On 1/4, in what is in some ways the second biggest pro wrestling live event annually, New Japan Pro Wrestling’s tradition becomes a quarter of a century old.
New Japan booked the first pro wrestling event at the Tokyo Dome on April 24, 1989. The show was built around the first real Russian athletes competing as professionals. The story got worldwide attention. The show itself was a mixture of a number of stories. A number of decorated Russian wrestlers and judokas were on the show, although the big ones hoped for, David Gobejishvili, who had won the gold medal the year before as a super heavyweight in freestyle wrestling in Seoul, South Korea, and Greco-Roman champion Alexander “the Experiment” Karelin, were not part of the crew.
Ironically, both did do pro wrestling in Japan later, Gobejishvili losing to Minoru Suzuki on a 1992 show at the Tokyo Dome for the Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi promotion, and Karelin beating Akira Maeda in a 1999 show for RINGS.
The first show was headlined by Antonio Inoki, the era’s biggest superstar, facing Shota Chochishvili, who captured the gold medal at 209 pounds in judo in 1972 and bronze in the open division in 1976, for Inoki’s world martial arts championship. Dating back to 1976 and his win over 1972 Olympic super heavyweight judo gold medalist Willem Ruska, Inoki had done worked matches against stars from a number of fighting disciplines, always winning, making him a superhero. He also did one or two shoot matches during that period, most notable being the 1976 fight with Muhammad Ali. Many consider these fights the birth of MMA in Japan. The reality is they were all pro wrestling matches, except the Ali fight, which was supposed to be a pro wrestling match, but turned into a weird shoot to save the show because Ali at the last minute refused to do the job, and the whole idea of the fight was to get Inoki over, so he wasn’t going to lose either.
Chochishvili won the match with a series of uranages leaving a shocked audience as Inoki was unable to continue. That match created the uranage as a big finisher in Japan, best remembered by Hiroshi Hase, and a trademark move in the U.S. years later.
When the night was over, Lou Thesz, one of Inoki’s idols, came up to him, after the show drew 43,800 fans and Inoki put somebody over clean in the main event and said, “Antonio, tonight you became a businessman.”
In actuality, Inoki’s pick to be the guy he would lose his world martial arts title that he’d held for 13 years to was a bad one. The match didn’t get over. Inoki beat him back for the title a month later in Osaka. Rather than make a new superstar foreigner, Chochishvili only had one more pro wrestling match, on a New Year’s Eve show at the end of 1989 in Moscow, where 15,000 fans saw him team with Inoki to beat the team of an American and Japanese wrestling Olympian, Brad Rheingans & Masa Saito.
But the show had a lot of other elements to it. Salman Hashimikov, another Russian who had won world championships in freestyle wrestling in 1979, 1981, 1982 and 1983, debuted and beat Bam Bam Bigelow, one of the company’s top foreign stars. Hashimikov one month later defeated Big Van Vader to win the IWGP title and remains one of the few foreigners ever to hold that title. Another Russian, Victor Zangiev, who ended up as the most impressive of the group, became the prototype of a legendary character, Zangief, in the Street Fighter video game series.
Keiichi Yamada, a 5-foot-4 ½ bodybuilder type who emulated the Dynamite Kid, was given a cartoon costume to become the next Tiger Mask, called Jushin “Thunder” Liger. One can make a strong case, given his longevity, that Liger, who quickly became one of the world’s elite wrestlers, ended up being the greatest junior heavyweight in pro wrestling history. Thesz, as an ode to the past, was the referee for an IWGP tag team title match. Vader won a one-night tournament to capture the IWGP heavyweight title. And there was even a match with Benny “the Jet” Urquidez, a kickboxing legend of the 70s.
New Japan promoted annually at the Dome from that point on, but on no specific day. On January 4, 1992, a show called “Super Warriors in Tokyo Dome,” drew 50,000 fans paying $3,700,000, the latter figure breaking the all-time gate record at the time set by the Hulk Hogan vs. Ultimate Warrior match at Sky Dome in Toronto.
It was a loaded show, which was broadcast on PPV, on a tape delay, into the U.S. by WCW, which was New Japan’s business partner at the time. Riki Choshu pinned Tatsumi Fujinami to win the IWGP title in the main event, while Lex Luger pinned Masahiro Chono to retain the WCW title, Sting & Great Muta beat Rick & Scott Steiner and Inoki beat Hase.
