NJPW Thread

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Meltzer:

--Regarding English commentary on New Japan World, it was addressed last night and Takaaki Kidani said they were looking into doing so. Nothing on an English language web site, but New Japan already has an English language regular site so that could be coming. There was some talk about how the Muhammad Ali vs. Antonio Inoki match is not on the site, and that's generally considered the most important match in New Japan history. There are really a ton of major matches not up, particularly a lot of great Choshu's Army stuff from 1982-83. One thing that hit me watching the 80s stuff is just how much more of a fight feel there was to the matches, how they felt less pre-planned and just how much bigger the promotion was then. But there is a ton of great stuff including the Inoki vs Billy Robinson match from 1975, Inoki & Sakaguchi vs. Lou Thesz & Karl Gotch, Inoki vs. Hulk Hogan (more than one), Inoki & Bob Backlund vs. Hogan & Stan Hansen, Inoki vs. Bruiser Brody (at least two including a 60 minute draw with no commentary), Every January 4th Tokyo Dome match ever held, plus the New Japan vs. All Japan matches from the 1990 Dome show which never aired on television when they took place and also have no commentary. Every PPV from the last couple of years is up. The bar on the bottom blows away the WWE Network and the navigation is much better (if you use Google Chrome to translate). The audio and sound quality is amazing.

--Takaaki Kidani didn't give any numbers, but he said today how surprised he was at how many people outside Japan signed up. He said nothing about domestic numbers, but said outside Japan orders blew away expectations.

This great to hear. For years we've had to hear TNA boast how they're the #2 promotion, now we actually have a legitimate one. Thanks for this bit of news.

[DXvsNWO1994]

Officially signed up!!!

Quick Question, do other people find that it works better on certain web browsers over others? I got error messages with the test video on Safari, but it worked on Firefox.

[Mike0284]

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x2bdx7 ... start=1025

[Robareid]

Go with chrome, works perfectly and built in translation.

[DBSommer]

yeah, they make it in English so I know exactly what I'm buying and for how long, and I'm there. As it is even with Chrome translating, I'm not sure of what's what on the sign up. Was doing a good job of translating matches, though.

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Is the awesome Antonio Inoki vs, the Great Antonio match included? I was a big fan of Inoki's and am happy his career can be spotlighted in this venue.

[supersonic]

Meltzer's coverage of NJPW World:

Spoiler: show

New Japan owner Takaaki Kidani, announcing his goals of surpassing WWE and UFC as the No. 1 sports entertainment group in the world, copied WWE with the announcement on 12/1 of New Japan World, a streaming video service at http://njpwworld.com that will air all of its major shows, even down to the monthly price of 999 yen.

The service launched immediately after the announcement of the press conference, and was accessible worldwide. The next day, Kidani, without giving any numbers, said they were blown away by the number of sign-ups outside of Japan.

Kidani stated the first year goal was 100,000 subscribers, figuring at the time that almost all subscriptions would come from Japan, and figured they could eventually do several hundred thousand subscribers with strong international growth, and in particular brought up eventually having English language announcers for major shows and English subtitles, similar to how the show on AXS television would be done. He’s hopeful that the service, which will include all major shows as well as the weekly one hour television show World Pro Wrestling (although it appears they will run one month behind) will help international expansion, which is the group’s current focus.

What’s notable at the press conference is that they didn’t push that for the first time ever, the company will have a regular television show in the U.S.

Kidani said that they right now are the No. 1 company in the world when it comes to the actual wrestling product, but they are behind WWE when it comes to business.

Like with WWE, they are undercutting their PPV price, and will be airing their version of WrestleMania, the Wrestle Kingdom 9 show on 1/4 at the Tokyo Dome, with a two-hour pre-game show and four hour main show, on New Japan World, both live and with archives put up immediately after the show.

The service is priced at essentially the same price as the WWE Network and UFC network are for monthly subscriptions. Unlike both, they are including all of their up-to-date content with the exception of the one hour television show, on the service. In that sense, it is like UFC’s Latin America channel. Also different from the WWE service, this is no 24 hour live programming, and also different from both, the library is only New Japan content as opposed to purchased rights for footage from other companies. Also, unlike UFC, there is no price break for ordering multiple months, at least at first. Because the yen has fallen against the American dollar of late, the price at press time was $8.42 U.S., $9.54 Canadian and 5.36 British pounds, per month.

