NJPW reveals full card for King of Pro Wrestling

[cero2k]

Source: f4wonline.com

Sumo Hall will be home to four title matches as King of Pro Wrestling takes place on October 9th.

Kazuchika Okada will defend the IWGP Heavyweight Championship against EVIL in the main event, which had been set up over the last couple of months following EVIL's big win over Okada during the G1.

Other matches have KUSHIDA defending the Junior Heavyweight title against Will Ospreay, Tetsuya Naito defending the WrestleKingdom 12 briefcase against Tomohiro Ishii, and another three-way bout between new champions Killer Elite Squad, War Machine, and Guerrillas of Destiny for the IWGP Tag Team titles.

Interestingly, despite being promoted during the Destruction tour, Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. Kota Ibushi isn’t taking place at this event. No date has been confimed yet, but it seems likely that this could headline Power Struggle on November 5th. Tanahashi & Togi Makabe will instead team up to take on Ibushi & Juice Robinson.

New junior heavyweight tag team Roppongi 3K will also make their debut. They are the new team Rocky Romero promised he would bring to New Japan after Funky Future (Ryusuke Taguchi & Ricochet) successfully defended their titles against Taichi & Yoshinobu Kanemaru at Destruction in Hiroshima. NJPW didn’t identify who these two are, so the reveal might not take place until the show itself.

Many of NJPW's current international talent will be working the show as well, with Zack Sabre Jr., Cody, and Marty Scurll all taking part in tag team matches.

The full card is as follows:

IWGP Heavyweight Champion Kazuchika Okada defending against EVIL

Tetsuya Naito defending his WrestleKingdom 12 briefcase (and the IWGP Heavyweight title shot at the Tokyo Dome that goes along with it) against Tomohiro Ishii

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Champion KUSHIDA defending against Will Ospreay

Hiroshi Tanahashi & Togi Makabe vs. Kota Ibushi & Juice Robinson

YOSHI-HASHI, Baretta & Jado vs. Kenny Omega, Cody & Marty Scurll

IWGP Tag Team Champions Killer Elite Squad defending against War Machine and Guerrillas of Destiny

IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions Ryusuke Taguchi & Ricochet defending against Roppongi 3K

Toru Yano & Hirooki Goto vs. Minoru Suzuki & Zack Sabre Jr.

Bad Luck Fale, Yujiro Takahashi & Leo Tonga vs. SANADA, Hiromu Takahashi & BUSHI

[Big Red Machine]

Why isn't Tanahashi defending the belt against Ibushi? If you had that match on this show instead of the pointless tag match, this might be the first New Japan show I can ever remember seeing where every match feels like it matters and/or will at least be very entertaining.

[cero2k]

Why isn't Tanahashi defending the belt against Ibushi? If you had that match on this show instead of the pointless tag match, this might be the first New Japan show I can ever remember seeing where every match feels like it matters and/or will at least be very entertaining.

i don't know myself, they already faced off at Destruction. I'm guessing that main events Power Struggle, because I highly doubt they do that match at WK

[Big Red Machine]

Why isn't Tanahashi defending the belt against Ibushi? If you had that match on this show instead of the pointless tag match, this might be the first New Japan show I can ever remember seeing where every match feels like it matters and/or will at least be very entertaining.

i don't know myself, they already faced off at Destruction. I'm guessing that main events Power Struggle, because I highly doubt they do that match at WK

It's just annoying that they would do the face-off in the middle of the Destruction tour, then have their tag match to build things up at the end of the Destruction Tour... and now that we come to one of the biggest shows of the year, they're just doing another tag match. I find the stuff they do to put off title matches extremely frustrating. Okada will get away with a grand total of TWO title defenses in the second half of this year. Then throw in the fact that zero of those defenses will be against the guy who took him to a draw at the last big show and then beat him clean in the G1. That plus the fact that Naito is getting the shot at the Dome means that Omega will go until at least February before getting a title shot. Okada is going to break Hashimoto's record for longest title reign if he beats EVIL, but it's going to feel like bullsh*t because between Dominion and the Tokyo Dome this year and Dominion and the Tokyo Dome last year, he will have a grand total of THREE title defenses (I know that Hashimoto only had seven defenses, too, but that was in a time where people weren't used to world title defenses almost every month)! It's like the first six months of Jay Lethal's ROH World Title reign, but even worse.

