Author’s Note: Go to the bottom for some corrections on the modern status of All Japan.
If you’re looking for a story of high success, this is it. If you’re looking for a tale of inner turmoil, this is it. If you’re looking for a devastating fall from the eagle’s nest, this is it.
For there is no more rags to riches to rags (and soon to probably be back to riches) story in professional wrestling than the sad and crushing story of All Japan Pro Wrestling. They came from the ashes of a promotion that had fallen into the furnace after it’s combination superstar wrestler and owner died, to become a company that, although still alive, lost a huge bit of it’s soul when it’s superstar wrestler owner died while still in power.
It is impossible to escape the cycle of history, no matter how you plan to.
In The Beginning, Rikidozan Created The Giant and The Chin
Before 1972, the main player in Japanese wrestling was the Japanese Wrestling Association, the first official professional wrestling promotion in the Land of The Rising Sun.
Founded in 1953, the JWA was owned and operated by Rikidozan, the most famous wrestler in Japanese history and the man called “The Father of Puroresu.” Rikidozan was a Korean-born former sumo wrestler who, once run from sumo due to discrimination towards Koreans, turned to pro wrestling in the late 40’s and early 50’s. He became Japan’s biggest wrestling star by defeating numerous American wrestlers, which the post World War Two Japanese populace ate up. In fact, two of Rikidozan’s matches are among the top 10 most watched television programs in Japanese history, with a sixty minute draw with Dick The Destroyer being the most watched television program in all of Japan.
He set up Nihon Puroresu Kyokai, or the Japanese Pro Wrestling Alliance/Japanese Wrestling Association in 1953, and it quickly became the Japanese branch of the National Wrestling Alliance, mainly because it was the only organized promotion in the country.
Rikidozan defeated Lou Thesz for the NWA International Heavyweight Championship in August 1958, and was later put over by Thesz despite the blow it could deal to Thesz’s reputation. This cemented Rikidozan as an international star worthy of respect, as well as the JWA’s standing with the governing body of wrestling that their business was good enough for their top star to win a prestigious NWA World title from such an unconquerable legend.
It was soon after that he began to take on students whom he’d train personally, alongside Thesz or the other shoot wrestler from America that was making waves in Karl Gotch. Two men would come along in Rikidozan’s path: A near seven foot tall baseball pitcher that had recently ended a six year long career with the Yomiuri Giants, and a slender world class shot putter with a movie star chin that had been living in Brazil. These two men reported to Rikidozan’s dojo in April of 1960, and there did Shohei Baba and Kanji Inoki form a relationship that would carry these men into great heights and intense rivalry.
Rikidozan’s two padawans made their way into the JWA and soon enough around the world, with Inoki making his way around the American Mid West and South East, Baba found bigger success in the NWA, challenging both NWA World Champion Buddy Rogers and WWWF World Champion Bruno Sammartino, albeit unsuccessfully. Meanwhile in JWA, Rikidozan was engaged in a legendary feud with equally legendary judoka Masahiko Kimura in one of the first semi-mixed martial arts series of fights. One match was noted for Rikidozan changing direction and chopping Kimura in the neck, causing him to pass out.
Tragedy struck on December 8, 1963 when Rikidozan was stabbed with a urine-soaked blade by a member of the yakuza while mingling in a Tokyo nightclub. Depending on what report is read, Rikidozan either threw the man out and continued hot stepping well into the morning hours, or went to his doctor and was told the wound would not pose a serious threat. However, Rikidozan contracted peritonitis from the urine, and died a week later. Some allege that Rikidozan was murdered for shooting on Kimura, others say it was an escalation of a common club squabble. Either way, JWA was now left with no star or boss, and Baba and Inoki with no mentor.
JWA would have to put Baba and Inoki at the forefront as Rikidozan’s chosen successors. The two would be a successful tag team, but would never have a break up feud, leaving the two to feud from behind office desks.
In the late 60’s, the International Wrestling Enterprise became the number two promotion in Japan, giving the weakened JWA a serious run for their money by stealing Karl Gotch and Lou Thesz, as well as being the first Japanese promotion to bring Andre The Giant to the country, where he would quickly become a huge star.
