AJPW v. NJPW - A historical perspective

[MoS]

I am a newbie to puroresu. I have just started following 90s AJPW consistently.

 

While I have been blown away by what I have seen, as someone who is a mark for the business side of things, I am very interested to know, since the inception of the two companies, which of the two companies was bigger and was drawing more money. I would like to know throughout their period of existence, which company was on top; when they got replaced; what were the periods of dominance of both companies; when and how they exchanged the numero uno spot in Japan.

 

Bear in mind that I do not know if other companies ever beat these two and were at the top, although I have heard that UWF and later NOAH were ahead of these two at various points of time. So, if someone could fill in the blanks for me with regard to the other companies, I would be extremely grateful as well.

 

Thanks in advance!

[Fantastic]

Hopefully someone more knowledgeable and capable than me will chime in! I'll give a couple of points of what I know though from recent years:

 

- AJPW was basically the company in Japan from as early as the late 1980's until the mid 1990's. Certainly following Baba's death and Misawa's exodus, the company was never again what it once was.

 

- NJPW only really begun it's resurgence in the latter part of the 00's following the departure of Inoki and the end of the Yukes relationship. Basically, once Gedo and Jado took over the book and Bushiroad purchased the company, everything became as awesome as it currently is.

[Timbo Slice]

Both were started because of Japan Pro Wrestling, where Antonio Inoki and Giant Baba joined in 1960. Baba was initially a big star after the death of RIkidozan, while Inoki wanted to get out on his own. In 1971, Inoki planned to takeover JWA, but was fired instead, which led him to creating New Japan. Baba straight up left and created All Japan at around the same time.

 

AJPW was always tradition in the style of the NWA, and was a member of it throughout its heydays, with NWA World Champions touring in the 70's and 80's. NJPW saw Inoki lean towards "real fights" based on Inoki's trainings with Lou Thesz and Karl Gotch. So the styles were different from the get go. NJPW would have working relationships with the WWF and the AWA in the 70's and into the early 1980's, although since there weren't many wrestlers who were central to one territory back then, there was a lot of overlap.

 

When Stan Hansen jumped from New Japan to All Japan in 1981, that's when things tightened up a bit between the two promotions. Hansen had become a top star but felt he had a better chance with Baba, and that led to some weird things happening through the decade (Riki Chosyu coming over for a spell in 1986, Baba buying the Tiger Mask gimmick from Inoki) but by then, both styles had been set in stone in a way, with AJPW's NWA ties keeping it more traditional while Inoki bringing in shoot style workers like Akira Maeda led to a pretty fantastic feud in its own right. Both companies were drawing pretty good money, but neither company had a true edge over the other at this time.

 

In 1989, New Japan ran their first show at the Tokyo Dome to a pretty good response, which led to the annual Dome shows every year beginning in 1992 on January 4. There were points when New Japan was running multiple Dome shows in a year and selling them out. At the same time in 1989, AJPW saw the decay of the NWA and was trying to break away in their own right, which led to the formation of the Triple Crown using two of the NWA's longstanding titles and the PWF title, which Baba created back in 1973.

 

Both companies had losses of their weekly TV programs throughout the 1990's (which weren't in favorable time slots in the first place, but was still worthwhile exposure), but as far as the drawing money was concerned, both did well throughout the first half of the decade. The problem became later in the decade for AJPW when new stars weren't being created and they kept running the same guys on top (although the match quality was still outstanding).

 

Meanwhile, New Japan had made the Dome its home and even if match quality wasn't as great as All Japan's in some ways, they found other ways to draw money (Which led to WWF/WCW comparisons between the two companies in some ways). It wasn't until 1998 that Baba decided to run a Dome show, mainly out of fear that the wouldn't be able to fill the house. Instead? It was basically a sellout (48,300, $4M), but was a bit too late for the company. After Baba's death soon after, Baba's widow became owner and did not agree with Misawa on the direction of the company, leading to the creation of Pro Wrestling NOAH in 2000.

 

Soon after, All Japan was basically left for dead. They did a cross promotional feud at the end of 2000 that ran for about a year, and afterwards, Keiji Mutoh jumped to All Japan and assumed the role of president of the company, trying to lead it towards a more North American style. There were then power struggles with Inoki and his son Simon, with Antonio going to great lengths to get the MMA/shoot element into cards with horrible results. When he stepped away in 2006, that led to the resurgence mentioned above, and over the last decade behind Tanahashi, it's become by far the best company in Japan.

 

All Japan is in a weird spot now with Akiyama as president and him trying to branch out the company as best he can, but NJPW just started a working agreement with NOAH.

 

This is really the cliff notes version off the top of the head with a couple bits of research for clarity, but both companies had different ways of doing business while being successful for basically a quarter century before things got interesting. Some people will probably come in to clarify things or add to them, but this should give you a rough estimate.

[PeteF3]

From a business standpoint, NJPW was almost always ahead of All-Japan from at least the early '80s onward, with the big exception being when Choshu's Army was with AJPW.

[ohtani's jacket]

They were ahead of All Japan in the 70s as well. Inoki drew some big ratings for his proto-MMA fights. The 80s were a lot more rocky than people tend to realise. Business wasn't great for New Japan after '83. After all the shit went down with Inoki and his profit siphoning, the company struggled to draw with its limited roster. The UWF feud didn't draw as well as people imagine and whatever boost Choshu's return provided was killed by the booking and Sumo Hall debacle at the end of '87. The history of NJPW is similar to WWE in terms of boom periods and not really the "steady as she goes" narrative it's sometimes portrayed as. In that regard, Choshu probably deserves even more credit than he already receives for his booking of NJPW in the 90s, because it was, for a large stretch of the decade, the most profitable company in the world and that was with a flagging TV spot.

[BigBadMick]

They were ahead of All Japan in the 70s as well. Inoki drew some big ratings for his proto-MMA fights. The 80s were a lot more rocky than people tend to realise. Business wasn't great for New Japan after '83. After all the shit went down with Inoki and his profit siphoning, the company struggled to draw with its limited roster. The UWF feud didn't draw as well as people imagine and whatever boost Choshu's return provided was killed by the booking and Sumo Hall debacle at the end of '87. The history of NJPW is similar to WWE in terms of boom periods and not really the "steady as she goes" narrative it's sometimes portrayed as. In that regard, Choshu probably deserves even more credit than he already receives for his booking of NJPW in the 90s, because it was, for a large stretch of the decade, the most profitable company in the world and that was with a flagging TV spot.

Reading Observers from '83 - '89 you get the impression the two groups were switching pole position every couple of years. Dave pointed to bringing Brody back in late '87 as proof of Baba's desperation around the time.