For a company that likes to present itself as a sport, how the hell is the first thing you do after a draw in a world title match not work to set up a rematch? Even f*cking Delirious got that right, and if you're doing a sh*ttier job at following up on your finishes than Delirious, then you should just hand that pencil over to someone who knows what they're f*cking doing. In Lethal's reign the issue was that Delirious didn't do sh*t to build up any challengers, especially over those first six months, and so every time the announcers would talk about what a great, historic title reign Lethal was having it would feel like bullsh*t because it felt so artificially inflated by the lack of defenses. With Okada it's even worse because they're are guys who have done things that should warrant title shots but they just don't get them for absolutely no adequately explained reason.

Between this and the IC Title thing and the NEVER Title not being defended despite a whole bunch of guys having beaten Suzuki in the G1, no defense having been announced for Omega's US Title despite Elgin having an outstanding win over him (but YOSHI-HASHI is getting a title shot for some reason), the ridiculously long and inflated G1 schedule, splitting the February, May, and September big shows up into three shows... it feels like they're purposely trying to see how little they can give the fans while still drawing a house on the back of one or two big matches rather than trying to book a product that is dynamic and exciting the way that most other promotions do (and I will include even WWE and TNA in this. They constantly fail at doing so, but at least they try). The only other promotion that feels like they come close to trying not to do so is ROH, but with ROH the problem is that they seem to genuinely think that they are a magical combination of the best parts of New Japan, PWG, and CHIKARA when in reality they are the worst parts of those three promotions, so their problem is one of self-delusion rather than it feeling like they're purposely trying to give the fans as little as possible like New Japan feels like they're doing.

[cero2k]

Gedo is playing the long game with some people, I don't see anything wrong with Okada and Omega taking a break, we already had 3 5+ star matches this year and surely it's not like Okaga hasn't been dealing with the other man that defeated him, and Omega himself had also dealt with Juice. Indeed Okada hasn't had many title defenses, but he has also pretty much defeated most of the roster decisively, there's not many guys that I think should be getting title shots at Okada right now.

The reasoning to why Suzuki, Tanahashi, and Omega are not defending at KOPW is because they all headlined Destruction shows and that tour is waay close to KOPW, so the build could had been subpar, so I think it's ok to put the focus on different guys now. KOPW is pretty loaded even without those matches anyway. Between Power Struggle and Final Battle, I'm sure that Suzuki will have another defense, Omega will fight Elgin, and Tanahashi v Ibushi happens.

I feel that having 100 defenses is as bad as only defending once. My problem with ROH is that 80% of the challengers to any title feels like quick shots even if they had pins on the champion, so at least in New Japan, if someone gets to the title shot, it does feel more important. This is why i like Lesnar as champion for instance, where not everything is built around always having a title defense, but rather people fighting to become that one title contender and then when the champ returns, it feels like a big deal.

[Big Red Machine]

Gedo is playing the long game with some people, I don't see anything wrong with Okada and Omega taking a break, we already had 3 5+ star matches this year and surely it's not like Okaga hasn't been dealing with the other man that defeated him, and Omega himself had also dealt with Juice. Indeed Okada hasn't had many title defenses, but he has also pretty much defeated most of the roster decisively, there's not many guys that I think should be getting title shots at Okada right now.

