Section 1- Results
All Japan: Six days of the Champions Carnival down, four to go. At present it appears that (as expected) Kojima and Minoru Suzuki will march to a collision in the semifinals, following a draw in their round-robin match. The other block is thoroughly up in the air after Suwama pinned Kea, Kea make Sasaki tap, and both Mutoh vs Kea and Sasaki vs Mutoh went to draws. I expect that Sasaki vs Suwama on the last day will determine one of the semi spots, though the other is more up in the air.
Dragon Gate: Tuesday’s Korakuen show was a wild one, preceded by a surprisingly important lead-in on Monday. The end result is that Naoki Tanisaki, Yoshino, Doi and Gamma have caused a split in the Blood Generation stable, with CIMA/Fujii/Takagi (the original stable) being the other half. Also on Monday, Stalker got the win of a lifetime by beating the Florida Brothers in a gimmick vs gimmick match with no less than a German suplex. Main event on Monday was a mix-em-up tag match with Ryo Saito & Susumu Yokosuka beating Magnum Tokyo & Mochizuki. Yokosuka pinned Mochizuki to add momentum to his title chase.
NOAH: Masao Inoue-MANIA is runnin’ wild as he got perhaps the biggest win of his career, pinning Sano on Friday. He’ll take on Saito in the tournament final on Sunday, and I know you’re breathless with anticipation over that clash of titans. Also Scorpio made a routine openweight title defense against Ricky Marvin on Monday.
Section 2- News
Dragon Gate: The 4/23 card is getting loaded. Shingo Takagi vs BB Hulk (which was quite good in December) will determine the next title challenger. CIMA and Fujii will take on Gamma and Doi for the right to the Blood Generation name. Yoshie will land, perhaps in a one-shot, to face Stalker. Poor Stalker.
New Japan: The Tuesday update at Strong Style Spirit has a lot of information about Hideyuki Watanabe, who has been very influential behind the scenes in recent years. For example he’s the one guiding Akebono’s wrestling career. There’s also a note about New Japan’s fan club and how it used to steer members towards risky/sleazy loans. Gotta love yakuza ties!
NOAH: Taiji Ishimori, who has wrestled in every Japan promotion under the sun, seems on his way to NOAH. He’ll challenge KENTA at the Budokan show on the 23rd. NOAH has announced a Budokan show for July, meaning no Tokyo Dome show this year.
Section 3- Loot & Shillage
Phil Clark has my thoughts on the lack of a NOAH dome show and keeps it real in the process. Meanwhile there’s more plunder on the All Japan archive for your consumption.
Section 4- Privately held, publicly lying
Let’s start with Korakuen Hall. Every puro fed worth its salt has run there. Every puro fed worth mentioning uses the building several times a year. It’s decades old. It’s an institution. So why is it that a basic thing like “how many people can fit in the venue” can be a matter of contention? Is it 1800, commonly cited as the standard seating capacity? 2100, the number often claimed by NOAH and thought to be the ‘standing room only’ number? 2300, which was the claim made by Zero-One for a show in May ’03 that had fans as packed in as I’ve ever seen? Dragon Gate claims that number regularly despite clearly not cramming ’em in like sardines.
The reason there’s no clear number is the same reason why Wreslemania 3’s famous crowd of 93,000 is under dispute: wrestling promotions that don’t have public stock lie about their business numbers in order to look better. If you can make it sound like a lot of people are interested in your shows, it’s a bit easier to lure in fans for the new hot thing.
A corporation has to state revenues and expenses come tax time, but they don’t have to account for every single ticket, every discounted or free ticket, or every fictional butt not actually in the seats. A Japanese fan emailed me an anecdote about Takoyaki (octopus sold by street vendors) coming with a free ticket when you’re outside certain wrestling shows. Only in cases like WWE where public trading requires full reports to stockholders are promotions forced to tell the whole truth. In Japan this situation is compounded by press coverage (adding pressure for the perception of success), ties to the black market, and a much smaller number of muckraking reporters.
If I want to know the exact attendance of a show in Japan, the source I’m most likely to trust is Dave Meltzer. Others like Zach Arnold can provide a reasonable ballpark figure shortly after the show takes place. I can’t trust the official websites of Japanese federations, who have all been caught in fudged numbers. I can’t trust Japanese sports coverage, even name-brands like Yahoo!, who rely on the federations to provide attendance numbers. I can’t trust my eyes when watching a show because eyeballing a crowd is incredibly inaccurate, and even then you have to start with the assumption of a certain maximum capacity.
The most heavily ‘worked’ venue has always been the Tokyo Dome. The biggest shows with the most hype and the most fans, why not go so far as to say that Antonio Inoki’s retirement show drew 70,000? Well, how about the simple fact that you can’t fit that many people into the Tokyo Dome? Even the usual sell-out claim of around 63,000 is dubious. When you start to factor in empty seats, giveaways and so on, true numbers are hard to come by.
Is NOAH or New Japan number one? Is Dragon Gate doing better than Zero-One? Which wrestlers are drawing the most fans? Which matchups are the crowds coming to? Those are all things that, as a puro analyst, I want to be able to answer. A few months back I started considering the NOAH vs New Japan dilemma, but now I’m near the point of giving up. Without clear, reliable data to work with I can’t say anything for sure but the blatantly obvious. Over the long run this might force me to stop fixating on business numbers like ticket sales. Oh the humanity!
