Feel like Khan's just playing devil's advocate here, but you gotta just be daft if you think this was even remotely the right way to go about booking this G-1. The only real purpose this Takeshita win serves is to add significant juice to Takeshita vs Okada, which has been looming for quite some time now and inherently does not help NJPW in the long run.
Also to ask for a source for the fans cheering for EVIL over Take during the final, but hitting the classic HoT's good for business when the actual anecdotal evidence of New Japan's attendance being down tremendously is some real locked in stuff. (I know this obviously is more due to the fact that NJPW has lost Naito and Okada over the past 2 years; but if HoT was so great for business then they should fill in those shoes and draw crowds)
The argument isn't even about EVIL tho really, I'll say this.... what a final by him and Take, not even joking that was probably EVIL's best singles match since his turn in 2020.
New Japan's boom period started because New Japan took a chance on a returning Okada from excursion, who funny enough had not even earned that spot comparative to what Tsuji, Uemura, and Shota have done since returning from excursion. Yet look at the paid dividends that leap of faith was for New Japan and how well it turned out. And why I say Okada didn't earn it, is that Tsuji, Uemura, Shota, and Ren have all main evented multiple times for big New Japan shows and all have knocked it out of the park one way or another. You can absolutely still have HoT and EVIL run rampant in New Japan while also committing to the younger guys, these two things are not mutually exclusive and in fact I agree with Khan in the sense that you can have this big bad org only for one of the Reiwa's to finally vanquish that threat. But guess what happened, Takeshita was the one to do it lol.
NJPW doing the Naito holding pattern on the Reiwas is just not going to pan out well in the long run. Further more the IWGP world belt has been booked like utter shit since it's inception and genuinely has the imbalance of a fucking television championship. Literally the only significantly lengthy run I can think of off hand was Sanadas and um yea that sucked.
I can have this feeling towards these booking decisions, while also recognizing that that was a killer g-1 final lol.