The issue is that his "dealing with the other man that defeated him" is taking a lot longer than it should. This feud didn't need to last two f*cking months. There is no reason he couldn't have defended against EVIL in September and Omega in October and by then you should have been able to build someone up to challenge in November. I heavily disagree with the statement that Okada has run through the whole roster. He has taken on Suzuki, Fale, Cody, and Shibata, with Omega, Naito, and EVIL still outstanding. That leaves Makabe, Elgin, Kojima, and Nagata (and Ibushi), and that's without doing the work to temporarily elevate a non-EVIL midcarder like Sanada or Juice or one of the K.E.S. guys (why not give Davey Boy Smith Jr. a shot while his partner was on the shelf for six months?), or violating their stupid restrictive obsession with stables (Ishii pinned Okada in last year's G1 while he was champ and still hasn't gotten a singles title shot of any kind. All of the guys who could easily be elevated and get a title shot are stuck in CHAOS) This "long game" Gedo is playing is taking way too long, to the point where it feels like nothing is happening.

The reasoning to why Suzuki, Tanahashi, and Omega are not defending at KOPW is because they all headlined Destruction shows and that tour is waay close to KOPW, so the build could had been subpar, so I think it's ok to put the focus on different guys now. KOPW is pretty loaded even without those matches anyway. Between Power Struggle and Final Battle, I'm sure that Suzuki will have another defense, Omega will fight Elgin, and Tanahashi v Ibushi happens.

1. They're not so close. A full month will have passed between the Suzuki vs. Elgin match and KOPW. Omega is defending the belt a mere week after KOPW in ROH. Does that really make defending it at KOPW that much of a struggle? These guys spent all of July and August wrestling big matches three days out of four in the G1. Are you telling me they can't defend their titles at least once on each tour?

2. It's New Japan! When have they ever done something to build up a match for a top title other than the guys facing off in a bunch of tag matches on the "Road to..." shows?

I feel that having 100 defenses is as bad as only defending once. My problem with ROH is that 80% of the challengers to any title feels like quick shots even if they had pins on the champion, so at least in New Japan, if someone gets to the title shot, it does feel more important. This is why i like Lesnar as champion for instance, where not everything is built around always having a title defense, but rather people fighting to become that one title contender and then when the champ returns, it feels like a big deal.

1. You're not wrong about ROH in terms of the title shots feeling like quickies, but that's a symptom, not the root of the problem. In WWE the problem that Lesnar's absence solved would also be able to be solved by a competent booker doing the things that Delirious fails to do in ROH: have people actually earn their title shots and make the idea of the title shot into enough of a story that someone that it gives you at least that shadow of a doubt that the champ will retain so that when the challenger hits his/her finisher or gets that one perfectly-timed roll-up, you actually bite on the false finish.
As far as applying that to New Japan, there is no reason why the company can't be booked to work that way, either, just like ROH and WWE could be, given competent booking. They've got one big show (or even sometimes two, like March could have both the Anniversary Show and the New Japan Cup Finals) every month of the year (keep BOSJ as a late May into early June thing, move Dominion to very early July, and start the G1 a bit later and cut off one or two shows). I understand the champion not defending in the G1 finals, but there is no reason for it not to be defended on every other tour. The Jr. and tag belts (both divisions) are. If New Japan tried to do this they would essentially just be a more formulaic version of what ROH should be (and the way they do everything is formulaic nowadays anyway, so it's not like this would be a downgrade). I don't want 100 defenses, but I do want at least one on pretty much every tour, not this no more than a two quarter bullsh*t we're getting.

