The Reality of Wrestling: No Dome Show For NOAH

The Reality of Wrestling: No Dome Show For NOAH
By Phil Clark, David Ditch, & Gordi Whitelaw

To put it simply, last week was a pretty slow news week minus Orton’s suspension. An article on that would seem the way to go, but at this point I could care less why The E does the things they do backstage and the real shock (if there’s any) will be when the details—the real details that is—of the actions that lead to the suspension come out.

So after an average Wrestlemania (I’ll never get back the time wasted on those main-event intro’s) despite Ken Anderson’s thoughts to the contrary, I’ve decided to head back to the Puro World sooner than I thought I would. Why? Because in that world, there’s a real news story going on. A couple of weeks ago, a rumor came out noting that Pro Wrestling NOAH may not run the Tokyo Dome this year opting to have a sixth and possibly seventh Budokan Hall show in 2006. Well, this past Friday, they made their decision: New Japan will be the only wrestling promotion to run the Tokyo Dome in 2006 as NOAH has decided on the safer route of another Budokan Hall show. For a story that could have incredible implications on the business in Japan, I’ve decided to do my first roundtable article bringing in two members of a group I call “The Four Horsemen of Puro.” Those members are Dave Ditch and Gordi Whitelaw.

D.D. Says: Why NOAH decided not to run the Tokyo Dome depended entirely on what they could get for the upper card. If they could have snagged Kawada or Bob Sapp for a match against Kobashi, and pair it with Akiyama Vs. Sasaki, then The Dome would absolutely have been the way to go. However, a show built around Akiyama Vs. Sasaki or Akiyama Vs. Kobashi would struggle to even half-fill the Dome. Without a dream match they’re better off sticking with the Budokan and adding another in December.

The main event for this Budokan show should be Akiyama defending against Sasaki or Kobashi in a match similar to the Kobashi Vs. Akiyama match from 2004. Despite any stylistic concerns I might have, that match came off well to the public. This time around Akiyama would go over, and that would do wonders for him. Outside of that the options are limited, because I wouldn’t recommend using Rikio, Morishima, Misawa or any of the junior-heavyweights for the challenger. NOAH doesn’t currently have ties to any outside promotion with a viable challenger, so that option seems out as well.

In terms of other big matches, it’s easy to plug in Misawa Vs. X and Kobashi Vs. X and away-you-go. I’m tempted to go with Misawa against Kobashi or Sasaki, since the former hasn’t been done in three years and the latter is a dream match. The drawback is that who knows which Misawa will show up, and Misawa has seemed to do much better in tags over the last few years. Misawa tagging with Kobashi or Taue against some outsider combination of Tenryu, Sasaki, Shibata, Minoru Suzuki, Akebono, etc. would be reliably entertaining and interesting. Toss in say KENTA Vs. Sugiura for the junior title, a Hidaka & Fujita junior tag title defense, Morishima & Yone taking on outsiders (Suzuki/Shibata? Shibata/Murakami?), and perhaps a match where Rikio has to see how hard a Muso he can do on Yoshinari Ogawa, and baby you’ve got yourself an almost dome-worthy card. The two goals for the show overall need to be making Akiyama look strong and building up his next challenger.

Whether or not this is a good decision financially depends on the circumstances. I would say that they shouldn’t run the Budokan in December while still using the Dome in July, and I’d also say that a December Budokan would probably add 5 to 10 thousand additional tickets compared to their usual show in Yokohama. That makes up a lot of the difference in the number of sold tickets between the Dome and the Budokan. If they can’t produce a strong enough card to sell at least 35,000 tickets in July, then the two Budokan cards are the way to go. Not only from a profit standpoint, but also from an image one. Running the Budokan successfully seven times in one year while New Japan struggles to sell 5,000 tickets for megamatches does plenty, while running a half-full Dome show makes NOAH look desperate for attention. All that said, if they can’t produce enough money matches to do well for the July/September/November series of Budokan shows, they might be wise to lower their expectations for December as well.

G.W. Says: Actually, I was glad when I heard that NOAH wasn’t going to run a Dome Show this July. I think that running the Dome is largely an ego move, anyway, and one that can quite easily backfire. It was an embarrassment to New Japan when they drew small crowds to the Dome, and the same thing could have happened to NOAH this year. If Kawada isn’t available, the only true dream match I can see them running this year would be Kobashi Vs. Tenryu one on one. They’ve been building towards that for a long time now. I have been waiting for the payoff since seeing Tenryu & Koshinaka Vs. Kenta Kobashi & Junji Izumida in Yokohama in December!

I just heard that Kawada was on the April 7th Zero-1 Max card, though, so who knows? If he is on the card, I’m sure NOAH will be able to fill the Budokan pretty easily.

Other than that, I suppose Kensuke can be relied on for some kind of special contribution to the big show. He could go one on one with Taue, or even face Akiyama for the GHC Heavyweight Title. He could also team with Nakajima to face Yone & Morishima, assuming they’re still holding the belts in July. More than that, though, I’d like to see Morishima vs. Misawa in a rematch from the March 5th Budokan show. If you really need a GHC Tag Titles defense on the show, you could team Misawa up with Ogawa or with a young guy, and have them lose to the champs when Morishima pins Misawa cleanly. That would be satisfying, too. I also wouldn’t mind seeing an Akiyama Vs. Taue rematch.

