Brandon Thurston: Paul Levesque closed the press conference emphasizing improved international growth opportunities and the opportunity to execute on an international “global localization” talent development strategy now that WWE has support from Endeavor following the TKO merger.

4 comments

1. Feels like at least worth discussing here considering this sub is often used as a puro hub as a whole.

   Could be nothing, could be something. Given current metrics, and how closely Bushiroad and Cyberfight are operating at the moment, opening a branch in Japan seems like a suicide operation. Nobody is making money in the region right now.

   Personally, there’s already one American promotion with an infinite money glitch that’s actively making my NJPW viewing experience worse, so I’d rather the other one with a much more predatory history stay in its lane.

2. Let’s look at this seriously.

   I’ll say the same thing I said about the khan gonna buy njpw guff. Why in the name of God would someone want to do that. This is not the UK where the wwe could disrupt the market by paying guys working at McDonald’s fulltime money and a vague promise of main roster appearances.

   This is a market with razor thin margins because already so much money has to be paid in wages. To put this into perspective Mayu Iwatani after the bushiroad buyout in an interview said her downside was 1 million yen a month (~10k) and in good months she could make 3 million yen (~30k). Japanese wrestlers who have gone to the wwe have typically taken pay cuts at first because the ceiling on money is so much higher (plus fame) if they were to get over.

   So for the wwe to come in an upset the market for anyone who can draw a brass razoo they will have to pay more money than they would typically want to spend on nxt talent. What Japanese talent who sign with the wwe want is opportunity to pull in wwe upper midcarder money in the US. Not to be warehoused for a promotion that will initially have pretty weak korakuen strength. Let’s say they offer huge money for all the big stars right

   Then they are in the same position everyone else in the market is in lol. The point of monopolising a market is to make money.

   I just don’t see the appeal here.

3. Lol this can mean absolutely nothing I’m getting sick and tired of the sky is falling doomer stuff about NXT Japan happening ever since 2016 there’s been tons of people fear-mongering about NXT Japan going to kill the Japanese wrestling scene it’s been years since then and nothing has happened I think this fear-mongering about NXT Japan is mostly done by people who don’t understand the Japanese Market is incredibly hard for foreign companies to be successful in Japan WWE is not even that popular in Japan to begin with and this is not the UK where the WWE just believed a bunch of small mom and pop promotions tons of Japanese wrestling companies are owned by gigantic corporations stop comparing this to the UK they’re not in any way similar at all

4. Bushiroad companies will most likely be fine (specially New Japan). A bit worried about smaller promotions though, specially if they buy into one (even though as a few people have already pointed out, this won’t be like what they did to the UK scene).