The obnoxiously long manifesto on the junior title situation I promised in the last thread:
The junior heavyweight title situation right now is so depressing to me compared to how good it had been since Despy won it last year. I would have preferred Despy being champion all that time, but I understand why they wanted to elevate Eagles as a top guy with his brief run. Once Despy got the title back and he had his decicive WK defence against Hiromu he was set for a GOAT tier year for a junior. He had great defences against Wato(!) and SHO, an organic demand for a rivalry/series with Lindaman, and the gigakino match and postmatch with Jun Kasai on the way. Despy was objectively on fire this year, but then they halted that momentum to a large degree by putting the belt on Ishimori. I partially get why they did it, because it made more sense for KUSHIDA to have his return match against a heel rather than a face not named Hiromu, but even if KUSHIDA getting sick isn't they're fault they haven't even tried to salvage Ishimori's reign. There was really no way to avoid going over six months without a defence? I know they value total defences over how many days you hold the belts, but just from a business perspective they're leaving money on the table while making their champion feel like an afteethought. They really coukdn't squeeze in a Robbie Eagles defence, if not Ace Austin? Even YOH or TJP would be preferable to nothing. Instead we get a non title match for Wato, which was pretty good, but then instead of a title shot before January we set up a four way at WK. I don't even understand why Hiromu should kayfabe have a right to challenge right now when he lost two title matches this year including the last one which occurred. The four way will have to be almost preposterously good as well as elevate Wato to being a thoroughly credible top guy in the division to not be an embarassingly awful decision...