[cero2k]

The issue is that his "dealing with the other man that defeated him" is taking a lot longer than it should. This feud didn't need to last two f*cking months. There is no reason he couldn't have defended against EVIL in September and Omega in October and by then you should have been able to build someone up to challenge in November. I heavily disagree with the statement that Okada has run through the whole roster. He has taken on Suzuki, Fale, Cody, and Shibata, with Omega, Naito, and EVIL still outstanding. That leaves Makabe, Elgin, Kojima, and Nagata (and Ibushi), and that's without doing the work to temporarily elevate a non-EVIL midcarder like Sanada or Juice or one of the K.E.S. guys (why not give Davey Boy Smith Jr. a shot while his partner was on the shelf for six months?), or violating their stupid restrictive obsession with stables (Ishii pinned Okada in last year's G1 while he was champ and still hasn't gotten a singles title shot of any kind. All of the guys who could easily be elevated and get a title shot are stuck in CHAOS) This "long game" Gedo is playing is taking way too long, to the point where it feels like nothing is happening.

What's the hurry? rushing with EVIL and Omega will leave you exactly like that, with lackluster challengers like Kojima and Makabes, not to mention that if you really want to build up someone like EVIL, giving him the main event of KOPW does TONS more than giving him the random main event at a B-show like Destruction. Furthermore, like i mentioned, we already had 3 big Omega vs Okada matches, if you keep doing them so close to each other you end up with a Cena v Punk situation where the next feels a lot less imporant, again, what's the hurry? title shots after pinning a champion shouldn't be a rule, it's a storyline mechanism to let the fans know that such and such can defeat the champion, and you use that to make the story better. We KNOW that Ishii can defeat Okada IF Ishii ever decides to turn on his stablemate.

1. They're not so close. A full month will have passed between the Suzuki vs. Elgin match and KOPW. Omega is defending the belt a mere week after KOPW in ROH. Does that really make defending it at KOPW that much of a struggle? These guys spent all of July and August wrestling big matches three days out of four in the G1. Are you telling me they can't defend their titles at least once on each tour?

2. It's New Japan! When have they ever done something to build up a match for a top title other than the guys facing off in a bunch of tag matches on the "Road to..." shows?

They can defend it every night and twice on sundays if you want to, especially if you want your title matches become irrelevant matches that you find in every show. And while it is a month, it's only two big shows in between (the Road are technically house shows, those shouldn't count for big storyline developments), it's really not that much time, that's the very same reason why NXT feuds feel so much better than WWE feuds, WWE rushes everything month-to-month and that's coming from a company with a BUNCH of televised shows in between. Yeah, NJPW doesn't do overly complicated title shot stories, but they do build their title matches with their tag matches and try to make several exchanges inbetween in order to tell the story.

1. You're not wrong about ROH in terms of the title shots feeling like quickies, but that's a symptom, not the root of the problem. In WWE the problem that Lesnar's absence solved would also be able to be solved by a competent booker doing the things that Delirious fails to do in ROH: have people actually earn their title shots and make the idea of the title shot into enough of a story that someone that it gives you at least that shadow of a doubt that the champ will retain so that when the challenger hits his/her finisher or gets that one perfectly-timed roll-up, you actually bite on the false finish.
As far as applying that to New Japan, there is no reason why the company can't be booked to work that way, either, just like ROH and WWE could be, given competent booking. They've got one big show (or even sometimes two, like March could have both the Anniversary Show and the New Japan Cup Finals) every month of the year (keep BOSJ as a late May into early June thing, move Dominion to very early July, and start the G1 a bit later and cut off one or two shows). I understand the champion not defending in the G1 finals, but there is no reason for it not to be defended on every other tour. The Jr. and tag belts (both divisions) are. If New Japan tried to do this they would essentially just be a more formulaic version of what ROH should be (and the way they do everything is formulaic nowadays anyway, so it's not like this would be a downgrade). I don't want 100 defenses, but I do want at least one on pretty much every tour, not this no more than a two quarter bullsh*t we're getting.

