Jeff Jarrett and Global Force Wrestling officially announced what had been reported here for some time, that the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show will air on PPV in the U.S. and Canada.
“GFW Presents New Japan Pro Wrestling’s Wrestle Kingdom 9" will air both live, at 2 a.m. Eastern and 11 p.m. Pacific time on 1/4, which is a late Saturday night/early Sunday morning time slot, starting one hour after the completion of UFC 182, the Jon Jones vs. Daniel Cormier show.
It will also be replayed in the traditional Sunday PPV time slot, but one hour earlier, from 7-11 p.m. Eastern time.
All major carriers in the U.S. and Canada have agreed to get the show. The price was not announced. Originally the price was to be $24.95, but there were negotiations going on where that could change.
At this point we don’t have any information on how the show will be marketed, as nobody has ever been able to successfully do live PPV pro wrestling events without television backing since the early UFCs. Nobody is expecting big numbers and if they could get 10,000 buys, it would be considered a home run. The plan is not for one show, but to start doing this regularly, if the first show is any kind of success. Whether that would be the monthly PPVs, a big four of Invasion Attack, G-1 Climax finals, King of Pro Wrestling and Wrestle Kingdom, once a year, or never again, will depend on what type of interest this show gets.
There will be announcing in both English and Japanese, the latter to alleviate the super hardcore fan who prefers it in its authentic form.
The negative is the four-hour window. As anyone who watches New Japan shows knows, their big shows are usually four-and-a-half hours and Tokyo Domes closer to five hours. Given all the talent in the promotion, plus the pageantry with the long and elaborate entrances, they will have to cut back on match time to hit four hours, causing them to rush through prelims. Another question would be if they will break Japan tradition and run a show with no intermission, which at least would give them about 20 more minutes to work with, which they’ll need.
There is also a lot of political stuff going on regarding the ROH talent and the Tokyo Dome show. Everyone has a different story on what is going on. Jeff Jarrett and Scott D’Amore met with Joe Koff, the ROH CEO, in Baltimore last week. It was described to me in the end as more of an introduction and shake hands meeting with nothing decided. No deal was reached regarding ROH helping promote the show on its TV in the weeks after Final Battle, which will be ROH’s second live PPV show.
Even more confusing right now is the plight of ROH talent on the Tokyo Dome show. Nothing is for sure, but we do know that Kyle O’Reilly, Bobby Fish and the ROH champion at the time were all earmarked for the show, which was to include both ROH and NWA title defenses, besides those of the Japanese belts.
The talent expected to be on the show from ROH was told that as things stood, they would still be on the show but their match would not air on PPV into the U.S., meaning the matches (believed to be two bouts although nothing is confirmed at press time for any ROH talent on the show) would be dark matches. That’s both good and bad. The ROH matches will probably be good matches, plus, with Fish & O’Reilly winning the Super Junior tag team tournament on 11/3 in Gifu over The Young Bucks, they were supposed to be involved in the IWGP jr. tag team title match at the Tokyo Dome coming off their title shot at the 11/8 Power Struggle show with Alex Shelley & Kushida.
Fish & O’Reilly winning the tournament would indicate New Japan booker Gedo was going with the idea they would be on the Dome show. If they weren’t, the Young Bucks could have gone over instead.
One ROH source said that everything is in flux but at the end of the day, everything will work out. Another person involved in the situation said that they believe, by the show time, it will all work out as well, but right now there is an issue in the sense Sinclair doesn’t really understand wrestling. The feeling is it will hopefully be worked out.
To a wrestling fan, it’s a no-brainer to have ROH talent appearing on the second biggest pro wrestling event of the year, and nothing looks more major league than tearing down the house before 35,000 or more people on an international stage to make you look like legitimate stars as opposed to guys working for a distant No. 3 U.S. promotion.
But from a businessman point of few, it’s very different. This is ROH contracted talent that is not supposed to appear on iPPV or PPVs for any other company. They’ve let it slide with the New Japan shows in the past since it was only iPPV and a very small audience outside Japan watching.
