NJPW G1 Climax 29 profiles: Tetsuya Naito, Hirooki Goto

We’re taking a closer look at each competitor before heading into New Japan’s annual double round-robin tournament, the G1 Climax, that begins on July 6 live from Dallas at 6 p.m. Eastern/3 p.m. Pacific on AXS TV.

Tetsuya Naito (IWGP Intercontinental Champion)

How to briefly-but-more-fully-appreciate Tetsuya Naito: Think of him as the the yanki version of Billy the Kid, and probably the most popular native wrestler in Japan right now.

Popular, yes, but the 2017 G1 Climax winner was rendered somewhat ineffective in last year’s tournament, despite finishing with 12 points and scoring victories over five of this year’s G1 competitors. He kickstarted 2019 with a win over Chris Jericho at Wrestle Kingdom 13 to capture the IWGP Intercontinental Championship for the third time before trading the belt with Kota Ibushi at G1 Supercard and Dominion in spring of this year.

After his longish feud with Jericho and last couple singles-bout barnburners, it’s obvious to any fan how torn up Naito’s body is these days. He now walks to the ring like a guy who has been dropped on his head and/or neck a couple dozen times. When he isn’t working a multiple-person tag match, we see Naito wrestle with his usual grace and ease only when he has to, which is not much at all in 2019; he has only wrestled a total of six singles matches this year.

While he is still one of the top-three stars in NJPW (next to Okada and Tanahashi), will he still be perceived as such in the eyes of the fans after this year’s G1 tournament? Or will Naito soon join Togi Makabe and Satoshi Kojima, members of the just-over-the-hill club, those solid hands with years of experience and innate talent but not enough gas in the tank to perform at a high level? The answer will come later on this summer.

Hirooki Goto

Hirooki Goto is a conundrum. He has the intangibles people say wrestlers need in order to be successful in this business, but even still, Goto ends up perceived by fans as a respectable mid-carder with no real reason to be pushed anymore. He’s even won this damn tournament, plus three separate New Japan Cups, and somehow it doesn’t register. He has become, unfortunately, just another face in CHAOS, and there’s not much reason as to why. There just isn’t space on the NJPW roster for “merely” above-average wrestlers in 2019.

Goto feels like he’s at a point in his career where he is only as as good as his dance partner, so while we should expect him to have terrific bouts with guys like Jeff Cobb and Shingo Takagi, what comes from having to watch another aggressively boring match with him and Taichi? The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer claimed their match in Beppu, Japan last September was “everything bad about pro wrestling” and marked the match with negative-one star.

Fans probably won’t stomach another one of those, but with in-ring standards higher than ever now, this shouldn’t be the case. Here’s to hoping Goto will tear houses down across the G1 in his run this year.