I think every tour that is focused on another division/title should let the IWGP champ take a break to focus on the other, so BOSJ, New Japan Cup, Tag League, Super Jr Tag League, G1, Jr Cup, they should all be focused on the winner of such cup. Then all co-promoted tours COULD have Okada defend, but for the sake of promoting the other company, I'd think it's better to let the champion of such promotion come and beat one of NJ's guys, so that takes out Fantasticamania, Honor Rising, Global Wars (US, UK, RevPro), and War of the Worlds. That leaves

Wrestle Kingdom vs Omega
New Beginning vs Suzuki
Anniversary Show vs Tiger Mask, non-title, but it's also not a tour, plus this is usually IWGP vs Jr IWGP, so it tends to be non-title anyway
Sakura Genesis/invasion attack vs Shibata
Dontaku vs Fale
Dominion vs Omega
US Tour vs Cody
Destruction (no defenses)
KOPW vs EVIL
Power Struggle

So considering that Okada shares the spotlight with the IC title, the only tour that he didn't defend in was Destruction, that STILL had three big main events with credible titles on each show. I don't see where you wanna fit more defenses.

[Big Red Machine]

The issue is that his "dealing with the other man that defeated him" is taking a lot longer than it should. This feud didn't need to last two f*cking months. There is no reason he couldn't have defended against EVIL in September and Omega in October and by then you should have been able to build someone up to challenge in November. I heavily disagree with the statement that Okada has run through the whole roster. He has taken on Suzuki, Fale, Cody, and Shibata, with Omega, Naito, and EVIL still outstanding. That leaves Makabe, Elgin, Kojima, and Nagata (and Ibushi), and that's without doing the work to temporarily elevate a non-EVIL midcarder like Sanada or Juice or one of the K.E.S. guys (why not give Davey Boy Smith Jr. a shot while his partner was on the shelf for six months?), or violating their stupid restrictive obsession with stables (Ishii pinned Okada in last year's G1 while he was champ and still hasn't gotten a singles title shot of any kind. All of the guys who could easily be elevated and get a title shot are stuck in CHAOS) This "long game" Gedo is playing is taking way too long, to the point where it feels like nothing is happening.

What's the hurry? rushing with EVIL and Omega will leave you exactly like that, with lackluster challengers like Kojima and Makabes, not to mention that if you really want to build up someone like EVIL, giving him the main event of KOPW does TONS more than giving him the random main event at a B-show like Destruction. Furthermore, like i mentioned, we already had 3 big Omega vs Okada matches, if you keep doing them so close to each other you end up with a Cena v Punk situation where the next feels a lot less imporant, again, what's the hurry? title shots after pinning a champion shouldn't be a rule, it's a storyline mechanism to let the fans know that such and such can defeat the champion, and you use that to make the story better. We KNOW that Ishii can defeat Okada IF Ishii ever decides to turn on his stablemate.

The hurry is that nothing moves forward and you've got tours where it feels like you literally could have skipped almost all of the matches and it wouldn't have mattered. Of the twenty-seven matches over the three big shows of the Destruction Tour, how many of them had finishes that mattered?
From Fukushima:
1. NEVER Title match
2. Six-man Tag Title match (and even this is a stretch because those belts don't mean sh*t)
From Hiroshima
3. Intercontinental Title match
4. Jr. Tag Title match
5. Jr. Title match
From Kobe:
6. US Title match
7. Trent vs. Yujiro
8. Heavyweight Tag Title match
9. Okada & Ospreay vs. EVIL & Hiromu

At that point, what benefit is there to me for watching all three full shows when 66% of the matches don't mean sh*t? And please not that among the people who didn't have any matches that mattered are Tetsuya Naito (G1 winner) and Tomohiro Ishii (the guy Naito is defending his briefcase against next month), Kota Ibushi (they wouldn't even let him pin Elgin to build him up a bit. His team lost in Kobe when Elgin pinned Finlay) and that Okada and EVIL both deserve to be in here as well as their matches only mattered in Fukushima because the NEVER Six-Man Tag Titles were involved (and saying those belts matter is being generous) and in Kobe because their were consequences for the guys involved in the actual fall, not for them. In other words, big name guys who were having their matches at KOPW (or later) didn't do anything relevant on this entire tour. It was just stalling.

