This weekend New Japan Pro Wrestling, the second-largest wrestling promotion in the world and, in the opinion of many, the very best, will hold their biggest show of the year. In part 1 of my two-part preview, I’m here to tell you some history on the show as an annual tradition. In part 2, we’ll discuss this year’s show in great detail, with full rundowns of all the matches and predictions. So let’s get right into it!

January 4th at the Tokyo Dome: A decades-old tradition

Even though the show is titled “Wrestle Kingdom 9”, do not let that fool you into thinking this show is only nine years old. On the contrary, New Japan Pro Wrestling has been holding a major show on January 4th at the enormous Tokyo Dome (a 55,000 seat stadium primarily used as the home of the Yomiuri Giants, one of the flagship franchises of Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league) dating back to 1992. The promotion had promoted a big early year show at the Dome for years prior, but following the success of 1993’s “Starrcade 1992 in Tokyo Dome” (yes, that’s confusing, but it was held on January 4th, 1993) the promotion has done a show there on that date every year since.

As the name would imply, the original 1/4 Dome show featured heavy participation from WCW wrestlers. New Japan and WCW formed a mutually beneficial partnership in the late 80s, following the WWF’s decision to no longer allow their talent to appear in Japan (previously, stars as big as Hulk Hogan and Andre the Giant were allowed to supplement their North American dates with regular tours in New Japan). Keiji Mutoh came over to the United States where he was given the gimmick of The Great Muta, and his success with the then-NWA in 1989 made him an enormous star when he returned to New Japan full-time.

The 1993 show was a 12-match card so stacked that a rare bout featuring legend Antonio Inoki (he went over the criminally underrated Hiroshi Hase) actually went fourth from the top! Above him was a great tag sprint with Sting & Mutoh (doing his Great Muta gimmick) defeating the Steiner Brothers, Lex Luger successfully defending his WCW World title against Masahiro Chono, and finally Riki Choshu beating Tatsumi Fujinami to become the 12th IWGP Heavyweight Champion.

As an aside, almost all Japanese promotions do not use their own promotion name for their titles as you’d see here; what we would think of as the “New Japan World Heavyweight Title” is actually the “International Wrestling Grand Prix Heavyweight Title”, with the IWGP being a fictional governing body that oversees all of New Japan’s championship matches. Titles are also defended much more rarely in Japan and thus title changes are much less infrequent. Consider that since the IWGP Heavyweight Title was first established on June 12th, 1987 (the first champion was, of course, Antonio Inoki, as he defeated Masa Saito in a tournament final at the legendary Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan, or Sumo Hall), there have been just 61 different title reigns. In the same time span, from June of 1987 until present, there have been 110 different WWE Championship title reigns, and that’s not counting the World Heavyweight Title or Inoki’s “unofficial” reign, among other things.

The January 4th Dome show has had a great deal of legendary bouts through its twenty-one years of existence. In 1996, the Dome show took place near the beginning of the interpromotional feud between New Japan and the more “shoot-oriented” UWF-I. That Dome show featured an enormous $5,400,000 in ticket sales, which due to elevated prices compared to New Japan’s other Dome sellouts was the biggest gate for a single wrestling event in history at the time. That record would hold until WrestleMania finally beat it with $5.8 million…..over a decade later, in 2008! That’s right, even huge shows like 2001’s Wrestlemania X-7 ($3.5 million) and 2002’s Wrestlemania X8 ($3.8 million) actually didn’t break the gate record!

The show was headlined by UWF-I ace Nobuhiko Takada actually defeating the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, Keiji Mutoh, to become the 18th champion. As has become common knowledge, this was the show that then-WCW Executive Producer Eric Bischoff would be in attendance for, and the New Japan vs. UWF-I feud ultimately gave him the idea for the nWo angle that would launch his promotion into the stratosphere later that year. So it’s not hyperbole to say that, had the smash hit 1/4/96 Tokyo Dome show never happened, the course of professional wrestling history in the United States would have turned out very differently!

A New Millennium, An Annoying Fetish For “Shootfighters”

The 2001 January 4th Tokyo Dome show featured another huge interpromotional main event, as Kensuke Sasaki faced All Japan legend Toshiaki Kawada to determine the vacant IWGP Heavyweight Title. Sasaki had been champion until losing to Kawada in the main event of another show at the Tokyo Dome on 10/9/00 (as part of a New Japan vs. All Japan singles match series), and following the non-title loss he vacated the title out of shame for letting his home promotion down. Some might ask why they didn’t just make the first Sasaki-Kawada match a title match and have Kawada win the belt and then lose it back to Sasaki here, but it’s a cultural thing; the idea of Sasaki losing and voluntarily vacating the belt from his feelings of dishonoring his home promotion, then going for revenge against Kawada, actually probably meant more than the more simple or “American” scenario might have. Anyway, obviously Sasaki got his win back and once again became IWGP Heavyweight Champion.

