For those who don’t pay attention to it: The “IWGP” acronym stands for the International Wrestling Grand Prix, the fictional committee which acts as NJPW’s kayfabe bookers who organize tournaments, assign matches and oversee referees - (when in reality the booker is Gedo and a few others lol).
For the first time, the Committee is being formally ‘restructured’ and it’s members will be publicly named, overseen by President Tanahashi.
It’s members are:
- Yuji Nagata
- Jushin “Thunder” Liger
- Tiger Hattori (Former head referee, also used to manage NJPW’s overseas presence and booking)
- Naoki Sugabayashi (Chairman of the Board of Directors)
- Matsumoto Hitoshi (Representative Director of NJPW and Board Member)
Tanahashi explained that “the IWGP Executive Committee is committed to hosting and managing the tournaments where title matches and official matches under the jurisdiction of New Japan Pro-Wrestling are held, as well as the participating wrestlers. We will also work with the refereeing department to promote the improvement of in-ring management.” (This is likely mostly to give kayfabe reasoning for why referees will begin to stop putting up with HoT’s and other heel groups’ bullshit.)
I was expecting Rocky Romero to work his way into this too, he’s in everything!