Whatever challenger you would throw in here doesn't have to be lackluster if you actually do your job as a booker and build that challenger up going in. For example, seeing as how this tour is coming off of the G1, why not have a guy who starts very slowly in his block, but then wins, like his last five or six matches all in a row? If he just got five straight wins over five of the top singles guys in the company. That sounds like something that deserves a title shot, don't you think? And if that's not enough, the send him to the UK for the War of the Worlds Tour: UK shows and Summer Sizzler and ask your good buddies at ROH and NJPW if they had an upper-card guy they wouldn't mind having put over your guy to build him up for his title shot so you can tell your fans that this guy also beat some of the best wrestlers in ROH and RPW, too. But Gedo doesn't do that because all he knows how to do in a round-robin is book it so pretty much everyone is close at the end but still going into the final night of block play it's pretty much only the two guys in the main event that have a mathematical possibility of winning the block.


Yes, giving EVIL the shot in the main event of KOPW does more for EVIL than giving him the shot in the main event of a Destruction show, but I don't that's worth killing an entire tour over. This is the biggest match of EVIL's career so far regardless of whether it main events a Big Five show or a "B" PPV, and, to be blunt, there really isn't anywhere for EVIL to go. Elevating him is nice and all, but it's always going to be Okada, Naito, Omega, and Tanahashi dominating the top titles, plus Suzuki and Ibushi whenever they're around. Look at freakin' Ishii. The guy has clearly been a top star for New Japan for several years and he has gotten a grand total of one IWGP Heavyweight Title shot and zero IC Title shots. He hasn't had a NEVER Title shot in over a year and a half, and EVIL wouldn't be seen as anything close to Ishii's level. Even Elgin hasn't gotten that much relative to the level he is portrayed as being at when you realize that a good chunk of his stuff with the IC Title last year was supposed to be Tanahashi. That's what happens when you've got a promotion so obsessed with protecting people that a large chunk of their roster is just guys who are there so that others don't have to get pinned.

The Cena-Punk comparison is very unfair. That was three matches in a month and a half. This was three matches in eight months, with five matches in between the first two. Joe and Punk had their trilogy in six months. Flair and Steamboat had theirs in three. An Okada vs. Omega match at KOPW wouldn't feel rushed because the story has been told in such a way that demands another match, and KOPW is the biggest and soonest available show. First they had a sixty-minute draw with the title on the line, then Omega pinned Okada in the middle of the ring, clean as a sheet, in a non-title match. How does that not absolutely demand a rematch?
The idea that pinning a champion in a non-title match shouldn't as a rule result in a title match undermines the very meaning of a title. Being the champion means you're the best. If Kenny can beat Okada, that shows us that maybe Kenny is the best rather than Okada, so now they need to have a match to determine who is truly the best, and whoever wins that match should be awarded the trophy that says you're the best: the title. Without that idea, everything about championships in pro wrestling falls apart. The whole reason that beating the champion in a non-title match works as a storyline mechanism to build up title matches is because it undermines the very idea that the champion is the best.
That's the whole problem with Ishii not getting a title shot: because it casts aspersions over the legitimacy of Okada's claim to be the best. And there is absolutely no reason why two dudes in the same stable can't face off for the title. They're babyfaces! They can't just have a good, clean, wrestling match against each other? If Suzuki-Gun can go around hitting each other with weapons and hitting each other in the nuts and still be pals or if Okada can forgive f*cking Yano for hitting him in the testicles then why can't Okada and Ishii just do their jobs as professional wrestlers and have a professional wrestling match against each other for the championship that Okada has and that Ishii earned a shot at? Ishii is just supposed to put his career on hold because Okada got to the belt first? Why would he even stay with CHAOS at that point? What does he lose by becoming unaligned?