Very quickly, January 4th became “Wrestling Day” in Japan. The week after New Year’s was always big. Culturally, New Year’s in Japan is bigger than Christmas when it comes to presents, so all the promotions used to load up on big shows that week long before it became the Dome tradition.
While in the promotion’s heyday, they sometimes had as many as three Tokyo Dome shows in a year, the 1/4 show was always the primary show, and for years after New Japan had fallen from its peak, the 1/4 show continued to either sell out, or come close to it.
The decline of New Japan can probably be traced to 1999 and 2000, coinciding with the rise of Pride. The key is that when Choshu had his retirement show on January 4, 1998, drawing a sellout of 55,000 fans, he made it clear that it was his real retirement, although it probably never was going to be given that isn’t now 18 years later, and he’s 64, and still wrestling. But when he retired, he said he would only come back if business got bad and it was necessary. While Choshu did a gimmick coming out of retirement match with Atsushi Onita in 2000, he came back on the January 4, 2001 show at the Tokyo Dome, which was a public key that things weren’t doing well.
It’s notable that from the 1992 show through the 2002 show, only one event, the 1994 show, failed to sell out, but it was only a few thousand shy, so it was like several of the WrestleManias in recent years. And that had a loaded lineup, headlined by Inoki vs. Genichiro Tenryu in a battle of legends, plus Hashimoto vs. Chono, Choshu vs. Yoshiaki Fujiwara (an 80s feud revisited), Hulk Hogan vs. Fujinami, the Steiner Brothers vs. Keiji Muto & Hase, The Hell Raisers (Road Warrior Hawk & Kensuke Sasaki as Power Warrior) vs. The Jurassic Powers (Scott Norton & Hercules Hernandez) and Liger vs. Tiger Mask (this time played by Koji Kanemoto).
Other years, the company was on fire. In 1996, they had just come off an October Muto vs. Nobuhiko Takada match which was the biggest match in company history, as New Japan’s champion (Muto) faced the top star of the rival UWFI, setting the pro wrestling record at the time with a $6.1 million gate. The rematch, where Takada won the IWGP title (setting up a third Dome sellout in April with Hashimoto going after the title) was also an easy sellout with a Dome show that only included one American, Big Van Vader, who lost to Inoki in what was Inoki’s last true classic match.
The show continued to sell out the next few years simply based on it being the biggest show of the year, with the big IWGP title match of the year, Hashimoto vs. Choshu in 1997, Sasaki vs. Muto in 1998, Muto vs. Norton in 1999 and Sasaki vs. Tenryu in 2000.
In 2001, it was a big one. Pro Wrestling NOAH had formed in 2000, with almost every star from All Japan leaving. Toshiaki Kawada was the only All Japan star who stayed, and to stay in business, Motoko Baba went to New Japan for help, creating a joint promotional rivalry that boosted business for both sides. On October 9, 2000, a special Dome show was booked where Kawada beat IWGP champion Sasaki. In losing to an outsider, Sasaki vacated his title.
So the Dome show was built around a tournament with Sasaki, Satoshi Kojima, Yuji Nagata, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Chono and Kawada, where Sasaki (who had earlier beaten Kojima and Chono) defeated Kawada in the finals, a result that could be very much questioned.
The success of the Dome show has had its ups and downs, largely based on the health of the company. Until the 2002 show, where a dream match of Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Chono going to a 30:00 draw drew 47,000 fans, every show was either sold out or almost packed. But things got bad from there, with papered crowds that sometimes only did 10,000 paid. One year, things got so bad that fans protested by throwing away their papered tickets and not coming.
It’s only in recent years that there has been a turnaround, notably when the 2013 show, headlined by IWGP champion Hiroshi Tanahashi and top rival Kazuchika Okada, drew 29,000 fans.
Little has been said about the advance for this year’s show. Last year at this time there was talk that with a little luck, they were going to nearly fill the building for the first time in 13 years. They didn’t have the luck, although Wrestle Kingdom 9 drew 36,000 fans and the best gate since that period, featuring the same main event, where Tanahashi once again retained the IWGP title over Okada.
This year, there has just been vague words that sales are good and that the floor (7,000 seats) sold out quickly. Aside from the expensive tickets, only one other price range, the $47 tickets, had sold out as of a week ago.
Things were going down in New Japan by 2002. But the Dome staved off the problems by booking the Misawa vs. Chono match and getting one more nearly full house. An interesting generational battle was third from the top, as the Steiners, top foreign stars from a decade earlier, faced Sasaki and a partner in his first important Dome match, Hiroshi Tanahashi, who would be the guy to lead the revival a decade later, with Joanie Laurer (Chyna) as referee.