2004 featured a couple of New Japan’s current top stars in key matches. A very young Hiroshi Tanahashi was in the middle of his reign as the first-ever IWGP U-30 Openweight Champion, a very interesting title that could only be held by wrestlers under the age of 30. The belt served to showcase the rising crop of young talent New Japan had; talent that was, at the time, drastically held back by the insane booking style of the shoot fighting-obsessed Antoino Inoki, but would eventually center a rebuild of New Japan following his departure and a lengthy down period. Tanahashi retained his title on the undercard with a win over Yutaka Yoshie. Meanwhile, Shinsuke Nakamura, the man who has come to personify charisma and become this generation’s Masahiro Chono (in another words, be ostensibly a heel but still be almost universally beloved by the audience), was at this point an almost charisma-devoid “shootfighter” who was pushed to the moon as the “supernova”. He defeated Yoshihiro Takayama (who PRIDE enthusiasts may remember as “the Japanese guy who had that insane fight with Don Frye”) in the main event of the show, to unify Nakamura’s IWGP and Takayama’s NWF Heavyweight titles.

As mentioned, New Japan was in the midst of a deep decline thanks to Inoki’s love for shootfighters, and nowhere was that more obvious than the 1/4/05 Dome show. Obscure former shootfighter and WWE signee (who never got out of dark matches there) Ron Waterman worked third-from-the-top at the Dome, winning a bizarre sort of “shootfighter battle royale” which was, if anything, even more awful than I’m probably making it sound. Second from the top was a three-way match billed as a “dogfight”, and Japanese wrestling features very, very few triple threat matches, so neither the fans or the workers really knew what to make of it. But at least the main event was good, as Nakamura and Tanahashi fought over Tanahashi’s U-30 title. Nakamura beat Tanahashi to become the 2nd champion, finally ending Tanahashi’s epic 21-month long reign as the first holder of the belt.

Life After Inoki

By the time the following year’s 1/4/06 Dome show rolled around, the influence of Inoki had finally begun to decline. Video game company Yuke’s (who are of course the makers of the WWE videogame series from Smackdown to present day) had purchased a controlling interest in the company midway through 2005 (eventually they sold to the current owners, the massive Japanese entertainment company BUSHIROAD, in January 2012), and Inoki gradually lost more and more power until he finally left the company altogether to found the competing Inoki Genome Federation (IGF) in 2007 (legendary former NJPW star Riki Choshu took over most of the control of the booking, a role he previously had throughout most of the 90s as well). The IGF is still around, and just a few weeks ago held a show where their top title was defended by- yes, in 2014- Mirko Cro Cop in an honest-to-god shootfight. So yeah, not much has changed there.

But thankfully things were changing for New Japan at this point, as the card was thankfully shootfighter-free, unless you counted not-yet-a-shootfighter Brock Lesnar. That’s right, Lesnar worked the main event of this show, defeating Nakamura with the F5 (cleverly called “the Verdict” here, since Lesnar’s participation in New Japan came only after a judge struck down WWE’s ten-year non-compete clause in court) to retain his IWGP Heavyweight Title. Sadly Lesnar would walk from the company as champion later in the year rather than put over Tanahashi, as was the original plan, never even returning them the belt (they had to create a new one when Tanahashi defeated Giant Bernard, aka Albert/A-Train/Tensai, in a decision match); weirdly enough, he would turn up not long after in Inoki’s promotion, losing the IWGP Title he had already long since been stripped of to Kurt Angle.

Angle then came into New Japan claiming to be the rightful champion, and the result was the 1/4/2008 Tokyo Dome show having two different IWGP Heavyweight Title matches! In the semi-main, Angle successfully defended his version of the title against Yuji Nagata in a fantastic match, while the main event saw Nakamura facing off against Tanahashi yet again for the “real” IWGP title, dethroning him with the Landslide in my personal favorite match between these two generational rivals. Thankfully the “two champions” scenario didn’t drag on for much longer, as Nakamura would defeat Angle in a unification bout on 2/17/08 at the Ryogoku Kokugikan.

