Once again in the wrestling world it looks like there could be a huge spat of Japanese
talent signing with American promotions, which seems to have riled up certain companies a
little.
But what has caused this?
Why do American promotions keep signing these wrestlers?
And why do the wrestlers accept these offers?
Across 2023, there’s been a lot of news stories surrounding Japanese promotions, namely
New Japan Pro Wrestling and Stardom, both of which are owned by the same parent company,
Bushiroad.
There’s been rumours and reports surrounding multiple wrestlers, including top names such
as Will Ospreay, Giulia, Sareee, Kairi, and more.
All of their futures at point or another were looking uncertain, with their next career
moves looking likely to take them to American shores.
Will Ospreay has competed at the top level for New Japan Pro Wrestling for many years,
while also in 2023 alone working for multiple indie promotions, AEW, Impact Wrestling, and
also registering interest in WWE.
Interest which was reportedly mutual.
Kairi worked for Stardom years ago, before her first WWE run as Kairi Sane.
She left the wrestling side of WWE in 2020, returning to Japan but remaining as an ambassador
for the company until 2021, when she left the promotion entirely.
She would return to Stardom in 2022, but then returned to WWE again in November 2023 at
Crown Jewel.
Sareee, or Sarray as some may know her, made a name for herself in Pro Wrestling Diana,
before being signed by WWE in 2020.
Following her brief run in NXT, she left WWE in May 2023, reportedly due to creative differences,
with her last match coming nearly a year prior in July 2022.
After rumours and reports of interest from American promotions, with WWE reportedly interested
in reaching out to her to entice her back, Sareee signed with Sukeban, an American joshi
promotion in November 2023.
Giulia has been regarded as one of the top names in Stardom for a long time, garnering
interest globally, and it was reported in November 2023 by Dave Meltzer in the Wrestling
Observer Newsletter that “WWE made [Giulia] an offer and she had not decided what to do.”
Mariah May had been rumoured to be signing with an American promotion for months before
her signing with AEW in November 2023, after she’d grown in recognition in Stardom as
well.
You may notice that the discussion around all of these names is pointing one way: talent
moving out of Japan and into America.
This has been the case in the wrestling world for decades.
Aside from one name that made headlines: Megan Bayne.
Megan Bayne had started wrestling for Stardom in July 2023, after previously working for
AEW from 2021 through early 2023.
Sean Ross Sapp of Fightful reported that Bayne was still under an AEW contract, but had been
sent to Stardom to continue working and improving.
But that brought about this since-deleted tweet from Stardom:
“No wrestler has ever been sent by AEW to come to Stardom.
Not once.”
Further reports clarified that Stardom was refuting the use of the term ‘sent’, as
they had actively recruited Bayne, rather than AEW being the ones who made the deal
happen.
Though Fightful Select would also later clarify that AEW and New Japan sources would agree
with the terminology of ‘sent’, and yes this might all seem like semantics on the
surface, but considering all this talk of talent from Japanese promotions going elsewhere
in the world right now, this might be hinting at something deeper.
And this is far from the first time something like this has happened.
American promotions signing top talent from Japanese promotions has been a thing for decades,
but particularly moreso in recent years.
In the same announcement, WWE managed to sign AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Karl Anderson
and Doc Gallows from New Japan Pro Wrestling in 2016, where Styles & Nakamura were two
of the promotions’ top stars.
The two having just faced each other in a hugely praised match at Wrestle Kingdom 10,
with Styles, Anderson and Gallows being hugely prominent members of the ultra popular Bullet
Club.
And of course there’s WWE signing names such as Kana, who would become Asuka, Kairi
Sane, Io Shirai, Sarray, Finn Balor, even re-signing Giant Bernard in 2012, who had
made multiple challenges for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship during his run in
New Japan Pro Wrestling.
Giant Bernard, also known as Albert, also known as A-Train, also known as Prince Albert,
would return as Lord Tensai.
And we all remember that one don’t we?
These huge signings aren’t just done by WWE though, as if you look at AEW, the formation
of their company in 2019 saw New Japan lose a ton of their top names.
Kenny Omega, Matt and Nick Jackson, Hangman Adam Page, Cody Rhodes, and even years later
with signings like Konosuke Takeshita from DDT, Kota Ibushi after he had left NJPW, Jay
White, Juice Robinson, the DNA of Japanese wrestling is found all over the company.
Not to mention those who had made a name for themselves in Japan as well like Toni Storm,
Jamie Hayter, Riho, Hikaru Shida, Emi Sakura, Yuka Sakazaki, the list goes on.
Granted, in some of these cases, they have non-exclusive contracts, so with Sakazaki,
she still wrestles in TJPW in Japan while also being signed to AEW.
Regardless, it’s a running theme throughout all of wrestling history that Japanese promotions
like Stardom, like New Japan, like DDT, all build up new stars, and then a bigger American
promotion signs them.
And given these American promotions’ shaky records with that talent, some being successes
and others decidedly not, why do the wrestlers accept these offers?
Well, Dave Meltzer had some insight on Wrestling Observer Radio, specifically talking about
WWE’s interest in Giulia, where he said: “We don’t know the nature of the offer
from WWE.
She earns more in Japan than the women in NXT although they can afford an NXT deal,
if they wanted to, that would beat her Japan earnings.
If this is a main roster offer, that is well above what she would be making in Japan.”
The crucial part of this is the fact that WWE can afford to pay her as much as she was
earning in Japan for an NXT deal, above what the usual rate is.