But it can be looked at that ROH is in the PPV business and New Japan is in the PPV business working with Global Force Wrestling. The show is “GFW” branded, and if GFW gets off the ground, they will be competitors to ROH vying for the No. 2 or No. 3 slot in the North American market. Plus, it appears GFW will have the leg up on ROH when it comes to working with New Japan if GFW gets a television deal and starts up as a promotion. While one can argue it can be best for all concerned for GFW, ROH and TNA to all be cooperative with each other rather than adversarial, alliances like that in wrestling historically end up being short-lived, and that’s when they aren’t promoting in the same area. With all three groups promoting nationally, an alliance, while good on paper, will be difficult to maintain because of the competitive situation they are all put in. Plus, GFW and New Japan together, and ROH, are both trying to run regular PPVs.
With the two shows four weeks apart, the New Japan show on PPV can be construed as competition for Final Battle. But more in 2015, if GFW gets off the ground, or New Japan’s show is successful, they and ROH will be competing for the same very small hardcore fan base.
Joe Koff of ROH told us that he doesn’t see it as a story at this point because nobody from ROH is officially booked on the Tokyo Dome show at this time and there’s nothing to talk about until that deal is made.
Two other sources said airfare for some ROH talent has already been purchased by New Japan, which makes things awkward.
ROH talent affected by this, which includes Fish, O’Reilly and Cole are said to be privately very down about all this, as one could imagine. Not just appearing at the Dome before the largest crowd and biggest show they’ve ever been on, but the ability to have it also air in the U.S. and try and have a great match could be career highlights for them.
The one thing is that if it does work out that the ROH talent can’t be on the American PPV, which would mean they would likely be in pre-show dark matches from the U.S. standpoint, the four-hour window for the show will mean there would be less time constraints. Even at five hours they are likely to have to rush the undercard matches through because of how loaded the show is expected to be.
But New Japan has already pushed a 4 p.m. start time in Tokyo, which is 2 a.m. Eastern. So for this to happen, it would mean New Japan would have to change the start time of its show, plus work with time constraints on its biggest show of the year that they’ve never had to worry about.
Still, there are always going to be issues if New Japan tries to break into foreign markets, particularly the U.S. market.
An interesting note is that the announcement of the Dome show on U.S. PPV got almost no coverage in Japan until New Japan owner Takaaki Kidani called a press conference with media.
The time slot will be an issue to all but the audience that already follows New Japan, which is very small in the U.S. There isn’t a big audience that will purchase a PPV on tape when the results are already out there and there’s a good chance the video will be able to be accessed in places before the Sunday night feed. The one thing with Bound for Glory, which based on very limited numbers, looks to have been down 40 percent this year from the prior year and 70 percent from two years ago (more because the show wasn’t promoted as well), is that the footage wasn’t available before it aired on delay, although the results were.
There are talks with Jim Ross and Mike Tenay continuing. With Ross, I’m thinking the deal will either be done or not within the next week or two, but with an offer said to be tied to buys because of the limited budget, that could be difficult. With Tenay, I just can’t see him making a deal until TNA makes its television deal, and then starts making offers to the people no longer under contract. At this stage, Tenay is under contract for voice overs of shows through 11/19, which is the final first-run TNA show, until a new TV would go into place in January, if such a deal is signed.
With UStream no longer airing New Japan shows and the Niconico web site being far too difficult to navigate for a non-Japanese unless you are someone who just has to watch it, there is a potential niche business for Jarrett and New Japan. There are those in ROH frustrated because they had an existing promotion with television and could have cultivated the same thing, particularly coming off the success of the New York and Toronto joint-promotional shows earlier this year.
If it was me, I’d do a deal where the Korakuen Hall shows for the most part, or perhaps others if they see fit, that are already airing in Japan anyway, would broadcast live for free on the New Japan U.S. site or a GFW site, using English language commentary. The idea would be like traditional wrestling, and New Japan does a good job with that, with all the tags on those shows pushing the PPV matches. I’d broadcast all the PPVs once a month on the Internet for maybe $20 to $25. I’d also do a similar G-1 package and also PPV maybe the final show of Fantastica Mania, or when they do the big doubles (split the main matches into two shows in a month as they did a couple of times last year), maybe offer a package of both for $30 type of thing. That way, even if the economics don’t work for 12 live PPVs a year, and that probably isn’t a good idea, the free shows can hopefully cultivate a small audience that will buy the iPPVs, and also perhaps generate enough to where they can do a decent number of buys for the four big ones. It’s still a risk, because TNA had two hours of prime time TV with 1.2 to 1.5 million viewers, with English promos and even people who were well known major stars, and wasn’t able to maintain a traditional 12-show a year PPV business. And today, WWE has changed the fans’ perception of the“value” of watching a major show.
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