The 10 Longest Reigning IWGP Intercontinental Champions
The IWGP Intercontinental Championship is New Japan Pro Wrestling's secondary title, established in 2011 and largely defended as a strictly midcard title. However, after a couple years, some of the promotion’s stars began competing for the title, elevating its status so far that sometimes the title is defended in NJPW main events.
So far, there have only been 24 champions to hold the title, and none of the champs have had a reign less than 40 days. The IC strap has been held by most of NJPW’s top talent, so looking at the longest reigning IWGP Intercontinental Champions will reveal some of the best wrestlers in the world.
10 Tetsuya Naito (130+ Days)
The big story of 2020’s two-day Wrestle Kingdom 14 was the Double Gold Dash, where both the IWGP Heavy and Intercontinental belts would be defended on Night 1 of the show, with the ensuing champs going head to head in a winner-take-all match on Night 2. That final match ended up being Tetsuya Naito vs. Kazuchika Okada, a culmination of like six years of storytelling involving Naito striving for a WK main event victory, and Naito has held the title since. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Naito has only been able to defend the title once in his reign, against KENTA in February 2020.
9 Hirooki Goto (147 Days)
The always-underrated samurai dad Hirooki Goto is a two-time IWGP Intercontinental Champion, and this 147-day reign is his second title run, which he won from Shinsuke Nakamura at Wrestling Dontaku in 2015. Unfortunately, Goto has the misfortune of being sandwiched between Nakamura IC title runs, so he ends up getting overshadowed by the King of Strong Style. To make matters worse, Goto’s only successful title defense in this reign was also against Nakamura, so he didn’t have much opportunity to really do much with the title this time.
8 MVP (148 Days)
Montell Vontavious Porter — undervalued WWE guy and head of the Beat Down Clan — has the distinction of being the first IWGP Intercontinental Champ, having beaten Toru Yano in a tournament final in some 2011 USA shows co-promoted with Jersey All Pro Wrestling. Fun fact: MVP’s race to the top of the bracket had him beating both Kazuchika Okada and Tetsuya Naito.
MVP’s five-month reign would prove to be rather unspectacular, with a couple successful defenses against Toru Yano before Masato Tanaka finally dethroned him.
7 Hiroki Goto (161 Days)
Hiroki Goto is the third ever IWGP Intercontinental Champion, having won it from Masato Tanaka at 2012’s New Beginning. This first IC Title run is longer and more successful than first one, lasting about five months as he was able to defend the title against Yujiro Takahashi and Tomohiro Ishii. Goto ended up losing the title at July’s Kizuna Road to his CHAOS stablemate Shinsuke Nakamura, in what would be Nak’s landmark first title reign.
6 Shinsuke Nakamura (168 Days)
If there’s anyone responsible for elevating the IWGP Intercontinental Championship to main event status, it’s Shinsuke Nakamura, a former three-time IWGP Champ who’d reinvented himself as the cool and weird King of Strong Style. This is the title run where he won the strap back from La Sombra and got into a feud with Tanahashi that resulted in fans voting to put their title match at the top of the Wrestle Kingdom 8 card, which in turn sparked Tetsuya Naito’s aforementioned six-year quest for a main event victory.
5 Chris Jericho (209 Days)
At 2018’s New Years Dash!!, Chris Jericho attacked Tetsuya Naito, kicking off a year-long feud that would result in Jericho winning the title at Dominion half a year later. His first defense of the title would come five months later, as he’d tap out Evil with the Liontamer but hold it for two long, causing Evil’s LIJ buddy Naito to come out and successfully challenge for his old title at Wrestle Kingdom 13. Not a “fighting champion” kind of title reign, but a really long one where a heel held the title hostage from the hero.
4 Shinsuke Nakamura (224 Days)
Shinsuke Nakamura lost his IC strap to Bad Luck Fale in 2014, but ended up winning it right back on Fale’s first defense for a nice, lengthy reign as champ where he ran through Katsuyori Shibata and Yuji Nagata before losing the title to Hiroki Goto.
Nak’s best match during this era, however, was his 2015 Wrestle Kingdom 9 title defense against Kota Ibushi, recently moved up from the Junior Heavyweight division. It’s a brutal match as Ibushi goes toe-to-toe with one of his idols, and one of Nakamura’s best efforts before signing with WWE the following year.
3 Hiroshi Tanahashi (230 Days)
The Ace of NJPW’s first IC Title reign in 2014 (92 days) mostly had Tanahashi feuding with Shinsuke Nakamura after winning the belt from him at Wrestle Kingdom 8, but this second reign (from 2017-2018) is much longer and full of diverse title defenses. He beat Naito for the title at Dominion and ran through a host of talent that included Kota Ibushi, Zack Sabre Jr., Jay White at the Tokyo Dome, and, randomly, Billy Gunn. Tana would end up dropping the title to Minoru Suzuki, which is pretty awesome.
2 Tetsuya Naito (259 Days)
Naito may be the only other NJPW star who’s come close to defining the Intercontinental Championship, partially because of his fraught relationship with it. As established, Nakamura/Tanahashi WK8 IC title match bumped Naito’s IWGP Heavy match from the main event slot, so when he first won the title in 2016, he constantly tried to destroy the belt. He’d win it a few times over the years, but often regarded it as a curse that he could not dispel, but he also kind of wanted it?
1 Shinsuke Nakamura (313 Days)
Shinsuke Nakamura’s first IC title reign was not only his longest, but the longest in history, running nearly a year after he won it from Hiroki Goto. It was during this time that the IC title became truly international, as Nak not only defended it against Western talent like Shelton Benjamin, Lance Archery, and Davey Boy Smith Jr., but also had title bouts in the US and Mexico. In Mexico, La Sombra untreated Nakamura for a spell, but Nakamura won it back. If it weren’t for that short intermission, Shinsuke Nakamura’s longest Intercontinental Title run would have been even longer.
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