GHC Hardcore Openweight Championship

[2.0] "At this point, either have the champ take on people who know hardcore, or kill the belt. Shuji, Mack and Tanaka were great choices for the belt, but never got the time or opponents that a hardcore title mean something worth keeping around. And now the belt is on a guy who hasn't been in a hardcore or death match in nearly a decade. On top of that, because it's brand/show exclusive, he's probably not going to defend it for three months. A trinket in every possible way. I'll edit if I'm proven wrong, or when we get to the end of Monday Magic, and they give the belt to jokerfied Yoshi Tatsu. Edit (Jan. 19, 2025): Close enough, trinket status it is."

[3.0] "NOAH never really know when to let a bad thing go away, this is the prime example. They tried, it didn't catch on and never really did aside from a couple signs of life which petered out as quickly as it came around."

[6.0] "EDIT: I'm changing my stance here a bit. NOAH seems intent on rehabilitating this belt's dour image from the 15-minute Akiyama days. Ninja Mack's most recent title defense was a barn-burner 20 minute hardcore war with Alpha Wolf that was the pay off to a year-long rivalry between the two, and it was immediately followed up with a challenge by brutal Japanese legend Shuji Ishikawa. I think NOAH realizes they have something special building here in this second run, or at least I'd like to think they do. I've bumped up my score a bit here to more accurately reflect the efforts in making this belt matter. If Shuji/Mack ends up being a good program (I kind of don't care who wins between the two, at the moment--Ishikawa would be a great holder, but Mack is kind of a perfect spot-hungry Babyface for this title, and he is -wildly- over with the Japanese crowd) I think I might change my score to entirely reflect the "new era" of this belt, which is pretty positive thus far."

[3.0] "Too bad the most beautiful title design the company ever made had terrible booking with the title gimmick of 15 minute time limit match with count out leading to championship change stood very much against the name of the title and the title tho wanted to push new talents into main event stage was hampered with the title being house shows exclusive, with kenta kobashi being the final champion of the title's lineage yet has no televised match of him winning or defending the title. NJPW had similar concept when they introduced their NJPW world TV championship, yet they executed it very well. I wouldn't mind if Noah brings this title back, but I hope they don't book it terribly. I would suggest them to book like the NJPW's KOPW championship then NJPW world TV championship."

[4.0] "Very gimmicky stipulation (winning by time limit or count out was allowed, which meant short matches and a lack of pacing compared to the main events) and a mix of decent at best title defences and a lot of just uninteresting wrestling makes for a worse than average concept in general. No one gave a shit about this belt and it quickly became a big afterthought. It's supposed to give the undercard something to go for (kinda like the NEVER belt) but that never materialised."