In 1972, Inoki attempted a business coup to place himself and Baba in charge of JWA, but they were struck down, leading the two biggest stars in Japan to leave and form their own promotions.
The Japanese Wrestling Association went out of business the following year with no stars and no crowds.
Digging Trenches
Inoki formed New Japan Pro Wrestling with himself as the top star and Japanese mainstays like UWF’s Akira Maeda, Riki Choshu, and Tatsumi Fujinami.
Baba, on the other hand, partnered with Nippon TV and Rikidozan’s sons Mitsuo and Yoshihiro Momota to create All Japan Pro Wrestling with himself as the star and Mitsuo Momota, Akio Sato, and IWE defector Thunder Sugiyama as it’s mainstays, with Sugiyama bringing many lower level IWE wrestlers in to freelance for All Japan and fill out the roster. However, unlike Inoki (at least until the 80's), Baba brought in a steady stream of foreigners to feud with the Japanese stars and give them an enemy to overcome to create their star, much in the vein of Rikidozan defeating the evil Americans, though tensions between the US and Japan had obviously dissipated in the near 30 years since the end of World War II. Nontheless, it worked. Eventually.
All Japan had their first show on October 21, 1972 at Machida City Gym in Tokyo. A few foreigners rounded out the card, with Dominic DeNucci defeating Akio Sato, Dutch Savage defeating Samson Kutsuwada, Classy Freddie Blassie getting himself DQ’d against Motoshi Okuma, and Jerry Kozak drawing Masio Koma. The main event would see Baba and Thunder Sugiyama be defeated at the last second in a 2 out of 3 falls match against Bruno Sammartino and Terry Funk. The rest of their initial tour would see different combinations of all the men on the first show, with a focus on Baba vs. Sammartino for the soon to be created Pacific Wrestling Federation World Heavyweight Title.
The PWF was set up by Baba in early 1973 as a governing body for All Japan and it’s titles, I assume to set up some legitimacy like the NWA. However, much like New Japan’s International Wrestling Grand Prix body, it doesn’t make much sense as the body only has one promotion under it’s umbrella, but I digress.
Baba cemented himself as the ace of his own promotion, just as Inoki was doing the same in New Japan, with the key difference being that Baba was much more willing to lose than Inoki was. That was one of many differences between the two that seemed to endear Baba to the fans more than Inoki, because it probably wasn’t his later in ring work. Baba was a fantastic mat and chain wrestler in his early career in the 60’s, but by the late 70’s, his reported acromegaly was already starting to wear his body down, along with some rumored nerve damage that may have left his arms slightly atrophied. But he was willing to put his new talent that he saw something in over his ego, something Inoki just could not seem to do. By the eighties and ninties, when he would be putting over his new up and comers, he was extremely limited, and thus many American fans don’t realize Baba used to put on thirty minute chain wrestling classics and throw dropkicks.
Either way, Baba won the first PWF World title, and held it for over five years, during which he placed AJPW under the umbrella of the NWA as it’s Japanese territory, and the PWF titles became regional titles with the NWA World Heavyweight title being the big kahuna. During that reign, he’d also bring the All Asia Tag Team championship, which he and Inoki had held four times, back from the dead three years after the JWA closed.
The NWA had a lot of faith in Baba as a promoter, as he would bring in big talents from the States and put them over, which led to some of the biggest stars in All Japan actually all being white Americans for a time, as The Funk Brothers would become huge stars, where the Spinning Toe Hold is as deadly as a Sharpshooter in Canada. The NWA rewarded Baba’s frequent flyers miles, for lack of a better phrase, by sending the top stars of the NWA in Jack Brisco and Harley Race to Japan all through the mid to late seventies, with Baba winning the title three times, once from Brisco and twice from Race.
It Was Acceptable In The 80's
The eighties would see Baba continue to reign as the top dog, but he would soon be challenged by probably the most popular gaijin in the history of Japanese wrestling: Stan Hansen.
Hansen fit the perfect stereotype that many countries have about the US: he’s a wild ass cowboy who beats the living shit out of people. In truth, Hansen is a very pleasant and nice man, but he is nearly blind without his glasses, and could not judge proximity or depth in the ring, leading him to swing wildly and just knock the piss out of people. This style did not make him popular in the US, and neither did his “cowboy” character, most people just saw it as hokey.