At this point the Wrestle Kingdom name had now been attached to each 1/4 Tokyo Dome event (it had actually begun in 2007, but that first WK show was a fairly uninteresting one), making 2009’s event Wrestle Kingdom III. The event was enormous, featuring interpromotional encounters up and down the card. Wrestlers from TNA were all over the show, with the Motor City Machine Guns of Alex Shelley & Chris Sabin defeating Team No Limit of Yujiro Takahashi & Tetsuya Naito for their IWGP Jr. Tag Team Titles. Kurt Angle and Kevin Nash, of all people, teamed up with Riki Choshu and Masahiro Chono for a big eight-man tag against the Great Bash Heel group of Giant Bernard, Takashi Iizuka, Tomohiro Ishii, and Karl Anderson. And finally, Team 3D defeated Togi Makabe & Toru Yano in a hardcore match for the heavyweight IWGP Tag Team Titles, meaning TNA took both sets of tag straps on the same night!

Elsewhere on the card, Pro Wrestling NOAH (itself made up of wrestlers that had left All Japan back in 2000) battled New Japan in two different matches, as Jun Akiyama defeated Manabu Nakanishi in a singles match and Mitsuharu Misawa & Takashi Sugiura were beaten by Nakamura & Hirooki Goto in a tag team encounter. In the main event, the defending IWGP Heavyweight Champion was Keiji Mutoh, who had actually left New Japan for All Japan years prior! He lost the strap to Hiroshi Tanahashi, who became the 50th champion. And finally, Yuji Nagata defended the Zero-One Heavyweight Championship against ex-ECW Champion Masato Tanaka, of ZERO-ONE MAX. So yes, counting New Japan, wrestlers from five different promotions took part in this show!

2010-Present: New Japan Hits Its Stride

The Choshu booking years should not be overlooked, as he did a good job recovering from the unbelievably bad last few Inoki years and a solid foundation was put into place that would allow the promotion to enter the current decade ready to break out. But the promotion really seemed to take off after longtime junior tag team Gedo & Jado took over as bookers in 2010. The two have won Best Booker for three straight years (2011-2013) in the Wrestling Observer newsletter’s year-end awards, and I would be pretty surprised if they didn’t make it four straight when this year’s awards come out in a few weeks.

The 1/4/2011 Tokyo Dome show took place not long after they had taken over, and is notable for a number of different reasons. After several years straight of heavy involvement from TNA wrestlers on the Dome shows, this would be the final NJPW event featuring TNA talent. Beer Money of James Storm & Robert Roode were involved ina 3-way dance for the IWGP Tag Team Titles, but were defeated by the team of Bad Intentions, Giant Bernard & Karl Anderson, who had become huge fan favorites after breaking away from the GBH group and would reign as champions for nearly 19 months. Roode lost the fall to Anderson after taking the Gun Stun, a variation of the Ace Crusher/Diamond Cutter/RKO/whatever (the team of Nakanashi & Strong Man were also involved).

Rob Van Dam would beat Toru Yano in another interpromotional match; this match is notable because Yano copied his opponent’s signature “R-V-D!” finger pointing taunt with his own “Y-T-R” version, and the pose became so popular with the fans that he continues to do his rip-off to this day! Finally, Jeff Hardy defended his TNA World Title in an atrocious match against Tetsuya Naito. Hardy showed up in no condition to perform, and his awful performance against a young rising star New Japan was trying to elevate by being in there with Hardy was a huge black mark against TNA that helped end the relationship between the two companies.

Elsewhere on the show, Prince Devitt (now known as NXT’s Finn Balor) defended his IWGP Jr. Heavyweight Title against DDT’s Kota Ibushi in an outstanding match. Ibushi had just begun making regular appearances for New Japan, and finally became a regular member of the NJPW roster last year (though he’s still considered a DDT regular as well, so he’s in essence the only man in Japanese wrestling on the rosters of two different promotions). In the main event, Hiroshi Tanahashi once again won the IWGP Heavyweight Title, defeating Satoshi Kojima. Kojima had been an up-and-coming star before he departed for All Japan with Mutoh in 2002 (at least partly in protest of Inoki’s insane shootfighter fetish that we’ve already covered), before returning to New Japan doing an outsider/invasion gimmick leading a group called “Kojima-gun”. Following his title loss here, Kojima would be ousted by his own faction and replaced by, ironically, ex-Pancrase shootfighter Minoru Suzuki, and the unit continues on to this day as Suzuki-gun. Kojima has remained with New Japan ever since, mostly returning to the tag team ranks with his longtime partner Hiroyoshi Tenzan.