By 2003, they went with IWGP champion Nagata against Josh Barnett on top. Barnett had been the UFC heavyweight champion, beating Randy Couture the previous year, but was stripped of his title for testing positive for steroids and then left the promotion after a financial dispute. A huge fan of Japanese wrestling and culture growing up, Barnett was willing to lose in exchange for being taught pro wrestling. By 2004, even with a 17-match show, Bob Sapp in his heyday and the retirement of Fujinami (who is also still wrestling now, more than a decade later), it was the heavy papering period, which continued for years.
While the 2005 show is listed as drawing 46,000 fans, headlined by a main event of young stars, Tanahashi losing to Shinsuke Nakamura, the reality was nowhere close and for the next several years the real paid attendance was in the 10,000 to 12,000 range. By 2007, the first show called “Wrestle Kingdom,” where Muto & Chono were brought back as a tag team to beat Kojima & Tenzan, while Tanahashi beat All Japan’s Taiyo Kea, things were so bad that they were considering dropping the Dome show from the schedule.
Wrestle Kingdom III, where Tanahashi regained the IWGP title from “outsider” Muto of All Japan, and Nakamura & Hirooki Goto beat Misawa & Takashi Sugiura, got the crowd up to 27,500. But in 2010, a double main event with Nakamura keeping the IWGP title over Yoshihiro Takayama and Sugiura keeping the GHC title over Goto, plus bringing in Terry Funk and Abdullah the Butcher, All Japan legends of the 70s and 80s, saw the crowd fall to 20,000.
The next year it was down to 18,000 with Tanahashi beating “outsider” Kojima to win back the IWGP title, and plenty of outsiders from NOAH (Go Shiozaki, Takashi Sugiura), Zero-One (Masato Tanaka), TNA (Jeff Hardy, Rob Van Dam, James Storm and Bobby Roode) and CMLL (La Sombra, Mascara Dorada and Hector Garza). That show also featured a singles match where Prince Devitt (Finn Balor) regained his IWGP jr. title over Ibushi.
A Tanahashi vs. Suzuki IWGP title match in 2012 got the crowd to 23,000, and it started a year where business doubled overall.
By 2013, an absolutely incredible show featuring the first Tanahashi vs. Okada match, an incredible Nakamura vs. Sakuraba match, plus Makabe vs. Shibata, Tenzan & Kojima vs. Muto & Shinjiro Otani (former New Japan star who was a top star in Zero-One), Devitt vs. Low Ki vs. Ibushi for the jr. title, Nagata vs. Suzuki and even an opener where Sapp and Akebono were on opposite sides of an eight-man did 29,000. The last two years have gotten the crowds up to 35,000 and 36,000.
Last year’s show also had the most worldwide interest perhaps ever, but certainly since the glory days of the promotion, due to it airing live on PPV in North America in a partnership with Jeff Jarrett’s Global Force Wrestling. The show, heavily pushed as having the best action you would see all year, and with the return of Jim Ross as the announcer, did 15,000 buys on North American PPV, a number that beat every ROH and TNA show. And while the circumstances are very different given the streaming network, it wasn’t that far off several WWE shows. That’s with the show being available for streaming off the New Japan World site, although unlike with WWE, that wasn’t much of a factor as there were probably only 2,000 to 3,000 New Japan World subscribers outside of Japan by that time.
Even with that, there is no PPV for the show this year. In some ways it would be more difficult, given the show is late Sunday night/Monday morning (3 a.m. Eastern; midnight Pacific, likely for close to five hours is the listed start time but it will probably start 45 minutes earlier with the Rumble match as the equivalent of the pre-show match) instead of Saturday night/Sunday morning, which also allowed for a prime time Sunday night replay in the traditional wrestling time slot. But last year was also hampered. Many companies didn’t air it live, instead opting to replay the much bigger UFC event. Others didn’t air the replay on Sunday night, when the expectation was you’d get the bulk of the viewers.
On the flip side, New Japan is significantly more popular in the U.S. than a year ago due to World Pro Wrestling Returns airing on Friday nights on AXS, as well as several appearances of New Japan stars on ROH programming. A promotional partnership with ROH pushing the show on its TV’s after Final Battle in exchange for being partners, and working out a deal with AXS for promotion, would have led to more interest, probably enough to offset the less fortunate time slot. Jim Ross had also made it clear he was more than up to do it again.
