Opinion: New Japan should unify the IWGP Heavyweight and Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Titles
If you follow New Japan Pro-Wrestling, you are surely well aware that straight-up tag team wrestling isn't their strong suit. It's an intriguing notion that the co-bookers of the company, Gedo & Jado, are one of the more well-known tag teams in Japanese wrestling history, but don't seem to care about tag team wrestling.
IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team Championship
The presently active full-time heavyweight teams include the champions, Guerillas of Destiny (Tama Tonga & Tanga Loa), and... nobody else. There is only one full-time tag team in the Heavyweight Division. Only two teams have held the titles for nineteen of the last twenty two months: the aforementioned GoD, and the team of EVIL & SANADA. The other three months were claimed by The Young Bucks, which coincidentally, were also the only three months in which they were a heavyweight tag team and their three final months as part of the New Japan roster.
The 2018 World Tag League, the annual fall tournament that determines who will challenge for the tag titles at WrestleKingdom, featured fourteen teams. Only three of them were actual teams. Only one of those teams is still active.
SANADA and EVIL, a pair of wrestlers from Los Ingobernables de Japon, were the winners of the tournament (they won it the year prior as well) and won the Tag Titles at WrestleKingdom, a few months later. They held the belts for a month and a half and didn't pair up again until they were given a rematch three and a half months later. They lost and haven't teamed since. Both men are primarily singles wrestlers who have been working toward becoming IWGP Heavyweight Champion for the last couple of years.
IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Championship
The current IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team Champions (El Phantasmo and Taiji Ishimori) won the titles in their first match as a team. That was about three months ago, when they defeated the truest tag team in the Junior Division, SHO and YOH, collectively known as Roppongi 3K. Before them, the champions were the thrown together LIJ team of BUSHI and Shingo Takagi. Tagaki, by the way, is no longer a Junior, which means LIJ no longer has a tag team in the Junior Division. BUSHI is sort of an odd-man-out in LIJ, as the only Junior Heavyweight in the group, and no longer a top-tier singles star.
The other true tag team in the Jr Heavyweight division is the Suzuki-Gun team of Yoshinobu Kanemaru and El Desperado. They (just like SHO and YOH) always split up for the annual Best of the Super Juniors singles tournament, but they are a tag team for the other eleven months of the year. El Desperado has been out for the majority of 2019 with a broken jaw, so that's one less team. DOUKI has been Desperado's replacement, but he's just temporary.
Since mid-2016, the division has been dominated by The Young Bucks (who turned heavyweight and then left the company), Roppongi Vice (Rocky Romero & Trent Baretta, who split up when Trent became a heavyweight and also left the company), Roppongi 3K, and Kanemaru & Desperado. The last team on that list held the titles for almost a year, from March 2018 until January 2019.
A quick look at the 2018 Super Jr Tag League, the Junior equivalent of the World Tag League, shows that out of eight teams only two were full-time tag teams: Roppongi 3K and Kanemaru & Desperado. With Desperado injured and no timetable for his recovery, that team is effectively not an active pair on the roster.
What does that mean? Do the math. There is only one tag team in the Jr Heavyweight Tag division.
Merge The Titles - Create One IWGP Tag Team Championship
Interestingly enough, it seems as though New Japan may be planting the seeds to actually merge the belts. Recently, one-half of the only true Jr tag team, YOH, has gotten pins on both members of the only true Heavyweight tag team, Tanga Loa and Tama Tonga, in multi-man tag matches. The teams also squared off in a straight 2-on-2 match on the first night of the G1 Climax tour in a preliminary showcase match before the tournament matches began. The Heavyweight team, Guerillas of Destiny, won the match, but it was a good contest and not a one-sided affair.
This year's WrestleKingdom event has two nights. It lends a perfect opportunity to merge the belts and begin 2020 with a single set of Tag Team Championships. The winners of the World Tag League face the Heavyweight Tag Champions on January 4th. The winners of the Super Jr Tag League face the Jr Heavyweight Tag Champions on January 4th. The winners of those matches, the respective Heavyweight and Jr Heavyweight Tag Champs, square off on January 5th in a winner-take-all match that unifies the titles.
You still end up only having two real tag teams, but it's a start. Plus, it opens the doors for Juniors and Heavyweights to team up, or to do Junior vs. Heavyweight matches, and all of the traditional professional wrestling tag team tropes. One could go on and on about using the factions to create more full-time tag teams, but at least with only one set of titles the division won't feel like a barren wasteland.