New Promotion - Tokyo Women's Wrestling

Do you remember the golden rule of japanese wrestling? For every one promotion that dies(REINA), two must form in its place(New Reina and now this).

Sanshiro Takagi of DDT along with former NEO president, Tetsuya Koda, announced a new women's promotion today based in Tokyo. The promotion will be based around Nozomi Dai, a former NEO trainee who retired so quickly that I don't even think I got to see more than highlights of her.

The promotion said they will follow the classic "Three No's" of All Japan Women: No drinking, No men and No tabacco. They said they will create a seperate dormitory for the women and will focus on finding new recruits.

Let's first break down the different people involved:

Sanshiro Takagi - Sanshiro Takagi is probably one of the harder working wrestling promoters out there. He built his company, DDT(Dramatic Dream Team), from virtually nothing in the late 1990's. In time, he has turned DDT into one of Japan's hottest promotions and has made DDT into the biggest indy sensation since Dragon Gate. I actually would trust Takagi with my promotion. He knows his audiences and there's no doubt in my mind that he will put in the effort necessary.

Tetsuya Koda - Koda was the head of NEO until NEO closed due to retirements/creative disagreements. Koda, was also involved with Ice Ribbon, but left his post with Ice Ribbon as of today. Koda generally seems like a good guy overall. Again, I think he has the fans best interest in mind and he cares about wrestling.

Nozomi Dai - I do not have alot to say about Nozomi Dai, because there really is nothing to say. She's 21 years old and was either injured or missing from NEO up until today. I think I saw a clip of her but that's really it. As I mentioned with REINA a few posts back, I don't hold alot of stock in wrestlers who have previously quit wrestling.

Let's now take a look at the outlook of this promotion:

Current state of joshi - As I mentioned in my REINA post, Joshi's struggling with almost every other promotion at the moment. It's a niche of a niche and one would need a bingo card to keep track of all of the companies starting up these days. It's really not a good time to start a promotion.

Outlook of the promotion - I like the idea of pushing younger wrestlers. That's what joshi needs. Joshi finally figured this out after 2010 when a bunch of wrestlers started to retire with less than a handful of rookies to replace them. Stardom saw the opening and made the move. At best, this promotion is going to be a new Stardom with hopefully a little less push on the image over the talent of the wrestlers. The big problem I see coming is where is DDT going to find its new women wrestlers. The market is pretty oversaturated already and I think almost every idol wrestler has to be taken at this point. We've also had more than our fair share of turds over the years, and so far, their first wrestler would fall into that group.

Connection with DDT - I'm curious to see if there will be any interactions with DDT. DDT has an interesting fanbase. It has one of the more younger fanbases and it has alot of female fans. I don't know if they can really pull from their fanbase or not for this. Joshi is more of a middle-age men's thing than a young females thing.

Other factors: One thing that may help this promotion is that they can always put the girls on DDT cards to get them experience and to make the cards more interesting. This is a good thing since alot of companies are outsourcing their talent in order for them to get experience.

Overall, this is kind of a gamble. I think they have some good ideas and some good people in charge but the last thing joshi needs right now is a new promotion. I will have to wait and see on this promotion. Stay tuned for more updates as they become available.