But the Japanese ate that stuff up, and they loved stiff style, as evident by the popularity of the UWF and Japan pretty much being the cradle of modern mixed marital arts with Pancrase. People would crowd the door when they heard Hansen’s music start to play, and would throw themselves into his path as he swung a full length bull rope with a cowbell to clear them from his path, resulting in many people, including women and children, getting brained with a ten pound cowbell and loving every second of it. To top it off, he came out wearing chaps, a leather vest, a cowboy hat about two sizes too big, and having a giant plug of chewing tobacco often hanging out of his mouth.
While in New Japan, Inoki continued to dominate the top of the card, winning the first IWGP title, Baba had an assorted cast of larger than life characters to surround himself with, with Hansen as the top foreigner, Abdullah The Butcher always lurking around with his nasty fork, Harley Race and Billy Robinson to put on the mat classics, and Baba’s own two star pupils looking to take over the top. We’ll get to them.
Hansen would trade victories and titles with Baba at first, in the process becoming the only man in history to pin Giant Baba and Antonio Inoki in singles championship matches. He’d defeat Baba twice for the PWF title, and held the title for over a year and 2/3 of a year in his first two reigns. After Riki Choshu ended his “invasion” angle of NJPW, as Choshu was the next biggest star in New Japan, Hansen won it, and then lost it to Genichiro Tenryu, the first of the pupils, who was also the NWA United National champion. Hansen would beat him, and gain both titles, leading he and the other pupil of Baba in Jumbo Tsuruta, who was the NWA International Heavyweight champion. Tsuruta defeated Hansen in April of 1989 to unify all three titles into what became the AJPW Triple Crown Heavyweight championship, represented by all three belts. The unification gave All Japan it’s own highly prestigious title, and they soon after left the NWA.
The two Baba proteges that would be the stars of the late 80’s and early 90’s would be Genichiro Tenryu and Jumbo Tsuruta.
Tenryu was a relatively successful sumo wrestler in his teenage years, and seemed to be headed for the top ranks of sumo before he left the sport due to disputes with his stablemaster. Baba saw the potential to create a new Rikidozan, and signed Tenryu up to the All Japan Dojo, where he trained him initially before sending him to Amarillo to be refined by his top foreigners in The Funk Brothers. He’d go on to feud all through the eighties with Tsuruta for multiple titles, as well as form an extremely successful team with him that would win multiple All Asia Tag titles and two World’s Strongest Determination Tag League tournaments.
Tsuruta was a monster of a man, standing six foot six and weighing nearly 300 pounds, he was a national wrestling champion and competed on the Japanese Greco-Roman team at the 1972 Olympics. He’d be an extremely successful tag team wrestler with and without Tenryu, winning 23 total tag titles in the promotion, but having much more singles success than Tenryu would, winning three Triple Crowns to Tenryu’s one, though Tenryu did look to be the chosen one, as he pinned Baba in a tag match, a feat only one other Japanese wrestler would accomplish. Baba’s teams would lose, but rarely for another Japanese wrestler was he ever the one to be pinned. Their feud for Tsuruta’s first Triple Crown was the first big name main event feud for the Triple Crown, and all feuds for the title in the future would be held to the standard of Tenryu-Tsuruta.
The turn of the next decade would begin with a near killer for All Japan, but would turn out to be their most successful and most destructive all at the same time.
The 90’s: Best In The World
April of 1990 would bring a departure that ruined relationships and Baba’s plans for the entire decade.
Tenryu left All Japan, despite seemingly being poised to led the company for the next decade, to become a full time spokesman for Megane Super, the biggest and most popular manufacturer of eyeglasses in Japan. Why he could not do both, I’m not sure, but I’d venture to guess they offered him a lot more money to leave than Baba was willing to pay him to stay. Rather than use him as a spokesman, Megane made Tenryu the face of it’s new, out of nowhere wrestling promotion Super World of Sports. With their big money offers, they wooed a lot of talent from New Japan and All Japan, with The Great Kabuki, former yokozuna Koji Kitao, and even the world’s greatest referee Red Shoes Unno jumping to the promotion. The Japanese crowds did not like this “money puroresu,” and simply saw wrestlers going for money and not passion or desire to work there. They signed inter-promotional deals with the WWF and tiny Japanese promotions like Fujiwara Gumi and Gran Hamada’s hybrid Universal Lucha Libre to try and bring some flavor to the product in the form of high flyers and shooters from the Japanese promotions and the usually successful tactic of bringing foreigners in from the WWF, but none of it excited the crowds. When the Japanese economy slumped in 1991 and 1992, the crowds just stopped coming, and Tenryu had left for naught, as the company was closed after just over two years in business.