This undercuts Jeff Jarrett’s English language produced PPVs on television throughout North America and on the Flipps App on the Internet worldwide outside of Japan, which was charging $34.95 for the show alone. Last year’s Tokyo Dome was 3500 yen on either PPV or iPPV in Japan, and $35 for iPPV in the U.S. through Ustream. Essentially, like WWE has done with its PPV business, New Japan is killing its two-year-old iPPV business.

In this U.S., the mentality has been that it’s easier to get people to order a PPV on television as opposed to through a streaming service, although WWE may have sped up the curve on changing that one. ROH was doing maybe 2,000 iPPV buys for big shows, and did six times that on traditional PPV with a weaker show, its first time out of the blocks. However, WWE moving from PPV to the network saw regular PPV drop down to 21,000 buys in North America for Hell in a Cell, and that includes Canada, where the WWE is theoretically not even available to be ordered in 80 percent of the homes, and it’s a scaled down version.

But ultimately, the regular television PPV for New Japan is likely to have a short run. For the 1/4 show, while the super hardcores in the U.S. and Canada will order the network, a large part of the television audience won’t likely even know there is a New Japan World service, and for most, the Japanese commentary is a deal breaker and Jim Ross is a positive. But in the long run, once New Japan World starts broadcasting in English, people will learn to stream it for the lower price, provided there are no technical issues like what badly damaged ROH for years. The idea of Jarrett being able to build a PPV franchise with New Japan, which was a longshot but not an impossibility, via the traditional PPV route, seems far more than a longshot today.

A big difference is that while WWE takes in the lion’s share of its $9.99 per month, so there was some argument for doing it the way they did, New Japan and TV-Asahi are equal partners in this venture, since TV-Asahi owns the broadcast rights to the library. So they go from getting 50% of the Niconico higher priced sales from iPPVs to 50% of a much lower price point. Plus, for this year, the plans of doing doubles, which is two straight nights of PPV quality shows, means fans get both shows for the low price instead of having to order two shows individually. A usual New Japan PPV would be 2000 yen, so if there’s a double, like in February, it goes from 4000 yen for someone wanting both shows, to 999 yen, and you throw in probably three or more house shows during that month as well. It’s a super deal for the hardcore fan. The difference is, because of the television situation, New Japan is carried by the hardcore fan base. WWE is not, and the idea of the network was that the increase in casual fan buys by giving them far more content at a lower price makes up for getting far less money from the most ardent fan who buys everything. For New Japan, it’s far more of a risk. In addition, WWE, being an American product, has been able to provably be successful exporting their product, while New Japan has never been able to do so.

For example, the service would also enable subscribers to stream the entire G-1 Climax series in August for 999 yen per month. In 2013, to stream G-1 it cost $150 and in 2014, it cost $110 if ordered in advance and $160 if ordered the days before the first show. They also talked about how next year they were looking at doing every show of the tag team tournament airing live.

Besides doing four live events in December and five in January, they also have archival footage of some of the most important historical matches in New Japan history, dating back to 1972.

The first major event that will air is the finals of the tag team tournament from Nagoya on 12/7. Perhaps because of existing deals, this show will not air live, but looks to air on an eight-hour tape delay, at 10 a.m. Eastern time and 7 a.m. Pacific time.

The other shows airing in December are a 12/15 hour show from Koga (5 a.m. Eastern time), and the 12/19 and 12/20 shows at Korakuen Hall (both starting at 4:30 a.m.). Lineups haven’t been announced, but by tradition, the year-end Korakuen Hall shows usually have great main events. Last year they put the Tokyo Dome two main event matches together in a tag match.

The January lineup will be open with a 1/3 festival at Differ Ariake which airs in the U.S. on Jan. 2 at 10 p.m. Eastern time. I’m not sure if that will be matches with undercard guys or a fan fest.

The Tokyo Dome live broadcast will have a two-hour live pre-show at Noon Eastern on 1/3.

The Tokyo Dome show itself is likely to start at 1:45 a.m. Eastern time with one match, probably a multiple person match just to get people spots on the card, before the introduction of the main card at 2 a.m.