1. They're not so close. A full month will have passed between the Suzuki vs. Elgin match and KOPW. Omega is defending the belt a mere week after KOPW in ROH. Does that really make defending it at KOPW that much of a struggle? These guys spent all of July and August wrestling big matches three days out of four in the G1. Are you telling me they can't defend their titles at least once on each tour?

2. It's New Japan! When have they ever done something to build up a match for a top title other than the guys facing off in a bunch of tag matches on the "Road to..." shows?

They can defend it every night and twice on sundays if you want to, especially if you want your title matches become irrelevant matches that you find in every show. And while it is a month, it's only two big shows in between (the Road are technically house shows, those shouldn't count for big storyline developments), it's really not that much time, that's the very same reason why NXT feuds feel so much better than WWE feuds, WWE rushes everything month-to-month and that's coming from a company with a BUNCH of televised shows in between. Yeah, NJPW doesn't do overly complicated title shot stories, but they do build their title matches with their tag matches and try to make several exchanges inbetween in order to tell the story.

They be defending the title on every non-"Road to..." show in a quality title defense if Gedo would actually bother to build up challengers. The best way to book a champion is by keeping multiple challengers hot and on what feels like a path towards the title. Over the summer of 2006 Dragon had Nigel, Cabana, Joe, KENTA, and Homicide ALL chasing him. Or Aries' second reign as ROH World Champion where you had Tyler, Dragon, Petey, Omega, and Delirious all chasing. Even Triple H or JBL's Cabinet in Evolution where you had a whole bunch of different babyfaces kept hot at the same time. That's one of the reasons I love EVOLVE so much: Gabe knows how to keep his champion(s)' plate(s) full with challengers while giving all of the challengers actual build towards the title to make you feel like maybe they might win.
NXT feuds feel better than WWE feuds because the people running NXT know how to tell stories. In WWE most feuds are like this Usos vs. New Day feud where they just have them interact with each other (usually by wrestling or a run-in, but sometimes by talking at each other, or if Bray Wyatt is involved, doing magic at someone) every single week for however many weeks or months the feud lasts. In NXT if the story is that Johnny Gargano is upset and saddened by his loss to Andrade Almas they'll spend the first week having Johnny tell you that he is sad and set up a match between Johnny and someo1ne picking on him for being said. Then, the next week they'll show you Johnny's sadness affecting him in the ring. Then they'll spend a week or two showing you that he's not sad anymore, then they'll have him ask for a rematch with Almas, then they'll have Almas' manager cut a promo telling you why is good for Almas and burying Johnny, so when they get to the actual match at Takeover, 1) you haven't seen these guys fight each other eighty times already so the match still feels fresh and exciting, and more importantly 2) Something has changed to make us think that this time the outcome might be different. On NXT they know how to tell a story that has more depth to it than just "wrestlers fighting because they don't like each other and/or both want to be champion." As a result of this they also don't know how to keep a feud hot without having the principal actors wrestle each other on PPV so all of their feuds either feel drawn out or rushed. If they knew how to tell a story that last three PPV-cycles but only required the wrestlers feuding with each other to wrestle on the first and third PPV, things would be a lot better.
The problem with New Japan isn't that their stories aren't complicated enough. The problem is that they're barely even telling stories at all. The "Road to..." shows have their cards designed to tease you with glimpses of the action you are going to get at the big shows, and that's fine. The problem is that that is exactly what everything Okada/EVIL and Naito/Ishii did on this tour (and what Tanahashi/Ibushi are doing at KOPW) felt like. Nothing changed in any way as a result of their matches. It was just teases of what we'll get when the big match comes... and as I said, that's the point of the "Road to..." shows, not the PPVs. They're not telling a story at all because nothing has changed or been reinforced in any way.