As a side effect of this betrayal, Baba announced that Tenryu would never be allowed to be on an All Japan card in any form for as long as Baba was alive and in control. That comes up later.
So, with no star and Tsuruta joining Baba on the lower card comedy tag matches as his health began to decline, Baba relied on his foreign standby in Stan Hansen to hold the Triple Crown for over a combined year with two reigns being broken up by Tsuruta’s third and final run, which lasted for all of 1991 as Baba toiled away, attempting to pick the next generation he didn’t think he’d have to find so soon. But luckily for him, he was sitting on top of a gold mine waiting to be given the chance to shine.
Enter The Four Pillars of All Japan.
Mitsuharu Misawa had been in the company for over a decade, originally as the second incarnation of the Tiger Mask character after All Japan bought the rights to the character from New Japan. He’d already unmasked and begun to use his real name by the time of the first exodus, and had entered into a feud with Tsuruta, with the two sides gathering a posse of veterans and rookies alike, with Tsuruta taking a near physical mirror image of himself as his protege: A six foot six, 300 pound master of the chokeslam named Akira Taue. Misawa kept on the man he’d commanded to unmask him in the middle of the ring on as his main partner, another 10 year veteran named Toshiaki Kawada, notorious for his brutal, tooth rattling style. Lost on the undercard shuffle was an orange clad young man who tried his damnedest in every match, but could just never get over the hump and get a victory.
Misawa had defeated Tsuruta in a five star main event at the Nippon Budokan on June 8, 1990, which did establish him as an up and coming superstar, but the ensuing feud was designed to maintain Misawa’s status and elevate the partners of the two main men. Misawa wasn’t able to defeat Tsuruta for a while after that, falling to he and Taue in a WSDTL match, and two successive Triple Crown title shots. Misawa focused his efforts elsewhere, running a gauntlet of gaijin to better himself, beating former Triple Crown champion Terry Gordy twice in a row before moving back to Jumbo, where he forced Tsuruta to tap out during a defense of Misawa and Kawada’s World Tag Team titles. This was the win Misawa needed to get him one last shot at the Triple Crown, but he had a daunting task in Stan Hansen, who he’d never beaten before. He pulled it off, and Misawa officially became the Ace of All Japan Pro Wrestling, with Kawada getting a rub by soon turning on Misawa and joining forced with Taue to create the legendary Holy Demon Army, while Kobashi, the orange clad fighting spirit underdog, who’d finally snapped his streak and began to win, became Misawa’s sidekick, but would soon break out as the definite number two to Misawa, who further cemented his status as №1 by pinning Baba, the only other Japanese wrestler besides Tenryu to do so.
In short, the company was now set. With his genius acumen and sense, Giant Baba had effectively made chicken salad out of chicken shit; pushing his next generation into the fire before they were all ready and coming out perfectly fine.
Through the nineties,even though the American audiences had regular exposure to New Japan talent like Kensuke Sasaki, Masahiro Chono, and The Great Muta due to their appearances in the NWA’s WCW promotion, as Inoki had filled Baba’s Japanese absence, the hardcore tape traders and subscribers to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter were infatuated with All Japan; with it’s heavy main event scene with four capable men to put on five star matches and the rotating stable of foreigners providing hard hitting, believable resistance to the Japanese heroes. Even though the crowd cheered for everyone, they only chanted the names of their hometown heroes as they came to the ring. The four mainstays, alongside the newer coming Jun Akiyama, made All Japan the one to watch the world over, with the wrestlers and the company itself winning scores of awards from organizations the world over. They were riding high, even through the latter part of the decade saw New Japan hit it’s zenith before the curse of Inokism with talent like Chono, Muta, and Shinya Hashimoto hitting their stride, just as The Four Pillars had in the previous five years. Either way, All Japan and Baba were riding high, regularly selling out the Nippon Budokan, Ryugoku Kokugikan, and every once and a while the Tokyo Dome, some of the largest capacity arenas in Japan.
