How New Japan Could Have Their Cake And Eat It, Too

[Big Red Machine]

So New Japan loves to do these giant G-1s, but they now also want to spread the matches out to give people time to rest, resulting in the tournament taking twice as long as it otherwise would, and with the first half of the show not mattering at all because it's just undercard tags involving some guys in the tournament teaming with guy who aren't in the tournament to face similar teams with one of the non-tournament guys always taking the fall. Well... here's how they can both have a super-big, long, G1 but have all of the matches matter and give their guys even more time to rest between matches: Expand to four blocks instead of two.

Imagine four blocks of eight wrestlers each. That means four matches per block per show, so you split the shows up similar to how New Japan does now, but with Block A and Block C wrestling on Day 1, Block B and Block D on Day 2, and on and so forth. This will give you eight important matches per show, and will let the guys on the off-day blocks actually have the day off (or go wrestle for NOAH, where you would obviously need to draw some talent from)

This tournament would include more wrestlers than New Japan currently is in the G1, but would actually be shorter by three shows. Both this and the spacing out of the times each guy has to work would let you draw more talent from NOAH because they can still run shows when only two or three of their top guys are missing. Combined with the fact that there is a grand total of ZERO ROH shows during the entire month-plus of the G1, I think it would be easy to get talent to fill out all of the spots in the tournament (especially seeing as how there are a few names from ROH like Page and Cole who New Japan seems to have taken a liking to, and who thus wouldn't be missing any shows in the middle of their big Bullet Club angle).

It also allows you to protect your bigger stars (and bigger matches) a bit more as they will be spread out across a greater number of blocks than usual. Instead of having Tanahashi having to face off against AJ, Shibata, Naito, and Ibushi all in the G1, each top star would only have to face one or two top stars in the round-robin portion, which means fewer jobs for top stars, and more big matches being preserved for bigger shows.

The final day would see the winner of A vs. the winner of B and the winner of C vs. the winner of D so that the final days of the tournament are relevant even to those who have the day off. The winner of the semi-final would then face off in the finals, essentially restoring the old "block finals" system except that this way everyone who makes it to the semis (and beyond) will have actually won their block instead of possibly having come in second place, while also letting you put over twice as many wrestlers as having accomplished the impressive feat of winning their G1 block. This also create two more extremely important matches for the final day, which has become mostly filler until the main event.

[cero2k]

it may be too expensive to double the amount of talent that they bring in for the tournament, especially considering they won't allow their juniors in. The other option would be to have 4 blocks of 4 people, but then that would feel underwhelming to what the G1 stands for today

[Big Red Machine]

it may be too expensive to double the amount of talent that they bring in for the tournament, especially considering they won't allow their juniors in. The other option would be to have 4 blocks of 4 people, but then that would feel underwhelming to what the G1 stands for today

To get it as long they want you'd at least need to have six people per block.