WWE, because of its size, has the luxury to be able to pay wrestlers more, and sometimes,
as we’ve seen through all of wrestling history, it’s not just about signing that wrestler,
it’s about making sure that other people don’t sign them.
And this is why a lot of these wrestlers are willing to accept offers from these larger
promotions: because they can get paid a lot more than they otherwise would, and who can
begrudge them for that?
It’s not just about getting paid of course, but it’s a pretty big factor, plus there’s
the chance that they can be featured on a national and international level, which only
raises their own personal stock even further.
In theory, signing with a big promotion is a nice, symbiotic relationship.
And it must be frustrating for promotions like Stardom, who are always seen as a secondary
promotion, to build stars up, only for a bigger fish to come along and take all the hard work
they’ve done and profit from it.
Which makes it a lot easier to understand why, when reports come out saying that AEW
had sent a wrestler to Stardom, had sent a wrestler to a smaller promotion to get her
reps in, they’d respond with a bit of fire and passion.
Stardom would tweet, again, now-deleted, that says:
“I'm the person that negotiated with Megan every step of the way, leading to her coming
to Japan.
I've been involved with bringing a large majority of Stardom's foreign talent for 8 years now.
It's my job.”
You can feel the years of resentment underneath these tweets, and I totally get it.
If you look a wrestling history, it’s not hard to see why promotions like Stardom can
start to feel put out by all of their top talent being signed by promotions with bigger
wallets behind them.
But even with all these big signings going elsewhere, the tides aren’t as one-sided
as they perhaps once were.
There hasn’t been much movement from American promotions to Japan in the past, but there’s
been some notable exceptions.
Sasha Banks, after leaving WWE under controversial circumstances, actively chose to go to New
Japan’s Wrestle Kingdom and challenge Kairi for her IWGP Women’s Championship, as well
as wrestling in Stardom, despite obvious interest from parties like a big American promotion
like AEW for example.
She helped generate buzz for her move away from America, when she could have quite comfortably
chosen the biggest paycheck or the biggest company to go to.
But she actively chose not to, with her instead shining more of a light onto Japanese wrestling.
I don’t mean to hyperbolise here, but it is one of the first big times I can remember
where somebody has made a name for themselves in WWE and elected to make Stardom and New
Japan a priority.
It’s stuff like this that makes Stardom feel like a big deal, like a destination for
people to wrestle, and not just a stepping stone.
Sarray meanwhile, despite reported interest from other top American promotions, chose
to sign with Sukeban.
Under the new management of Triple H, it felt as though he was trying to right some wrongs
that occurred under other management, hence why there were so many re-signings of fired
talent in 2022.
But while Hunter may not have been able to re-sign Sarray, it’s indicative of the fact
that there are other options in the world of wrestling now, actually sustainable options
where wrestlers can earn a living that aren’t exclusively one or two promotions in the world.
Because there is always fresh talent looking for a home.
New wrestlers with all the potential in the world are always being found and scouted in
all corners of the globe, and having multiple options for them as they progress through
their careers can only be a good thing.
Maybe they join New Japan’s dojo, maybe they can wrestle in Stardom, or Ring of Honor
or WWE’s developmental program.
There’s multiple avenues and multiple backgrounds for them that can lead to a fruitful and successful
wrestling career.
And having said everything that I said about Mercedes Mone earlier, there have been reports
from Dave Meltzer on Wrestling Observer Radio in November 2023 that there are “no plans”
for Mone to return to New Japan or Stardom.
Which is particularly interesting given that just one month earlier in October, the Wrestling
Observer Newsletter reported that once Mone had recovered from her injury, she was due
to return and challenge Giulia for the NJPW Strong Women’s Championship.
And now there might be no Giulia or Mone for New Japan or Stardom soon.
And there was even more fuel added to that Mone-leaving-Japan-shaped-fire, when Mone
in a Cameo video mentioned that she’s excited to get back to wrestling, where you can expect
to see her in “some wrestling company in 2024”.
Which sure doesn’t sound like something someone would say if they were returning to
the same promotion.
So does that mean she’s AEW-bound, after appearing in the crowd at All In: London?
Or does that mean that with Triple H in charge once again, that Mone could be going back
to Banks in WWE?
And that’s the nature of wrestling.
It’s always going to be the case that the biggest promotions with the most money will
look for the best and most marketable talent in the world.
They have resources that others don’t, and that’s just the nature of the world.
WWE signed AJ Styles, Shinsuke Nakamura, Karl Anderson and Doc Gallows.
AEW signed Kenny Omega, The Young Bucks, Hangman Page and Cody to form the promotion.
There’s always a bigger fish, and they are the big fish.
But…there’s always a bigger fish for these promotions too.
Much in the same way that talent is raised up in smaller promotions and signed by bigger
ones, talent is raised up in WWE and whisked away by something bigger.
For WWE, it’s Hollywood.
WWE creates mainstream stars, and because they are mainstream, they do bigger things
than WWE.
Batista, The Rock, John Cena, and now even people like Seth Rollins who’s in a Marvel
project, Becky Lynch, Sasha Banks, all these top names are attractive to Hollywood because
they are top names.
In exactly the same way that a top name in Stardom or New Japan is attractive to WWE
or AEW because they are a top name in those promotions.
This exact thing happened with John Cena, and Oli spoke more about it in Monday’s
episode, which I think you should go and watch right now because I think you’ll enjoy it,
so click the video on screen now.