They will also air the “Raw after WrestleMania” show on 1/5 at Korakuen Hall, which starts at 4:30 a.m. Eastern time on Monday, the two major Fantastica Mania shows on 1/18 and 1/19 from Korakuen Hall, also with a 4:30 a.m. start time, plus the opening of the next tour, which will be 1/30 in Tokorozawa at 5 a.m., which starts the build for the two major New Beginnings shows in February.

Going forward, all Korakuen Hall shows are expected to be streamed live.

In Japan, most of these shows either aired as PPVs and iPPVs or they were live on Samurai! TV. It’s not clear what that means for the relationship with Samurai! TV. What is known is that when local media tried to contact services that worked with New Japan, Samurai! TV, Gaora TV, G+ (all sports channels that rely on a lot of pro wrestling programming, all would be very minor channels by U.S. standards) and several local stations that air New Japan declined to comment.

The network also includes all the matches from the 67 commercially released Best of New Japan DVDs, featuring many of the biggest matches in company history, dating back to 1972. There are also documentaries that are to be added in time, including the 2014 G-1 Climax documentary on the tournament that aired in Japanese theaters. There is also every episode of the one hour World Pro Wrestling show from January 31, 2013 until the first week of November.

It also has every 1/4 show at the Tokyo Dome in its entirety from 1992 to 2014, as well as most of the other Tokyo Dome shows, as well as a complete collection of the major PPV shows starting with the 2011 Tokyo Dome show. Not all G-1 shows from the last four years are up, because some shows are owned by television stations other than TV-Asahi.

In comparison to WWE and UFC, there are positives and negatives. The positive is on day one, this service worked far better than WWE, which was filled with technical issues at launch. The navigation is far superior to the other two, with searches on the front page with the names of every wrestler with a match, and you can search based on wrestler name, based on year, based on arena, based on television announcer and based on championship belt of tournament.

For those who don’t know Japanese, it’s best used in Google chrome with translations, even though some of the names are screwy. Without the translations, it would be almost impossible to navigate for someone who doesn’t read Japanese. However, it is inevitable an English version of the New Japan World web site is forthcoming and probably very soon. Riki Choshu is Choshu Force, Dynamite Kid is Thomas Billington (his real name), Jushin Liger is Beast God Thunder Liger, Vader is Big Bang Vader, Manabu Nakanishi is The Spiral Nakanishi, Shinsuke Nakamura is Eup True, Yuji Nagata is Hiroshi Nagata, Alex Shelley is Patrick Martin (his real name), Doc Gallows is Doc Gyarozu, Karl Anderson is Machine Gun Carl Anderson and Bad Luck Fale is Bad Rack Whare. But most everyone else is their usual ring name.

The negative is that WWE opened with 1,500 hours and now has more than 2,600 hours, and UFC has now increased its Fight Pass to 6,000 hours of footage. WWE has matches from numerous promotions, well in excess of 100,000 hours, but only a small percentage is up. UFC has virtually the complete libraries of UFC, Pride, Strikeforce, Elite XC, WEC, WFA, Invicta and other promotions, with almost all of what it has up. New Japan World only has New Japan, and has closer to around 350 hours of footage, nowhere close to its total library, but the quality, as far as main events and big names in the footage, is strong because everything before 2011 is either Tokyo Dome shows or either big name matches or significant historical matches.

The archives include most of the biggest matches in company history, but there are plenty missing. For example, the biggest match in New Japan history, Antonio Inoki vs. Muhammad Ali, isn’t there. However, Inoki’s mixed matches with Monster Man Eddie Everett, bodybuilder Mike Dayton, boxer Chuck Wepner and judo gold medalist Willem Ruska are there. At the press conference, they noted the Antonio Inoki & Seiji Sakaguchi vs. Lou Thesz & Karl Gotch match is up. Legendary matches like Andre the Giant vs. Stan Hansen, Inoki vs. Billy Robinson, Inoki vs. Hulk Hogan, Kensuke Sasaki vs. Toshiaki Kawada, Naoya Ogawa vs. Shinya Hashimoto and Keiji Muto vs. Nobuhiko Takada are all there.

The forwarding and reversing, at least on my computer, is the best of the three. WWE’s tool bar on the bottom is poor, and at times a disaster, although apparently an improvement is forthcoming. UFC’s works fine, but often there are issues in going away from full screen. The video and audio quality is excellent. From my experience thus far, the buffering has been non-existent, unlike WWE, which has constant issues and UFC, which has occasional ones, but that still has to be tested with a major live event.