1. You're not wrong about ROH in terms of the title shots feeling like quickies, but that's a symptom, not the root of the problem. In WWE the problem that Lesnar's absence solved would also be able to be solved by a competent booker doing the things that Delirious fails to do in ROH: have people actually earn their title shots and make the idea of the title shot into enough of a story that someone that it gives you at least that shadow of a doubt that the champ will retain so that when the challenger hits his/her finisher or gets that one perfectly-timed roll-up, you actually bite on the false finish.
As far as applying that to New Japan, there is no reason why the company can't be booked to work that way, either, just like ROH and WWE could be, given competent booking. They've got one big show (or even sometimes two, like March could have both the Anniversary Show and the New Japan Cup Finals) every month of the year (keep BOSJ as a late May into early June thing, move Dominion to very early July, and start the G1 a bit later and cut off one or two shows). I understand the champion not defending in the G1 finals, but there is no reason for it not to be defended on every other tour. The Jr. and tag belts (both divisions) are. If New Japan tried to do this they would essentially just be a more formulaic version of what ROH should be (and the way they do everything is formulaic nowadays anyway, so it's not like this would be a downgrade). I don't want 100 defenses, but I do want at least one on pretty much every tour, not this no more than a two quarter bullsh*t we're getting.

I think every tour that is focused on another division/title should let the IWGP champ take a break to focus on the other, so BOSJ, New Japan Cup, Tag League, Super Jr Tag League, G1, Jr Cup, they should all be focused on the winner of such cup. Then all co-promoted tours COULD have Okada defend, but for the sake of promoting the other company, I'd think it's better to let the champion of such promotion come and beat one of NJ's guys, so that takes out Fantasticamania, Honor Rising, Global Wars (US, UK, RevPro), and War of the Worlds. That leaves

Wrestle Kingdom vs Omega
New Beginning vs Suzuki
Anniversary Show vs Tiger Mask, non-title, but it's also not a tour, plus this is usually IWGP vs Jr IWGP, so it tends to be non-title anyway
Sakura Genesis/invasion attack vs Shibata
Dontaku vs Fale
Dominion vs Omega
US Tour vs Cody
Destruction (no defenses)
KOPW vs EVIL
Power Struggle

So considering that Okada shares the spotlight with the IC title, the only tour that he didn't defend in was Destruction, that STILL had three big main events with credible titles on each show. I don't see where you wanna fit more defenses.

I don't think Okada will be defending the title at Power Struggle, either because the IWGP Heavyweight Title hasn't been defended at Power Struggle since 2013. You also forgot Kizuna Road, where he didn't defend the title at all. Both the Jr. Heavyweight Title and the NEVER Openweight Title were defended on Kizuna road, and almost every other "tour" this year, including the NEVER belt being defended at Honor Rising and the Jr. belt being defended at the Anniversary Show. The IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Titles have been defended on every tour this year other than Kizuna Road, and that includes the G1 Finals, the USA tour and the Anniversary Show, and they've even been defended multiple times on some of those tours. Why can't Okada and Tanahashi do that with their belts?
If you want to argue that having them defended more often would make them less special, I would argue that in order to feel like they matter they need to be defended with some manner of regularity, but either way, keeping titles special is clearly not something that enters into New Japan's philosophy because THEY HAVE TWELVE GUYS WALKING AROUND WITH TITLE BELTS! That's more than WWE, and WWE 1) is a two-gender promotion, and 2) WWE is actually booking two separate shows with separate rosters and separate titles. And New Japan STILL has more titles.
Why can't you have more than one major title defended per show on a tour with multiple major shows? Wasn't the whole idea that splitting the one big show into multiple shows would allow all of the titles to get an appropriate amount of time? Well how is 0:00 an appropriate amount of time for the IWGP Heavyweight Title?

I'd also disagree with the idea that the IWGP Heavyweight Title can't be defended at something like the BOSJ finals. It should be second from the top, yes, but I see no reason why it shouldn't be defended. They've had the IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title defended on the last day of the G1. Or at least give me two other guys in a #1 contendership match or something to not make the final day of some of these tours into one-match shows.