Sports Entertainment Invades Japan
by Paul T.

Disclaimer: I'm only giving my opinions because this is not Socal related. I'd like to leave Socal stuff up to the fans, fair enough?

As you know, the big news out of Japan is that the WWF has booked the Yokohama Arena (16,000 cap. give or take a few thousand due to stage set up). I'm not going to come out and speculate on whether this will be commercially successful or not because A) I'm no expert and I don't claim to know shit, B) no way to know until after it actually happens. But I will give insight to the different demographic of fans in Japan which has changed dramatically in just the last couple years. Die-hard American puroresu fans are probably pissed right now about having Sports Entertainment invade Japan, but the jaded American puroresu fans should be happy for their Japanese jaded counterparts because American puro fans and Japanese WWF fans are of the same kind - both seek the alternative and both tend to be anti-establishment.

I think Americans underestimate the "smart(k)ness" of Japanese fans. There are three major types of fans in Japan now and I will describe them in the order of quantity:

Type 1. Majority of fans. Most Japanese wrestling fans follow the norm. Some think pro wrestling is still real and even those who obviously know it's a work follow the major promotions and major stars. These fans are ecstatic to see a pro wrestler enter major shoot tournaments and win. These are the people who currently fill most of the seats at shoot and pro wrestling shows. I highly doubt the WWF can do anything to overturn these Type 1 fans.

Type 2-A. Die-hard "pure" pro wrestling fans. They follow pro wrestling religiously but are not attracted to the combining of work and shoot. They know it's a work but at the same time, they also either hate or have not been exposed to sports entertainment. Most of these fans follow major promotions but tend to support wrestlers who are not shoot oriented. You could also put SOME die-hard deathmatch, joshi, and Japanese style lucha fans into this category as well. These people will tend to watch only Japanese non-shoot pro wrestling unless they get some free tickets to the WWF show.

Type 2-B Open minded puroresu fans. They love non-shoot puroresu as much as type 2-A but some of these fans might "try" Sport entertainment out of curiosity. Could be the dark horse.

Type 3. Anti-establishment fans. Still very small in numbers but growing. The interesting thing is you would think that these are all "new" fans, but most tend to be longtime puroresu fans who are bored by the old ways of Japanese pro-wrestling. They feel that Japanese pro wrestling is outdated because Japanese wrestling still adheres to the concept that it is all a real fight. Since they are not satisfied with the current Japanese product, they've turned to foreign wrestling (WWF and even some smaller American feds) or Japanese feds that attempt to copy or are influenced by WWF (DDT, FMW, Toryumon). This "seek-the-alternative" attitude should sound very familiar to American puroresu fans. Type 3 fans are already making plans to sleep in front of box offices to get tickets for this show.

It's so funny reading these guys on messageboards in Japan because their attitude is the same as majority of American puroresu and American "smark" fans. One of the largest semi-underground messageboards in Japan had more than 1000 posts in the hour that the WWF show in Japan was announced. Comments such as "Good. Finally we get to see some good wrestling." "Please don't let ANY Japanese feds or wrestlers get involved and ruin the show. We want to see just WWF guys and girls." "Too bad the stupid Japanese wrestling fans of won't appreciate or understand how great WWF is." Sound familiar? But then again that's just the Internet. Internet posts do not reflect attendance in any country (if it does, your fed's got problems) so we'll see what happens.

Now in real life (not the internet), logic says it is going to be very difficult for the WWF to tap into the market and I agree, because the only people who even care about WWF in Japan right now are fan type 3 above. However, the WWF has an advantage over Japanese promotions in one very important aspect. The WWF has the potential to attract non-wrestling fans. This is something that Japanese promotions have had a very difficult time doing the last 10 years. If the WWF can tap into the following two types of people then I think they have a shot of becoming successful in Japan ONLY if they have the full support of the Japanese media.

For one, the female audience. Sex sells for women too. Ok straight up, Japanese women would rather see whiteboys Christian and Edge in tights than Yuji Nagata. This factor is why half white Paul T is a pimp in Japan, lol. Seriously though, if you look at shows in Japan, you see much fewer women than you do at a WWF show. The only fed in Japan currently who consistently draws females is Toryumon which does a semi entertainment/lucha style, they even had a guy doing a male stripper character and it was over. FMW and DDT do quite well attracting women with their silly storylines but total attendance has been dwindling as of late for FMW and DDT. Could that change with the introduction of big time sports entertainment in Japan? We'll see. No way to tell right now because it's never happened before to such a big degree.

Another type of non-wrestling fans, and this is a huge one, are the trend followers. We are talking about the many average Japanese kids, male or female, who think anything American that is pushed by the media is "cool". Current Japanese wrestling, described by these kids as "bunch of sweaty fat guys in black tights" is NOT COOL. Bunch of built American guys and big-breasted American women getting stripped to their underwear....HUGE POTENTIAL FOR COOLNESS for these kids.

I think many Americans underestimate the power that the Japanese media, entertainment and fashion have over these kids. If it is heavily promoted on their favorite TV shows that "The WWF is the next big thing", these kids WILL show up and will be saying "What!?" and "If you smerrarararaow what the Rock is cooking" faster than you Americans learned to say Michinoku Driver. Trust me, I've seen it happen with so many other trends. It is not a coincidence that many kids in Japan follow the exact same fashion trends rather than try to be individuals. It's all marketing. For the last ten years, entertainment, fashion, and media have been marketing to this generation and this generation only. They spend more on retail than any other demographic in Japan. Also these kids have been virtually ignored by major Japanese wrestling promotions and I think it's too late for Japanese promotions to turn these kids on by March 2002.

Now the last time the WWF did a show in Japan was 8 years ago and it was unsuccessful. That can't be a factor now because you have different fans now. Also, eight years ago was long before PRIDE came along and split traditional fans type 1 and 2 above.

So in closing what I'm saying is that there is no way to know how this whole thing is going to turn out. It all depends on many factors such as media support and whom it is promoted to. Some say it will bomb and I totally see the logic in that. Some say it will have a major impact on Japanese wrestling and that they will make a big impact. I'll take the safe route and just wait and see what happens.

More importantly though, I have some thoughts on how this could affect American indy feds/ wrestlers in Japan IF (huge "IF") the WWF is successful in Japan. Two different schools of thought on that but I'll keep those thoughts to myself ;-)