The move is a big risk. Traditional televised PPV shows are not big in Japan for a number of reasons. Unlike in the U.S., where fans of wrestling were used to paying for tickets for major shows, and then the next generation was the big shows on PPV; while the boxing culture was closed-circuit tickets for the big fight and later PPV; the Japanese culture has always been about the biggest matches being available on free television.

While PPV did very well for Pride a decade ago, and the early New Japan PPV shows when it was first introduced also did well, it has lost popularity over time. Only a small percentage of the Japanese homes had the necessary equipment to even order PPVs. IPPV had pretty much rendered traditional PPV useless as last year’s Tokyo Dome show only did 7,000 buys in Japan.

However, for the new generation, the iPPV concept, which started in late 2012, was a big hit, peaking with more than 100,000 orders of the last two Tokyo Dome shows. Like with WrestleMania and WWE, the company is undercutting the price and thus, the Dome show almost surely will gross significantly less money this year. Kidani is a big admirer of Vince McMahon as a businessman, and the mentality here may have been as simple as, well, this is what WWE does and they are the world leader, not realizing what a disaster, at least short-term, the WWE Network has been. And perhaps he sees it that WWE will turn it into a success and long-term is the game. The problem from New Japan is they have huge long-term issues because of the age of the roster and having not developed marketable new top talent in years.

The company is planning on cracking down on its content being uploaded to the Daily Motion web site, which is where the majority of international New Japan fans follow the shows. At press time, a ton of New Japan content was still up.

The plan is also for the service to be available soon on Smart TV, PS 3, PS 4, Xbox One, and Apple TV.

[OhioROHFan]

It gets on Roku and I'm sold. It's that simple. I don't need english commentary but english listings and dates, I'm good.

TAKE MY MONEY!!!

[cviens]

Officially signed up!!!

Quick Question, do other people find that it works better on certain web browsers over others? I got error messages with the test video on Safari, but it worked on Firefox.

I have had no issues with Chrome and the built in translation helps with finding what I am looking for. It works great on my Android phone as well. Chrome is my browser so again, the translation helps, but on Android devices you will have to download the NJPW World Player on the Play Store.

[cviens]

Apologies for the double post, but the full Wrestle Kingdom card was released today.

New Japan Pro Wrestling “Buddy Fight presents WRESTLE KINGDOM 9 in Tokyo Dome”, 1/4/2014 [Sun] 16:00 @ Tokyo Dome in Tokyo, Japan

(0) Battle Royal ~ New Japan Rumble: (competitors to be announced during match)
~ Rules: Time difference with 1 minute intervals, over the top rope, competitors will be announced when their theme song plays.

(1) IWGP Junior Tag Championship 4WAY Match: [39th Champions] “reDragon” Kyle O’Reilly & Bobby Fish vs. [Challengers] “Time Splitters” KUSHIDA & Alex Shelley vs. [Challengers] “Forever Hooligans” Rocky Romero & Alex Koslov vs. [Challengers] “Young Bucks” Matt & Nick Jackson
~ 1st title defense.

(2) Special 6 Man Tag Match: Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Satoshi Kojima & Tomoaki Honma vs. Jeff Jarrett, Bad Luck Fale & Yujiro Takahashi

(3) Toru Yano & (to be announced) vs. (To be announced Suzuki-gun Team)

(4) Special Single Match ~ Complete Conclusion Rules: Kazushi Sakuraba [FREE] vs. Minoru Suzuki [Pancrase MISSION]
~ No pin fall. Only KO, TKO, submission, or referee can stop the match.

(5) NEVER Openweight Championship Match: [5th Champion] Tomohiro Ishii vs. [Challenger] Togi Makabe
~ 2nd title defense.

(6) IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship Match: [69th Champion] Ryusuke Taguchi vs. [Challenger] Kenny Omega
~ 3rd title defense.

(7) IWGP Tag Championship Match: [64th Champions] Karl Anderson & Doc Gallows vs. [Challengers / WTL 2014 Winners] Hirooki Goto & Katsuyori Shibata
~ 7th title defense.

(8) Tetsuya Naito vs. AJ Styles

(9) IWGP Intercontinental Championship Match: [10th Champion] Shinsuke Nakamura vs. [Challenger] Kota Ibushi
~ 2nd title defense.

