Section 1- Results
All Japan: Despite claiming a higher attendance than the venue can hold, All Japan did manage its best attendance in a year and a half for the Hase retirement show. Naturally, Team Hase beat Voodoo Murders in the main event. Beneath it Muta beat Tajiri, Kondo defended the junior title against Hayashi, and Kea held off Kawada.
Osaka Pro: Adding some context to the show report I wrote, Billy Ken Kid won the Osaka Pro title from Super Delfin on Saturday. The show drew just 15 more people at the Delfin Arena than the meaningless show I saw on Tuesday the week before.
Zero-One: Nakanishi & Omori beat Ohtani & Tanaka in a Zero-One tag title defense on Friday.
Section 2- News
All Japan: Kea vs Minoru Suzuki is now the confirmed Triple Crown match for Sunday. Kawada is also on this card, so I’m guessing he’ll be a ‘regular irregular’ from now on as opposed to just having been used to build up the Kea match.
Section 3- You know what time it is
Once again, here is a link to Daily Puro. Please only click the ads in extreme moderation as ‘click spam’ doesn’t help anyone.
Another repeat, be sure to peruse the PuroPulse archives for this and last year’s Japan trip recaps.
Finally, Phil and Mike go in-depth on the All Japan show because I told Phil I wouldn’t.
Section 4- Everyone’s Olympic Hero
Kurt Angle walks into the office of a wrestling promotion and says “I’d like to work here”. Assuming there isn’t a WWE competition clause preventing it, the answer will be “yes” no matter where. Naturally the same could be said for any number of lesser ex-WWE stars, but in Angle’s case a number of promotions would also add “name your price” to their answer. Angle is the total package, one of the five most marketable active wrestlers on the planet and someone who every wrestling money-man has been coveting for years. That goes double for Japan.
In Japan, being an Olympic wrestler who didn’t even place is still enough to earn plenty of attention from the pro wrestling community. Choshu, Nakanishi, Tamon Honda, Masa Saito, Hiro Hase, Jumbo and Yoshiaki Yatsu (who made the team on a boycott year) were all Japanese Olympians in amateur wrestling. Judo stars like Naoya Ogawa get similar treatment. Some, like Nakanishi, were recruited very aggressively. Yuji Nagata’s younger brother can write his own ticket after getting a silver medal in 2000. Kurt Angle, with a heavyweight division gold, could have wrestled anywhere in Japan after 1996 even before making his WWF debut. Now that he’s a proven cash machine and a demonstrably reliable worker, that demand is exponentially greater. I can only assume that he had offers from every major Japanese fight company within a week of his WWE release. Angle is Brock Lesnar, minus the negatives but with more mileage.
There is no chance whatsoever that Angle will become a touring wrestler with a Japanese promotion. That much should be obvious to anyone. If he’s going to tour he’ll do it with whoever pays best, and Vince has the deepest pockets. Thus the only chance of him appearing in a Japanese promotion would be on big shows a couple times a year… but wait, even there WWE makes the most sense. WWE’s PPV shows generate more revenue apiece than all but a handful of promotions do in an entire year, and for the big three shows the number is that much higher. Big name part-time free agent wrestlers like Foley, Hogan, Nash, Scott Steiner and Goldberg only had a cup of coffee in Japan since WCW folded for just that reason: their going rate is several grand per bump and Japan isn’t paying what it used to. Factor in that Angle hasn’t burned his bridge to WWE ala Goldberg and Lesnar, and he has even less reason to pop up in Japan barring an astronomically high one-show offer. The kind which don’t come too often since New Japan and DSE/PRIDE/HUSTLE tightened the purse strings a bit.
What will keep Angle out of Japan isn’t a Japanese fear of his health, or a fear of a Lesnar repeat; it will be cold hard cash. Angle has achieved the kind of ‘legend’ status that would allow him to wrestle a light schedule in WWE while still making full-time money. Since full-time WWE money is still the best deal any wrestler can get, you’d better nix any visions of Angle vs Kobashi.
