ROH/New Japan 2015 SuperShows Speculation Thread

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

Another kind of random thought I had would be to do an NJPW vs ROH show focused on the Junior Heavyweights. They don't really have anything to do during the whole month of August due to the G1, but I'm sure ROH will be running at least a couple shows.
Imagine a show centered around the likes of Liger, Omega, Taguchi, Romero,Kushida, Shelley, ACH, Fish, O'Reilly, Young Bucks, all in NJPW vs ROH matches and then some tag matches with the regular ROH heavyweights to round off the card. They could even set up a couple things that see rematches/conclusions on the Seibu Dome show. It actually sounds pretty cool to me.

[fm20000]

Del Rio vs Nakamura
Del Rio vs Okada

book it

[JigsawVs.Jason]

If the same guys are coming over I'd like to see the following for one of the big shows:

Tanahashi vs Cole - IWGP Heavyweight Championship
AJ Styles vs ciampa - ROH Championship
Okada vs Elgin
Nakamura vs Strong
reDRagon vs time splitters vs ACH & Sydal - ROH Rag Team Championship
Jay Lethal vs Rocky Romero vs Hanson vs Liger - TV Championship
Anderson & Gallows vs Addiction
Young Bucks & Kenny Omega vs Briscoes, Cedric Alexander

[tigermask7.0]

Here's just a hypothetical question:
Which would you rather see in 2015? Chicago/New York ROH vs NJPW supershows with the same amount and caliber of NJPW talent as the shows last year....or only one or two NJPW talent being brought in at a time but for a greater number of shows throughout the whole year?

Honestly I'd rather have them dotted throughout the year. Having a big NJPW vs. ROH match about once a month would be awesome.

They both have their perks. Supershows are a cooler moment overall to me, but if they could get a couple people to be semi-regular throughout the year in order to get some continuity going I would probably prefer that.
I'm thinking like when NOAH guys were on ROH shows. They weren't really ever supershows built around it, but the same guys were appearing often enough to build up some rivalries, rematches, and things like that.

would rather see new japan talent spend throughout the year

it would make roh on sbg television interesting
by having a special attraction match appear once in a while
and
it would most likely increase gate attendance at live events
either way it draws new eyes to the product
on a somewhat consistent basis

supershows are nice
but it draws otaku fanboys only once a year
and
they may not pay attention to roh after that/until the next supershow

the point of business is to create customers
special attractions throughout the year is more consistent with this goal
then the gimmick nature of a supershow

ironically
doing a television taping after the toronto supershow
is money in the bank (pun intended)

[trufreedom]

Great time to put the ROH title on AJ, than you could have the whole story of these shows be Nigel trying to get the title back from NJPW/Bullet Club.

You could have Nigel set up a bunch of challengers during the tour (assuming they're doing 4 shows), Jay Briscoe could get a rematch, Nigel could make a deal with Truth Martini to have Jay Lethal try to bring the title home, but the whole time, the one person who keeps begging Nigel to give him one of the matches is Tomasso Ciampa. But Nigel is obviously apprehensive about having the out-of-control Ciampa in that match. Eventually Ciampa does something to convince Nigel, maybe save him from a Bullet Club beatdown on the first show or something. Than Ciampa pins AJ on the last night New Japan is here, saving the ROH World Title.

[cmachine]

Anybody in Toronto going to the shows? I'd like to go but my friends are not fans of wrestling at all. Looking for a person or group to join.

[dirty]

Anybody in Toronto going to the shows? I'd like to go but my friends are not fans of wrestling at all. Looking for a person or group to join.

If you really want to go just go by yourself. None of my friends, that live in the same State anyway, are wrestling fans. I go to these ROH shows by myself and have a great time anyway. If I lived in or near Toronto I'd be going to both of these, by myself, for sure. Doesn't matter - have fun, enjoy the show.

[dhads7161]

Anybody in Toronto going to the shows? I'd like to go but my friends are not fans of wrestling at all. Looking for a person or group to join.