In terms of other dream matches, I hope that we’ll get to see King’s Road ace Kazushi Miyamoto on the July card, since his promotion has been working with NOAH recently. I’d assume he’d need to be protected in the booking, since he’s the only real name in King’s Road. I’d really like to see him face KENTA for the GHC Junior Heavyweight Title, though. I don’t really know who else is available as a big name freelancer. I wouldn’t mind seeing Hase in NOAH! I suppose that it might be possible to talk Mutoh or Kojima into making an appearance. Also, someone has to get the belts back from Hidaka & Fujita, and if there are going to be Zero-1 guys on the card anyway, maybe Ohtani, Omori, and/or Takaiwa could make an appearance. It could be fun to have “Mr. Liar” Atsushi Onita make a special appearance, as well, though I don’t think he’s dream match material any more at this stage.

In the end, though, the nice thing about not running the Dome is that there is really no great need to over-rely on big name outsiders. If they were going to run at the Big Egg, we’d probably be stuck with Bob Sapp, Akebono, or both on the card. That’s not really what I’d like to see.

I’d much rather have the focus be on a big title defenses for Akiyama and the other NOAH champs, with just a few tasty outsider matches to add some spice to the brew. I’m pretty excited to see how the card shapes up.

P.C. Says: NOAH pussed out, period. For a long time I’ve supported this promotion (they were my promotion of the year last year), but this decision left me flat. I understand the motivation behind the decision—we don’t want to risk bombing at The Dome—and think NOAH will benefit from it with another Budokan sell out.

What leaves me flat is the lack of ambition and adventurism this reveals within NOAH. Is running The Dome a risk? Of course it is. Any arena the size of The dome involves the risk of not being able to sell it out. The difference here is that NOAH has the connections to other promotions and has enough stars in their promotion to produce a successful Dome show. Even if they did bomb, I don’t think it would affect them as much financially as it has for New Japan and All Japan.

Plus, has anyone noticed that NOAH owns Tokyo? Four of their last six Budokan shows have been overflow sell-outs (this year’s January show set the all-time record for the building) and one of the two non-sell outs just missed 16,000. As of now, they are the only promotion that runs Korakuen Hall in a way where they can put in 2,100 (and do) where other promotions only can do about 1,600. And finally, look at The Dome. NOAH’s two paid Dome attendances (37,000 and 45,000) are more than just about every New Japan effort in the last 3 ½ years and is bigger than All Japan’s last try in 2001. Tomorrow, NOAH could run any building in Tokyo with any card and get at least a 75% paid attendance if not sell the damn building out.

Should NOAH run Budokan in July? If not The Dome, than Budokan is #2 on the Japanese wrestling venue hierarchy, so I say go for it. They’ll more than likely sell out with Akiyama/Sasaki on top, and a couple of crowd-pleasing juniors matches and mid-card tags. NOAH is one of the only promotions anywhere that can put teams together on a whim and make them work (Minoru Suzuki & Naomichi Marufuji is my favorite example). Plus, there’s still the possibility of another Kobashi dream match, in this case it would involved either Tenryu or Bob Sapp.

The Reality is…NOAH will more than likely be vindicated with this decision when another 16,000+ attendance for a Budokan show comes in July. The interesting thing here involves the importance of the show. While Budokan shows are nothing to scoff at, a Dome show offers a sort of prestige to the mainstream public in Japan that may not be involved with wrestling since The Dome is such a big and important building. The fact that the show is in Budokan means that the matches will have much better crowd heat than they would in the more business-like Tokyo Dome, but The Dome would give the matches added importance than Budokan would since it’s a general location for NOAH’s big shows. However, with the way NOAH’s going hopefully Akiyama will continue to have a good title reign, and that’s what yours truly would like to see, plus NOAH does seem to get motivated when it comes to their Budokan shows. Misawa may have destroyed Baba’s All Japan, but the mentality of putting on terrific Budokan shows still lives on.

PLUGS

This week I’m pimping out The Horsemen of Puro.

First up, Mike Campbell who’s already made an appearance here can be found at his site, Splash Mountain.

Next, Zach Arnold can be found at Puroresu Power. It’s a terrific site for news and rumors in the world of Japanese pro wrestling. Also, check out The Dr. Keith Lepinski Show if you have a shot, it’s fantastic.

Next up is Dave Ditch, whose column The Puroresu Pulse is a fantastic read, especially this week as he goes in-depth with Dragon Gate, an Indy promotion that is to Japan as RoH is to America. Also, you can check out Dave’s website Ditch Wrestling with a terrific assortment of videos, especially in the All Japan Archive.

And finally, Gordi Whitelaw and his great column The Art of Wrestling features Gordi’s thoughts on Wrestlemania.

Thanks for plugging this article guys, here’s your recipt.