(10) IWGP Heavyweight Championship Match: [61st Champion] Hiroshi Tanahashi vs. [Challenger / G1 CLIMAX 24 Winner] Kazuchika Okada
~ 1st title defense.

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

Dang, eleven matches! I'm guessing at least the Battle Royale will be dark?
I'm really excited for matches 5-10! First half of the card doesn't do much for me other than the 4-way tag.

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

I watched the 30 minute promo put out by Global Force and I'm excited. I kind of dig watching the matches with Japanese commentary even though I don't know a lick of the language. Jim Ross calling the matches has put it over the top for me. Ross seems to have tunnel vision on putting forth the best color commentary he's ever done in his entire life. He seems to be really immersing himself into New Japan's wrestlers and angles. I can't remember the last time I've been this excited about a wrestling show.

[Robareid]

Yep, Royal Rumble is on the pre-show.

[DXvsNWO1994]

So does the winner of the Rumble Match get some type of award or prize? A future title shot perhaps?

[Robareid]

If so, I'd be all over a Nagata win. Him against Okada for the IWGP title at a Korakuen would be off the fucking chain.

[supersonic]

Meltzer:

--Apparently Matt Striker will co-host the Tokyo Dome PPV with Jim Ross. That has not been confirmed, but it did come from one person close to the negotiations and situation, and the person I expected to get it told me he was told on Saturday that he was told he was out of the running.

--There has been a change in one of the Dome matches. What was formerly a tag match with Toru Yano against Suzuki-gun has turned into an eight-man. The Suzuki-gun team with Davey Boy Smith Jr. & Lance Archer & Takashi Iizuka & Shelton Benjamin. Yano will have three mystery partners. This could be where Yuji Nagata & Manabu Nakanishi & Jushin Liger get on the show, or it could be where big name outsiders get on.

--The first New Japan World live house show aired earlier today. This was an interesting production. It was a two camera shoot from a house show with no commentary at all. They turned the crowd noise off during the music for the people who they don't have musical rights to (on the big shows they have a secondary big show entrance music for the guys, usually underneath guys, who they don't use Japanese music for). The show was okay, but the stream quality was perfect. Those who watched both said the stream was better than TLC. Show itself was said to be average, but nothing must see or anything. It felt like it was more of a test doing a live event. They've got two Korakuen Hall shows this coming weekend.

[supersonic]

Handy guide for NJPW World users - http://meltzerstarratingsv2.blogspot.co ... tings.html

[DXvsNWO1994]

About time we got a clear version of this...

[supersonic]

Meltzer:

As of about a week ago, the advance for the Tokyo Dome was 50% ahead of the same period last year, and the most tickets sold for a New Japan Dome show this far in advance since the All Japan vs. New Japan Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kensuke Sasaki feud, and that was one super hot program at the time, far bigger than what they’ve got now Given they sold 35,000 tickets last year, it looks like they will be coming close to the elusive sellout. The last pro wrestling sellout of the Tokyo Dome was the 2005 NOAH show with the Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kawada and Kenta Kobashi vs. Sasaki double main event. The last New Japan sellout was 2002 with the Yuji Nagata vs. Jun Akiyama main event. The last time a pure New Japan main event sold out the Dome was 1999 for Keiji Muto vs. Don Frye, and even that show had significant paper to sell the place out.

[Mr. Mojo Risin]

Meltzer:

As of about a week ago, the advance for the Tokyo Dome was 50% ahead of the same period last year, and the most tickets sold for a New Japan Dome show this far in advance since the All Japan vs. New Japan Toshiaki Kawada vs. Kensuke Sasaki feud, and that was one super hot program at the time, far bigger than what they’ve got now Given they sold 35,000 tickets last year, it looks like they will be coming close to the elusive sellout. The last pro wrestling sellout of the Tokyo Dome was the 2005 NOAH show with the Mitsuharu Misawa vs. Kawada and Kenta Kobashi vs. Sasaki double main event. The last New Japan sellout was 2002 with the Yuji Nagata vs. Jun Akiyama main event. The last time a pure New Japan main event sold out the Dome was 1999 for Keiji Muto vs. Don Frye, and even that show had significant paper to sell the place out.

New Japan should be applauded for how much momentum they've gotten. The attention they've been getting outside of Japan is great news. Ah, to dream for an entire New Japan show/tour in the U.S.