THE PULSE, Spring 2023

By: Mavs Gillis

Great ticket sales for the Tokyo Dome for both Wrestle Kingdom 17 and NOAH Keiji Muto Grand Final. Sell outs at Battle of the Valley and the All Star Junior Festival. STARDOM continues to break their attendance records. With the turnstiles being put into overdrive to start the year, one of the main factors we are seeing to the business of the box office, dream matches, dream cards and global crossover appeal. NJPW President Takami Ohbari said he wanted to get stars into the ring for the matches that fans wanted to see; the ripple effect of this
attitude has been seen on both sides of The Pacific.

Photo c/o Thom Fain & Masahiro Kubota

In his New Year’s address, Ohbari states “Honoring tradition while innovating for the future, we vow not to fear change, but instead to leave fans surprised and enthralled.” What might have been the goal going into 2023 for the top executives of New Japan might just be what is setting the standards for the industry in Japan as a whole. Plenty of these flowers need to go to Keiji Muto, a star with worldwide appeal and the respect of the industry that allowed Shinsuke Nakamura to return home for a one night dream match to start the year.

The match took place at the Nippon Budokan, a venue Jonathan Foye details the history of for us… An arena which is within walking distance of Japanʼs Imperial Palace. Followed by “The Icon” Sting bringing Darby Allin to Yokohama Arena for a send off to Great Muta and crossover matches galore at the Tokyo Dome, headlined by Muto putting over Tetsuya Naito to end his career and the impromptu return to the ring of Masahiro Chono and Tiger Hattori. Capturing all of these memories, our resident photographer Masahiro Kubota came back from the arena with a Muto Final photo essay.

Mercedes Moné sent the wrestling world into overdrive with her appearance at Wrestle Kingdom leading to a sellout crowd in San Jose witnessing her and our cover star KAIRI at Battle in the Valley. A triumphant debut with New Japan for Moné allowed her to take the IWGP Women’s Title to the red carpet premiere of The Mandalorian, good PR if we ever saw some. Before Monéʼs time to shine, it was another American who set the Joshi scene on fire.

WWE Hall of Famer Madusa aka Alundra Blayze, who gave us insight into her career and life in All Japan
Womenʼs for this issue. Another Joshi favorite is scoped out with our profile of Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestlingʼs Miu Watanabe.

The NJPW World TV title on IMPACT, Yuji Nagata winning the AJPW Triple Crown champion, Satoshi Kojima holding
the GHC Tag title, and Kazuchika Okada calling for a World Cup of wrestling – not to be outshined by his IWGP Jr. Heavyweight counterpart Hiromu Takahashi, who helped spearhead the All Star Junior 2023 Festival – an ambitious crossover and celebration of puroresu which
featured over a dozen promotions represented on the card.

An underrated example of this “Iʼll fight whoever, whenever” spirit is represented by Unagi Sayaka, who just seems to be showing up everywhere these days including an upcoming trip to the United States in May. Leave the fans surprised and enthralled.

What we thought would be just an appreciation of the 50th anniversary of NJPW and AJPW has been a grand new beginning for the pro-wrestling industry in Japan, making
2023 one of puroresuʼs most obvious must-watch calendars in years.

This foreword first appeared in Monthly Puroresu Issue #11.