Got a family member who likes wrestling? Take them with you.

[AlexROH]

Big changes on the supershows this year, by Wrestling Inc:

"Right now the plan is for ROH to book only 2-3 wrestlers from New Japan Pro Wrestling for the Toronto ROH shows in May.
Originally, the plan was to bring in the 8 or more wrestlers like last year which was ROH booker Delirious (Hunter Johnston)'s intent but ROH COO Joe Koff is uneasy about spending that level of money in 2015 on New Japan talent. Last year the company barely broke even on the 2 shows. Johnston believes the partnership can be very lucrative in the long-term and has pitched airing the shows as pay-per-views to recoup the money of bringing in an elite crew like in 2014, but that would disrupt the plan to do the Best in the World June pay-per-view. Gilleland doesn't believe it's worth disrupting their PPV calendar which they are just now establishing and taking on more risk.

Johnston is still working on changing this as New Japan wants the same arrangement as last year, including a few days of training and scouting at the ROH Dojo outside of Philadelphia. Johnston also predicts the dojo will be a much bigger money making venture in 2015.

Originally, Johnston planned to do ROH vs New Japan super shows in Chicago and New York in addition to Toronto, but that changed upon Koff deciding to scale back the New Japan shows.

Koff met with New Japan officials in the fall and expressed his disappointment and confusion over New Japan partnering with Jeff Jarrett to do pay-per-view. There had been internal talk that ROH was going to extend a similar deal to New Japan but was too slow to put it together."

[Robareid]

Wrestling Inc though

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

If they have a set budget for fly-ins (which it seems like they do) I'd rather that they only bring in 2-3 people here for these VOD shows, and then use the rest of the money to get some fly-ins at Final Battle or another big PPV later on if the scheduling allows it.

[DXvsNWO1994]

Wrestling Inc though

If I recall correctly, there record on ROH stories hasn't been that good. Didn't they report on the Elgin Story a few months ago?

[BTW10]

Can we not acknowledge any reports that come from anyone other than Meltz or Mike Johnson?

[WHG]

My one recollection of Wrestling Inc's news coverage was them saying that Delirious was underwhelmed with Elgin's title reign and had discussed a 2nd title reign with Adam Cole later in the year. This was a couple weeks before ASE6. Could be a coincidence, but after he lost the belt I did think back to this story. His info always seems specific enough that he likely has some kind of source who gets inside info from Delirious, because it again is referring to something he's talking about with someone.

We'll see how it plays out, but this is consistent with Meltzer's story last week.

[Burnside]

Big changes on the supershows this year, by Wrestling Inc:

"Right now the plan is for ROH to book only 2-3 wrestlers from New Japan Pro Wrestling for the Toronto ROH shows in May.
Originally, the plan was to bring in the 8 or more wrestlers like last year which was ROH booker Delirious (Hunter Johnston)'s intent but ROH COO Joe Koff is uneasy about spending that level of money in 2015 on New Japan talent. Last year the company barely broke even on the 2 shows. Johnston believes the partnership can be very lucrative in the long-term and has pitched airing the shows as pay-per-views to recoup the money of bringing in an elite crew like in 2014, but that would disrupt the plan to do the Best in the World June pay-per-view. Gilleland doesn't believe it's worth disrupting their PPV calendar which they are just now establishing and taking on more risk.

Johnston is still working on changing this as New Japan wants the same arrangement as last year, including a few days of training and scouting at the ROH Dojo outside of Philadelphia. Johnston also predicts the dojo will be a much bigger money making venture in 2015.

Originally, Johnston planned to do ROH vs New Japan super shows in Chicago and New York in addition to Toronto, but that changed upon Koff deciding to scale back the New Japan shows.

Koff met with New Japan officials in the fall and expressed his disappointment and confusion over New Japan partnering with Jeff Jarrett to do pay-per-view. There had been internal talk that ROH was going to extend a similar deal to New Japan but was too slow to put it together."

