Belt is concerned, so why not talk about the ones that proved to be the most disappointing -- due to outcome, being too truncated, or because they didn’t live up to expectations?
10 Best: Antonio Inoki vs. Tatsumi Fujinami (Super Monday Night in Yokohama, 8/8/1988)
Dragon Sleeper and Dragon Suplex innovator Tatsumi Fujinami and NJPW founder/MMA pioneer Antonio Inoki only clashed seven times in singles competition throughout their careers, but the last time in 1988 was the most legendary. Inoki challenged Fujinami for the recently created IWGP Heavyweight Championship and the result is an epic bout that had Inoki passing the torch to Fujinami. Watching two of the greatest of all time go a whole hour is what it looks like when gods battle.
9 Disappointing: Shinsuke Nakamura vs. Yoshihiro Takayama (Wrestle Kingdom IV, 1/4/2010)
Shinsuke Nakamura had a few reigns with the IWGP Heavyweight Championship, but it was never really his belt like the Intercontinental Championship was. In 2004, Nakamura took on Yoshihiro Takayama -- yes, that Yoshihiro Takayama -- in a title unification match that was a nice hybrid of pro wrestling and MMA, while this 2010 rematch is a somewhat disappointing sequel. Aging veteran Takayama is still an awesome but overly dominant striker while Nak hadn’t yet become a charismatic juggernaut, so it’s hard to watch this match and not wonder how it would have played if it was peak-era Shinsuke Nakamura.
8 Best: Shinya Hashimoto vs. Nobuhiko Takada (Battle Formation In Tokyo Dome, 4/29/1996)
In the mid-1990s, NJPW was running an invasion storyline with the shoot style promotion UWF International, which involved UWF-I star Nobuhiko Takada beating Keiji Mutoh for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship and holding it for the first half of 1996. Shinya Hashimoto, beloved yet underrated member of NJPW’s original Three Musketeers, would be the one responsible for bringing the title back to NJPW.
The match itself is only 12 minutes and some change, but it’s a classic where the stakes are so high that the crowd goes BALLISTIC any time Hashimoto lands a strike.
7 Disappointing: Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito (Wrestle Kingdom 12, 1/4/2018)
At 2014’s Wrestle Kingdom 8, Tetsuya Naito was supposed to challenge Okada in the main event, but a fan vote bumped his match down to second-to-last, and he lost. Naito went to Mexico, reinvented himself as "ingobernable," and found himself taking on Okada -- now the longest reigning IWGP Champ ever -- in the main event, finally. Yet another great match, sure, but it was ultimately disappointing, as victory over Okada at Tokyo Dome yet again eluded him. Little did wrestling fans know that NJPW was playing an even longer game than anticipated.
6 Best: Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kazuchika Okada (Wrestling Dontaku 2018 Night 2, 5/4/2018)
The Tanahashi/Okada generational feud has been going on since Okada waltzed back in from excursion and challenged the Champ in the aftermath of 2012’s Wrestle Kingdom VI, and lasted nearly 14 matches. This Wrestling Dontaku main event, where Okada defends the IWGP Heavy Belt against Tanahashi, is one of the best entries in their rivalry.
Tanahashi is the 21st Century ace of New Japan, but Okada was being groomed to take over the throne, so the new top guy should be able to beat the old top guy to establish his greatness. They’ve fought many times before this one, but the story here is all about the aging ace versus the young hot shot, and it delivers.
5 Disappointing: Brock Lesnar vs. Akebono (NJPW Circuit 2006 Takeoff, 3/19/2006)
New Japan touted this match between Brock Lesnar and 1990s gaijin sumo star turned pro wrestler Akebono as a modern-day Hogan vs. Andre, which is certainly an overstatement, even though this match is probably better than the WrestleMania III bout. There’s an amusing freakshow quality to the match, but it’s also one where the two are fundamentally mismatched. Still, it’s probably better than any time he trounced The Big Show to assert his dominance.
4 Best: Kazuchika Okada vs. Kenny Omega (Dominion 6.9 in Osaka-jo Hall, 6/9/2018)
This match may very well go down as one of the greatest NJPW matches of all time, if not one of the greatest in all of pro wrestling. The culmination of a year-long rivalry which involved an incredible title defense at the Tokyo Dome and a time limit draw at the previous year’s Dominion show, Okada chose Omega as his, choosing a 2/3 Falls Match and stipulating no time limit so that there’s a definite winner.
The two end up going sixty-five minutes in a truly epic, beautifully wrestled match that’s free of falls that are cheap or quick. It may sound incredibly long, but it’s worth every second.
3 Disappointing: Kazuyuki Fujita vs. Kensuke Sasaki (Pro-Wrestlers Be Strongest, 10/9/2004)
Kazuyuki Fujita is an Antonio Inoki protege with an invincible skull who started getting into MMA in the early 2000s and ended up beating Hiroshi Tanahashi for the vacant IWGP Heavyweight Title via knockout in 2004. After one successful defense against Katsuyori Shibata, Fujita suddenly lost the title to Kensuke Sasaki under curious circumstances in under three minutes, as Sasaki reversed a Sleeper Hold to get a quick pin on Fujita. Whether this was done to “protect” Fujita because of his MMA success or for some other political reason, it’s not exactly an exciting title match.
2 Best: Kazuchika Okada vs. Tetsuya Naito (Wrestle Kingdom 14, 1/4/2020)
Omega/Okada was the culmination of a year-long rivalry, but Naito/Okada was the culmination of six years of storytelling, from Naito being bumped from the main event of Wrestle Kingdom 8 to his second failure at Wrestle Kingdom 12. But this time everything was on the line -- it was the Double Gold Dash, where if Naito loses, he also loses his own Intercontinental Title. It’s a great match between the fan favorite Naito and the new ace of NJPW Okada, but it’s the final payoff of Naito’s victory that really puts this bout over the top.
1 Disappointing: Brock Lesnar vs. Shinsuke Nakamura (Toukon Shidou Chapter I, 1/4/2006)
If you ran Brock Lesnar vs. Shinsuke Nakamura at the Tokyo Dome in 2020 -- and WWE wasn’t producing it -- fans would flip their wigs. But this happened in 2006, when Brock was Antonio Inoki’s ideal of a wrestler who could shoot and Nak was the unpopular Super Rookie, a heartbeat away from excursion to Mexico, where he’d back a weirdo. The result -- in the main event of the precursor to Wrestle Kingdom -- is an eight-minute squash of a guy who’d go on to make NJPW way more money than Brock Lesnar would.