But just as every wave crests, it will soon crash in a scattering run of uncertainty and unpredictability.
All Japan 2K: The Beginning And The Revival
In January of 1999, Giant Baba, who was still wrestling select matches even a month before, lay dying of cancer in a hospital bed. January 22, Baba saw his final wrestling match, a barn burner where Toshiaki Kawada won the Triple Crown from Misawa despite breaking his ulna over Misawa’s head and nearly killing Misawa with the first ever Ganso Bomb when he couldn’t lift Misawa for a regular powerbomb. Baba reportedly told an attendant in the room that it was the finest match he’d ever seen, and that was saying a lot. Nine days later, on Janurary 31, 1999, Shohei Baba succumbed to cancer.
Immediately, Misawa was given the title of President of All Japan pro wrestling, assuming duties as head booker and public face of the corporate side of the business. All of Baba’s shares in the company, 85% of them, went to his widow Mokoto, with the remaining 15% of the stock being held by Nippon Television. However, trouble already began brewing on the first day, as Mokoto and Misawa did not agree on the direction of the company at all. Misawa clearly had a mind for the business, but Mokoto’s most famous contribution to All Japan was the push of Johnny Ace. Don’t get me wrong, Ace was a great wrestler and could hold his own with the best, but the main reason he got the big tag push resulting in 6 tag title reigns was because Mokoto took a shine to the blond haired pretty boy American.
By the beginning of the new millennium, the tension was ready to boil over, and that it did on May 28, 2000. Misawa was removed as president by a majority vote from the executive board, meaning Baba and Nippon TV executives. A month later, at a meeting of the regular board, constituted mainly by wrestlers, Misawa (still on the board), Yoshihiro Momota, Kenta Kobashi, Akira Taue, and Kenichi Oyagi resigned from the board. Baba soon released a statement saying that Misawa “took no responsibility and abandoned his duty,” even though he really had no major duty after she and the shareholders removed him.
On June 16, 2000, a blow that nearly put All Japan under was dealt, as 26 of the 30 contracted wrestlers on the roster, excluding Masanobu Fuchi, Toshiaki Kawada, Stan Hansen, and Maunakea Mossman, convened for a press conference, where they announced that they were leaving to form a new promotion with Misawa at the helm. Misawa stated the second exodus was so the talent could do things in a “modern style.”
Three days later, Kawada and Fuchi passed along the news that the entire front office had quit and was headed to Pro Wrestling NOAH, as Misawa’s new promotion was called. They also announced that Nippon TV was dropping All Japan from it’s airwaves after nearly 30 years of support. Because NTV remained a 15% shareholder, they had the veto power to keep AJPW from ever being on a new network, and to pour salt in the wound, they announced that they would replace All Japan with a weekly taped show of NOAH matches and tour highlights. The final All Japan broadcast consisted of footage of the recently departed Jumbo Tsuruta’s funeral, the press conference with Fuchi and Kawada, a highlight reel of Kawada and Misawa’s first Triple Crown match against each other, and Takao Omori and Yoshihiro Takayama vs. the Holy Demon Army for the World Tag Team titles.
Baba immediately announced that the roster would be replenished with the roster of the the soon to be defunct Wrestle and Romance promotion, led by none other than Genichiro Tenryu. Tenryu and Kawada teamed against Hansen and Mossman in his return, the first show All Japan held after the major players leaving for NOAH had their final All Japan matches. Dr. Death had come out to challenge his old rival Misawa to one final match after Misawa’s last match, but the Emerald Ace returned backstage with no match and left the arena before the last two matches. Baba soon after announced that Stan Hansen, who was about to retire due to a severe case of lumbago, was appointed as the new chair of the PWF, as if that meant anything, but more a way to keep their big gaijin in the fold after he quit wrestling, and to reward his loyalty.
Fuchi entered a New Japan ring in August and announced that he was taking over. Riki Choshu soon joined him, and AJPW and NJPW created a two year long cross promotional alliance, a seeming helping hand from Inoki to help his old friend’s widow get her company back on track. The main highlight of the alliance was Keiji Mutoh defeating Tenryu for the Triple Crown.
