There was a major shift in the professional wrestling industry earlier this week, as Bushiroad, the organization that was responsible for a popular trading card series before it bought New Japan Pro Wrestling from the video game company, THQ in 2012, sold its stake in the organization to Cyber Agent, the parent company of Cyber Fight, which owns Pro Wrestling NOAH, as well as DDT. The Wrestling Observer reports that Asahi TV, a longtime partner of New Japan and the owner of its historical video library, saw an increase in its minority share in the company to somewhere around a 46% interest in the promotion going forward. Considering that the structure of the New Japan streaming service is already in place, and Cyber Fight already has a stream service for it’s other pro wrestling properties, not much is expected to change as far as schedule or distribution of the product. As of right now, it looks as though Bushiroad will retain ownership of Stardom, and Cyber Fight owns Tokyo Joshi Pro, but it doesn’t seem like there will be any conflict, given the scope of those specific ventures. However, with Bushiroad selling New Japan, you have to wonder if there’s another buyer, potentially Tony Khan, for Stardom?
In truth, it’s usually not a good thing when there’s a consolidation of commodities under one banner since it would imply a monopoly, but taking into account the current circumstances of the industry on a global basis, the ability for the Japanese scene to combine its resources is probably the best case scenario for everyone involved.
While the change in ownership is a big story, the change in leadership of New Japan isn’t something completely new, and it was much more shocking when the legendary founder, Antonio Inoki sold his interest in the promotion to the previously mentioned THQ group in 2005 after his MMA experiment of a few years earlier had the Japanese league on the brink of collapse. Eventually, THQ also shutdown, but not before they sold the organization to Bushiroad. It was under their direction that the NJPW brand had its biggest resurgence of the past 25 years. Obviously, it was a matter of timing as well with the right talent booked in the right position at the right time, but it can’t be understated how important it was that Bushiroad was able to finance, as well as expand not only the product, but increase revenue streams with merchandise. The term, “generational talent” gets thrown around too often in professional wrestling, but Kazuchika Okada reaching his prime at a time when the organization had the funds to bring in more foreign talent to establish The Bullet Club was a key reason for its success. With more foreign talent and how wildly popular the NWO-type of takeover was, it put a renewed spotlight on the Japanese brand for fans outside of Japan. At the same time, native talent like Okada, Naito, and many others allowed that expanded audience to watch arguably the best in-ring product in the world at the time. With the Bushiroad money behind it, New Japan Pro Wrestling became a legitimate and viable career option for talent on an international basis to a level that it hadn’t been for years previously. The downturn in business of the Japanese scene in the early-2000s, one of the many reasons that prompted the initial sale from Inoki, took a lot of the shine away from the Japanese circuit that it had during a previous era. The Bushiroad expansion of the product is ultimately what introduced a completely new generation of international fans to New Japan Pro Wrestling. For the first time in history, a full streaming site allowed fans outside of Japan to watch live cards. Furthermore, along with the training dojo in Los Angeles, fans in the United States could order authentic New Japan merchandise without the astronomical shipping fees of years earlier.
In short, the direction under Bushiroad streamlined access to the product and ultimately made it much easier for foreign fans to follow the events, thus creating more revenue in the process.
That being said, with as much success as New Japan had over the course of a six or seven year period, there’s a reason that Bushiroad was willing to sell the organization. While I didn’t expect Bushiroad to sell the promotion, I’m not completely shocked by it either. When you look at the success that the group had with veteran wrestler, Gado as the booker and the number of talents that were spotlighted in the process, it simply wasn’t going to be sustainable. There are peaks and valleys to everything, with the goal being that the valleys can still generate good business. As we’ve seen, the launch of All Elite Wrestling, which took the core Elite group, and the subsequent signing of almost every top star in the company, was a major dent to the depth of the New Japan roster. It might sound too simplistic, but were too many guys signed away in a relatively short period of time that there wasn’t any realistic chance that NJPW could replenish the line-up fast enough for it not to take a toll on business. Along with that, and this was almost as big of an issue in terms of the company’s ability to generate revenue, the shutdown and then limited capacity of the pandemic was something that New Japan arguably didn’t truly recover from before the Cyber Fight purchase. Keep in mind, New Japan’s primary revenue streams were still the traditional live event tickets and merchandise sold in the building. There’s no doubt that their strong partnership with Asahi TV is an important part of their business model, but their television program is used to sell their live events, not targeted toward securing broadcast rights fees like we’ve seen in the modern era in America.
So, with no live events or limited capacity at venues because of the pandemic, New Japan lost a significant amount of money since they still had to pay wrestler contracts during that time. As we know, Tetsuya Naito, one of the most popular performers on the roster, left the company last year when he couldn’t agree on a new contract. His stablemates, Bushi and Hiromu Takahashi also left the organization. It was well-known that New Japan couldn’t realistically compete with Tony Khan’s money or the vast resources of the WWE so when someone was offered a deal, with a rare exception, they were going to sign the contract. But, when the Los Ingobernables De Japon exited, the impression was that New Japan just didn’t have the money to meet their demands.
As mentioned, the bottom line is, if Bushiroad thought there was another resurgence on the horizon, they wouldn’t have sold the company. That notion lets you know that there were some serious hurdles that led to the downturn in business, and there doesn’t look to be an easy solution in the near future. How Cyber Fight tackles remains to be seen. The group has the capital to make investments to strengthen the product, and both NOAH and DDT have done reasonable well for their level, but it should be noted that New Japan is a bigger scope than anything Cyber Fight has promoted in the wrestling business before. That’s not to say that the new ownership won’t be successful, but rather to point out that it’s not an automatically successful scenario either.
The Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer reported that New Japan was sold for an estimated $22.6 million for the 70% ownership that Bushiroad had as a part of its controlling interest in the promotion. That amount of cash isn’t bread crumbles, but it really puts into perspective that AEW and WWE have an exponentially bigger reach on an international basis. Of course, New Japan is tailored to its native audience, as it should be, but highlights the notion that the influence of the Japanese league is far bigger than its economic impact on the sport. Don’t get me wrong, when a performer is offered exponentially more money to sign with either AEW or WWE, it makes sense to take the deal since the entire point of the business is to make the most money possible. New Japan markets toward a smaller domestic market and thus their pay scale is lower. That’s not a knock on the organization, just to point out that capitalism will often dictate where talent goes in the modern era.
There have been different partnerships or working agreements in the past that allowed talent to work for different organizations at one time, but hopefully, everything under one banner can help make the process seamless. For example, New Japan needs depth and star power added to the roster.Naito worked for Pro Wrestling NOAH more recently so hopefully, Cyber Fight will have the ability to bring him back to New Japan. Hopefully, not much changes in the short term, as far as the transition of ownership won’t affect the stability of the organization, but at the same time, the best case scenario would be that the new leadership will have a bigger picture that they want to implement as far as goals for New Japan in the grand scheme of things.
Considering how much cash Tony Khan has thrown into the pro wrestling business the past few years, you have to wonder if Bushiroad tried to make a deal with him to buy the company? If I had to guess, I’d say that Asahi probably wouldn’t have been willing to sell their portion of the organization since it’s a longtime staple of the network. All things considered, if this purchase will further solidify New Japan, particularly through this rocky period, it was probably the best decision for the industry, because as I said, while the economic impact is smaller, the Japanese league had a major influence on the modern era of the entire business.
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Until next week
-Jim LaMotta
Email [email protected] | You can follow me on Instagram, Facebook, & Threads @jimlamotta89
