So, we're a few hours away from another Hirooki Goto IWGP title shot - his eighth, in fact. Goto is the perennial loser when it comes to the top prize in New Japan, the gold always seeming just beyond his reach. He's a fairly popular figure in the promotion but always plays second fiddle to the real stars, in the eyes of NJPW officials and fans alike. It's not that Goto doesn't have the in-ring talent, but more that he fails to connect with an audience in a way that many of his peers do. But, with Nakamura now gone and a new shift in attitude from Goto, perhaps there's a chance for him to provide more than another stopgap title defence and elevate himself regardless of the outcome of his impending title match.
This will be Goto and Okada's ninth meeting in singles competition (discounting the four matches between the two when Okada was a young lion), but it's hard to call what they have a feud or even much of a rivalry. Goto has been a temporary obstacle in The Rainmaker's path and Okada treats him as such, his comments towards Goto following much in the same vein as Nakamura's, calling him an irrelevance. In spite of this and in spite of his inability to defeat Okada when it counts, the fans reacted angrily when he finally showed some emotion and passion, attacking Okada at a press conference and multiple times since. For the first time in many years, Goto has felt the sting of the crowd's displeasure and it will be very interesting to see how he reacts.
It mirrors the situation Tetsuya Naito was in last year, with the crowd turning on him for allowing his own simmering frustrations to boil over. He too had some pointed comments about Goto ahead of their singles match at Wrestle Kingdom 10, praising Goto's skill before attacking his "wasted potential". Naito also questioned Goto's motivation and said "he can't assert himself" and that he lacks a "character of his own". Naito went on to point out that Goto was only following Shibata's lead by fighting Los Ingobernables and that everything Naito had done to him had been to "help" him. Whatever the case may be, the events of the past few months seem to have lit a fire under Goto and brought out a more aggressive, a more ungovernable side of him.
The question is whether Goto can make this opportunity count, do something memorable and carve a new path for himself into New Japan's main event scene, or whether this is just another stopgap title challenge on the continuing rise of The Rainmaker.