Somebody read the Observer and decided to paraphrase it.

[WHG]

A thought just randomly occurred to me, but if I were ROH I would try to sell this:

Rather than put these shows on iPPV, which if you believe Meltzer's reports they're considering scrapping again, or having them seem less important on VOD...they should try to sell New Japan on broadcasting them live on NJPWWorld in exchange for NJPW incurring a greater cost burden on the shows. It would make sense for ROH because: they'd be relieved of their biggest concern around these shows (cost), look like heroes for orchestrating live broadcasts at an incredibly low price, be effectively off the hook if the stream dies, and they'd still benefit from the increased live gate while only sacrificing a seemingly unprofitable iPPV model. The ONLY downside is you're potentially further exposing your high traditional PPV rate for ROH only shows.

NJPW meanwhile would get a huge boost to their US subscriber base. It may be temporary, but like any online subscription service the big key is getting people to commit to a month and put their CC in the recurring payment rotation. With fresh content and English commentary (which ROH would provide w/Kelly & Corino), it'd be interesting to see how many people would sign up to get one or two of these shows for $8.52 USD. If they did 1,500-2,500 buys for each one last year, I'd guess they'd get a lot more. NJPWWorlds global subscriber base is reportedly only 20k people. This could realistically boost their overall subscriber base by 10-15% (figuring that some are already subscribed to the service). I would think NJPW would be all over this.

Just a thought, but I really think there could be something to this idea.

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

That's a pretty good idea. NJPW was reportedly pleasantly surprised by the number of foreign subscribers. If they have to lug all of their broadcast equipment to America that may be an obstacle though. The fact that they're partnered with TV Asahi might mean that it's not practically possible to run a live feed from outside of Japan.

The other obstacle would be the inconvenient fact that NJPWWorld is in all Japanese. Obviously many westerners are enjoying it and have found ways around it, but the fact remains that the average fan (even a huge ROH fan) would probably be turned off by that and just wait for the VOD to come out on ROH's site. ROH's goal with these shows is to reach large numbers of their audience, not NJPW's, and I have doubts this would achieve that.

[DXvsNWO1994]

I've had this on my mind for awhile, since the news of less talents coming over came out.

Does the whole "bringing over only 2-3 NJPW Talents" referring to just the Japanese Talent, or anyone associated with New Japan, Japanese & Gaijin? You would think that guys like AJ Styles & The Young Bucks would be locks for these shows. I don't think someone like Karl Anderson lives in Japan all year, so you think he's still be available. Not sure where The Time Splitters would stand (Doesn't KUSHIDA have residence in Canada, or something along those lines?).

My point is, while having less fly-ins sucks, I don't think it'd be a total loss. If they bring in, lets say, only two guys from Japan, and it was some combination of Tanahashi/Okada/Nakamura, would anyone have a problem with that? I mean, when you think about it, do we really need the likes of Jado, Gedo & Doc Gallows on this shows? No really. Plus, if there are less guys, that means the chances of us seeing actual NJPW vs. ROH matches would go up, and we wouldn't have a situation like Global Wars where you had the main NJPW guys in tag matches against each other.

I would love to get a clarification on that, though.

[Northwoods_Nightmare]

I'm totally fine with whatever we can get, honestly. Even if it's just one Japanese wrestler. More is better obviously, but I'm not going to act spoiled about it. Bring in an upper mid-card or top NJPW star and put them in the main event and I would be more than happy.

I've also thought they could do a Bullet Club vs ROH themed show. With as hot as Bullet Club is I'd think people would be pumped for that. Heck, half of BC is in ROH already. Gallows and Anderson and I think Fale live in the continental states (not sure about Tonga). The only ones that would be tough to get might be Omega and Takahashi.

[WHG]

I really like the Bullet Club idea. It's simple, practical, and has a built in storyline they could build for the shows. With the Bucks back in the tag title picture (and my pick to win in Vegas) it would make even more sense.