Photo Credit: Bushiroad
By: Thom Fain
Bushiroad President Takaaki Kidani has revealed for the first time that a public rebuke from one of his own wrestlers was the final trigger for selling New Japan Pro-Wrestling, and that Netflix’s mega-deal with WWE had already convinced him his company could no longer compete on the global stage.
“To tell the truth, I couldn’t sleep until morning that day,” Kidani told Weekly Playboy in an exclusive interview, referring to a February promo in which NJPW’s Yota Tsuji declared that wrestlers were not “cards in a card game” and risked their lives in the ring — a direct shot at the parent company. Tsuji later insisted in a since-deleted interview that Kidani was “not so small a man” as to sell over such remarks.
Kidani’s response: “That’s exactly how humans make decisions. We’re creatures of emotion.”
Kidani, who built Bushiroad from a four-person card-game startup into a listed company, said the wound cut both ways — the wrestlers’ pride in the ring against his own pride in his founding business. If they rejected Bushiroad that strongly, he concluded, he should no longer hold on, and the incident became the “final line” that accelerated a sale already under consideration.
The deeper shock, Kidani said, came on January 23, 2024, when Netflix signed a 10-year streaming deal with WWE worth roughly $5 billion (about ¥740 billion at the time) — for distribution rights alone. He called it the single worst moment of his 14 years in wrestling, worse than losing stars like Kazuchika Okada or Tetsuya Naito. “There was no way we could win,” he said. From that day, he believed New Japan’s only path was partnership with a giant holding major media and streaming infrastructure — a field Bushiroad alone could no longer fight on.
His doubts had begun around 2019, when U.S. promotion AEW emerged and absorbed the “anti-WWE” American audience New Japan had cultivated. Only the pandemic-era collapse delayed the exit, he said, because he felt obliged to restore the business first; without COVID, the sale might have come years earlier.
Bushiroad transferred its entire NJPW stake to TV Asahi and CyberAgent for approximately ¥3.6 billion — against the roughly ¥500 million it paid game developer Yuke’s in 2012, a gain of about ¥3.1 billion on paper.
Even so, small-business consultant Takashi Honami told Weekly Playboy the price is “extraordinarily cheap.” He estimates the deal values NJPW at roughly six times EBITDA, versus the 30–40x multiples commanded by WWE and the roughly 20-year payback horizons typical when acquiring thriving entertainment companies. The figure also ignores NJPW’s unquantifiable brand assets — its wrestlers’ skill and characters, and five decades of history. Honami argues Bushiroad deliberately skipped hard bargaining to prioritize the industry’s long-term health, comparing the deal to fully renovating a derelict house and handing it over at peak value, “a textbook business-revival success,” rather than a fire sale.
He calls it a three-way win: Bushiroad books its gain; CyberAgent gains a marquee property to fortify its streaming lineup; and TV Asahi, whose holding company has earmarked ¥100 billion over four years for content and IP, locks in one of Japan’s strongest entertainment brands.
The sale was announced May 27 and formally completed June 30. Kidani has framed it as a “taisei hokan” — a restoration, likening it to the shogunate returning power to the emperor — since TV Asahi broadcast New Japan for most of the promotion’s history and once housed its offices.
Comedian and 50-year fan Yurioka Chotoku-Q says the deal feels like a homecoming, though he warns against casual crossovers with Pro Wrestling NOAH and DDT, already under CyberAgent, arguing today’s “oshi” fan culture prizes each promotion’s distinct identity.
Kidani’s turnaround was capped by NJPW’s January 4 Tokyo Dome show, which drew 46,913 fans in the first full-house sellout in 28 years — a plan set in motion in November 2023, when he simultaneously asked Hiroshi Tanahashi to become president and proposed he retire at that show. Number one Joshi promotion STARDOM stays with Bushiroad, which says it still has room to grow the brand itself.
Kidani, a lifelong fan who says he always regarded New Japan — founded by Antonio Inoki in 1972 and approaching its 55th anniversary — as something held in trust rather than owned, closed with a request to fans: recognize how entertainment is changing, and back the promotion as it takes on the world’s giants.
Takaaki Kidani was born 1960 in Ishikawa Prefecture, graduated from Musashi University and worked at Yamaichi Securities before founding Broccoli in 1994 and Bushiroad in 2007. Bushiroad acquired New Japan Pro-Wrestling in 2012 and transferred all shares to TV Asahi and CyberAgent in June 2026.
Source: Weekly Playboy (Shueisha), July 20, 2026
Date:
July 21, 2026
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