Wrestle Kingdom VI on 1/4/2012 saw the aforementioned Minoru Suzuki trying to become IWGP Heavyweight Champion, but his challenge of Tanahashi in the main event was unsuccessful (the match was phenomenal, by the way!). Elsewhere on the card, a young man by the name of Kazuchika Okada returned from his long trip to TNA. Despite his many natural gifts- good height, impressive athleticism, and an understated charisma and star quality-TNA saw fit to use him only as a job guy on their obscure Xplosion show for the nearly two years they had him, other than a brief run doing an amazingly racist “Okato” gimmick as Samoa Joe’s cameraman, a reference to the Green Hornet’s own Asian assistant. Okada returned here doing his new “Rainmaker” character and basically squashed fellow young wrestler YOSHI-HASHI; a month later, he would shockingly defeat Hiroshi Tanahashi to become the new IWGP Heavyweight Champion. Though the fans didn’t take to Okada’s amazingly rapid ascent at first, New Japan stuck with him as a top guy and would be paid off when he became one of the hottest stars in all of professional wrestling.

1/4/2013 brought us Wrestle Kingdom 7, another fantastic card in what had quickly become a series of them. In 2012 Shinsuke Nakamura won the IWGP Intercontiental Title, a curious belt which was created for ex-WWE star MVP during a series of New Japan shows held on the east coast of the US in 2011,and elevated it to the point where it was the semi-main event of this Dome show. Nakamura defeated former UWF-I wrestler and PRIDE fighter Kazushi Sakuraba in one of the best eleven-minute matches you’ll probably ever see. But the main event saw Tanahashi defeat Okada to retain the IWGP Heavyweight Title he had won back from him in June of 2012.

The win by Tanahashi would kick off an amazing series of matches between the two rivals in 2013. Okada beat Tanahashi on 4/7/13 at Sumo Hall to begin his 2nd reign as IWGP Heavyweight Champion, then retained against him in a rematch, again at Tokyo Sumo Hall, on 10/14/13. All three matches were amazing, right up there with the Ric Flair-Ricky Steamboat series from 1989 when it comes to a series of fantastic matches held between the same two wrestlers in a relatively short period of time, and you’re doing yourself a disservice as a fan of professional wrestling if you haven’t watched them.

Following that third October 2013 match, New Japan made a conscious decision not to book another Tanahashi-Okada bout for a while. The 1/4/14 Tokyo Dome show was scheduled to have a double main event: Okada would defend his IWGP Heavyweight Title against Tetsuya Naito, the 2013 winner of New Japan’s yearly round-robin tournament, the G1 Climax. Tanahashi would challenge longtime rival Nakamura for his IWGP Intercontiental Title. A fan vote was held to determine which match would go on last, and ultimately the longtime top stars of Tanahashi and Nakamura won out. Still, Okada and Naito’s bout slightly outshined them in my opinion, with Okada retaining his title with his signature Rainmaker lariat. Tanahashi meanwhile defeated Nakamura with his High Fly Flow frog splash off the top rope to become the new Intercontiental Champion.

And that brings us to Wrestle Kingdom 9. Hiroshi Tanahashi is once again the IWGP Heavyweight Champion, after he defeated AJ Styles for the belt on 10/13/14 at Sumo Hall. AJ had won the strap from Okada on 5/3/14 with help from his BULLET CLUB stablemates and Yujiro Takahashi (who had been Okada’s stablemate in CHAOS before turning on him during this match). Okada recovered by winning the 2014 G1 Climax in August, and as is now tradition in New Japan that meant he was getting the IWGP Heavyweight Title shot at the 1/4 Tokyo Dome show. So yes, that means, for the first time in about 15 months, we’re finally getting Tanahashi-Okada again. And we’ll cover that, along with the rest of the stacked Wrestle Kingdom 9 card, in part 2!

But to wrap things up, I would like to note that many of the matches I’ve talked about here today can be seen via New Japan’s new official streaming service, New Japan World. A monthly streaming service that’s basically NJPW’s answer to the WWE Network (right down to the 999 yen price, which thanks to a favorable conversion rate currently works out to something like $8.50 a month US), New Japan World is a godsend to foreign fans of their amazing product. The site accepts most US debit and credit cards and features both a huge backlog of events and live streaming shows (including this weekend’s Wrestle Kingdom event). Though it’s in Japanese, you can scroll down to the bottom of the page where there’s a Google Translate box; after you pick English (in any web browser, doesn’t have to be Chrome) all pages will be translated for you. The translations can be a little wonky but for the most part you should have no trouble navigating it.

See you later today for part 2!

Photo via Something Awful forums

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