​BushiRoad Sells New Japan - Immediate Thoughts

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God I hate when news breaks while I’m in the office. This morning New Japan has announced that their largest shareholder, Bushiroad Inc. has concluded a share transfer agreement as of today with TV Asahi Corporation and CyberAgent, Inc.regarding Bushiroad’s shares in our company. In other words, Bushiroad out with TV Asahi getting a bigger piece of the pie and CyberAgent coming in. 

I find this fascinating it is a time for takeover in wrestling following on from Nikki Cross and Big Damo’s purchase of both Britain’s Progress Wrestling and America’s Defy wrestling it reflects a changing landscape of new owners and maybe new ideas. CyberAgent is an interesting name. Their subsidiary in CyberFight is the owner of NOAH, DDT & TJPW so this is a real conglomerate of wrestling companies under one banner when you remember that New Japan owns World Wonder Ring Stardom as well (edit: apparently BushiRoad owns Stardom again? I don’t fucking know at this point). While minority owner compared to TV Asahi it’s the name worth speaking on as TV Asahi is a long term New Japan partner.


I’m sure a lot of wrestlers will be happy with this. A lot saw Bushiroad as refusing to invest into New Japan which saw the loss of talent to American companies in AEW & WWE. Yota Tsuji recently made a comment about how they are not cards which is how he and I’m assuming many felt. Considering the president of Bushiroad issued an apology to anyone offended by the comments (lol) it strikes a real rift from the companies. 


Maybe this split will be good, maybe New Japan will have some money to invest but at what cost? Make no mistake New Japan is the number one company in Japan with the largest reach outside of it as well do CyberAgent see a market opportunity to instead of trying to be the best just buy the best and what does that mean for the other companies they have? Will we see NOAH or TJPW be sold? I’d expect DDT to be a closer partner with New Japan now just because of Takeshita and we had Chris Brooks fight for the TV title at WrestleKingdom. And why does TV Asahi want more now? The WrestleKingdom TV numbers were good so do they see a market opportunity? Does having majority ownership mean they can push their ideas for TV integration in Japan more? I think it’s an undercooked piece of the puzzle compared to CyberAgent and their want for every wrestling company in Japan.


I think the answers to what it means won’t be seen until past Dominion. I imagine for New Japan they will hope for investment, be that actual money put in for talent or presentation but could also be for TV Asahi to feature their talents in a bigger role on that tv shows, promote them get the word out type deal. We shall see but if they have Master Wato win Best of the Super Juniors and the Junior Heavyweight Title at Dominion you won’t hear me complain, at least for a bit. 

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