On January 11, 2002, just after the Tokyo Dome show for New Japan, Keiji Mutoh left New Japan, where he’d made his name, and joined All Japan full time, bringing Satoshi Kojima and Kendo Kashin along. In September, Baba announced that Mutoh was to be given full control of the promotion, as well as receiving all 85% of Baba’s stock.
Under Mutoh, All Japan underwent a revitilization by mixing some of Baba’s old standbys, mainly keeping all of the titles intact as well as continuing to hold the annual Champion Carnival and the World’s Strongest Determination Tag League, but also introducing some ideas that Giant Baba would never have done, but it still brought something new. Mutoh continued to cross-promote with New Japan, including a match between the IWGP Heavyweight and the Triple Crown champion at a New Japan show. Baba never would have allowed his top champion to appear in another promotion where he could not control whether his man won or not. Mutoh would also set up working relationships with various promotions around the world, with the main one being in TNA around 2006–7, when TNA had it’s best wrestlers at their peak and consistent viewership. However, the extent of the relationship would be one of Mutoh’s proteges in Akira Raijin becoming Kiyoshi and eventually being one of the many Suicides, and All Japan wrestlers constituting the 2004 World X Cup Japanese team. Mutoh was able to bridge the two big Japanese promotions when he became the second man, after his other big name in All Japan, Satoshi Kojima, to hold the IWGP and Triple Crown titles simultaneously.
The new generation of All Japan also fostered under Mutoh, with Suwama and new top gaijin Joe Doering being the best of the class. All Japan, NOAH, and New Japan would constantly shift between the 1,2, and spots as Inokism nearly killed NJPW, NOAH continued to build new talent like KENTA and Naomichi Marufuji as Misawa and Kobashi began to wear down. Mutoh was even able to get Misawa to return for a few one-off shots in AJPW, mainly in tag matches either with or against Mutoh, and managed to get more New Japan guys to sort of freelance, working All Japan when New Japan didn’t need or want them, leading to Tencozy winning the WSDTL and the World Tag League in AJPW and NJPW in the same year, twice. He also negotiated a new TV deal with GAORA, a smaller network than NTV, but still a network.
Things were riding high and finally looking up, but apparently All Japan can’t have any extended success without a catastrophic failure.
On June 7, 2011, Mutoh announced that he was stepping down as president, but would remain on the board and on the roster. The resignation stemmed from a backstage assault on May 29 of the same year, where Yoshikazu Taru assaulted Nobukazu Hirai backstage, leaving Hirai with a blod clot in his brain, which burst after his match later that night, giving Hirai a stroke and leaving him in a coma. He’s since awoken from the coma, but has not recovered enough to return to wrestling. Mutoh took personal blame for the whole ordeal, and resigned. Mutoh dropped to the midcard, and kept chugging along, with his handpicked successor Masayuki Uchida taking his top spot in the office.
However, in 2012, Mutoh decided to sell his 85% shares to Speed Partners, an IT company, for 200 million yen, or just a bit over 2 million US dollars. Mutoh remained as a wrestler, while Speed Partners president Nobuo Shiraishi took control. In January 2013, AJPW signed former NOAH stars Atsushi Aoki, Go Shiozaki, Jun Akiyama, Kotaru Suzuki, and Yoshinobu Kanemaru to freelance deals. They’d left NOAH due to the poor treatment of Kenta Kobashi, who was about to retire but was not being given a position in the office to run the sinking company alongside Akira Taue, who became president after Misawa’s death in 2009. Kobashi would also return to AJPW, becoming the new president of the PWF after Hiroshi Hase, Hansen’s successor, left to focus on his political career.
Shortly after the sale was made public in early 2013, Uchida and Shiraishi were negotiating to get Mutoh back into the presidency by the end of May. But there was treachery afoot, as Shiraishi betrayed Uchida and Mutoh by naming himself president of the promotuon, despite having no knowledge of how to run a wrestling promotion.
