NJPW President Hiroshi Tanahashi Looks To Introduce More Multi-Year Contracts To Prevent Talent Poaching

By: Lewis Carlan

New Japan Pro-Wrestling has seen a number of major talent departures in 2025 and into 2026. Some of the names departing NJPW recently have been EVIL, SANADA, Hiromu Takahashi, Dave Finlay, Gabe Kidd & Clark Connors.

NJPW has traditionally offered much of its talent roster one year contracts that normally expire at the start of each new year. With promotions such as AEW and to a lesser extent WWE looking to add new talent to its roster, this has posed a serious problem for NJPW.

Tony Khan of AEW has shown that he is not shy when it comes to offering big money to draw top talent away from NJPW and he has succeeded quite a bit in luring wrestlers to his USA based promotion.

NJPW President Hiroshi Tanahashi addressed this in a recent interview with Proresu-Today.

Tanahashi stated NJPW needs to create a barrier to prevent top talent from being poached by other promotions. He suggested we could see more multi-year contracts given out to talent to replace the traditional one year deals.

From Hiroshi Tanahashi:

“I strongly feel that we must create a ‘barrier’ to prevent top talent from being poached by other promotions… such as by introducing multi-year contracts, and maintain the quality that makes New Japan Pro Wrestling great.”

With numerous young stars including Yota Tsuji, Callum Newman, Yuya Uemura, Ren Narita, Shota Umino & Aaron Wolf on the roster, multi-year deals would be beneficial to ensure they will be around to lead NJPW over the next few years.

Despite the perceived “poaching”, Tanahashi maintained that NJPW still has a good relationship with AEW.

(H/T goes to Drainmaker for the English Translation)