Mutoh quit in protest, as he and Uchida were in Canada and could not fight the hostile takeover at all, and a number of talents loyal to him followed him out of the promotion, with names like Masukatsu Funaki, former Triple Crown champion Ryota Hama, Seiya Sanada, and Koji Kanemoto walking out. Mutoh and Uchida, as well as Mutoh’s business partners that received part of the AJPW stock buyout, pooled their money together to start Wrestle-1 under Mutoh’s direction and with the departed All Japan talent to fill the roster.
A company founded amidst an exodus had just gone througha third exodus of it’’s own, and they looked in rough shape.
Shiraishi’s ego had doomed his company, as fan support for All Japan dropped immensely, with the company going into the red for the first time shortly after the Wrestle-1 departure. Mokoto Baba, disgusted by the idiocy of Shiraishi, demanded that the AJPW title belts be returned to her family. All Japan replaced the three belts of the Triple Crown with a single new belt, and the three belts were returned to Baba. The big NOAH departures were re-upped on exclusive deals, and the company was renamed to Zen Nihon Puroresu Systems. Shiraishi soon stepped down, with his corporate men Hirota Inoue became the president, although he would step down before he’d even been the president for a year. Akebono was also signed to an exclusive deal, which didn’t really excite hardcore fans. Akebono was still a huge celebrity to the average fan, but hardcore fans saw a large man they were trying to make the next Tenryu, except Tenryu lost a lot of his sumo weight and could actually wrestle worth a damn.
Jun Akiyama, the unofficial Fifth Pillar of the golden days, was named president in 2014. He tried his best to keep it afloat, but the ship started to sink. By the end of 2015, Baba had returned in an attempt to right the ship. Go Shiozaki had resigned. Akebono had left to go back to MMA. Kotaru Suzuki, the reigning World Junior Heavyweight champion, left. Just after that, Yoshinobu Kanemaru announced that he was leaving in December.
At the end of 2015, Akiyama announced that the departures stemmed from All Japan making all contracts pay per appearance instead of guaranteed in order to save money. However, they’ve bounced back, holding a number of shows with steady attendance figures, and continuing to tour the nation, though they seem to like Tokyo, for obvious reasons.
Giant Baba built a company with his bare hands and weathered it through the storm of his biggest star leaving, only to have the biggest period of it’s existence. His death brought a huge amount of discord that has even sustained to this day, but the company has managed to whether it all.
It’s gone up and down since, like an erratic EKG, but it seems that one of the most storied promotions in the world is breathing it’s final, shallow breaths.
EDIT: Let me correct this and my apparent lackluster research. I couldn’t find anything on extremely current All Japan, but some fine folks with much better knowledge than I ave corrected and criticized me, rightly so, on Twitter, pointing out that All Japan has bounced back once again, and is drawing very consistent, loyal crowds to it’s shows on a regular basis.
Mokoto Baba pulled her money in 2015 when Akebono left, as he convinced her to fund his new Odo promotion, and Baba was again at odds with the president, this time Akiyama, as she wanted to continue doing the old style, the exact same reasons for her arguments with Misawa, though she had no pull and left instead. Akiyama decided to start doing business in a more independent style, essentially trying to form the biggest indy promotion in Japan rather than get in a pissing match with New Japan. 2015 was a rough year prior to the departures, as attendance went up and down and money was uncertain after Baba left.
They regularly tour around Japan, drawing between 300–700 people depending on what size building they book. Akiyama has also implemented his “super indy” system, and it seems to be working, with the roster consisting of a number of freelancers. Akiyama has brought big money sponsors like the Japanese Automobile Federation in to replace the money lost when Baba left. Kento Miyahara has become the new ace, and at the relatively young age of 27, balancing him out with the older ace in Suwama, who is nearing 40. They’ve also taken in three new trainees for the dojo this month.
It looks like All Japan, though not standing toe to toe with New Japan anymore, are doing just fine, and things are looking up.
Again, I apologize and take responsibilities for my errors on the modern state of All Japan, and would like to thank @hailstonehoward and @ElStopSpot, two Twitter users who helped with the nitty gritty details. HailstoneHoward is a nice fella who runs AJPW Kings Road World, a site that really would have helped in this process if I’d known about it. Go check it out for all the newest news on All Japan Pro Wrestling.
Remember kids, always ask around for info. You won’t look like a moron.
