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With the exception of the ambulance issue in New York City, New Japan was extremely happy with the weekend’s Fighting Spirit USA tour with stops in Lowell, MA, NYC and Philadelphia. Of the three shows, the Philadelphia event was said to have been the most profitable for the company at the gate, but New York City was the #1 night in terms of merchandise sales, with Lowell coming in second for merchandise numbers.
There were no major injuries coming out of the weekend except for Kota Ibushi having, a cap from one of his teeth knocked out by EVIL in NYC. Referee Red Shoes immediately retrieved it. There’s no word if Ibushi was able to have it placed back on.
In terms of crowd reaction, New York City was said to have had the hottest crowd reactions.
Philadelphia was completely sold out, including an additional 200 standing room tickets that were made available because there were so many inquiries to the 2300 Arena for tickets after the initial immediate sellout.
In a follow-up to the ambulance stuff in NYC, at one point there were FOUR ambulances at the show. As we noted, FDNY was able to send an ambulance to assist but the New York State Athletic Commission turned it down, feeling that they couldn’t chance the ambulance wouldn’t be called away. A second FDNY ambulance arrived, but that still wasn’t deemed appropriate. Finally, not one, but two ambulances that were allowed arrived. The Commission attempted to send one away, telling them they were not needed. When New Japan’s local promoter asked what would happen if a wrestler got injured and needed to be transported, they were told the show would be halted until the ambulance returned. At that point, a rep for the show put his foot down and demanded both ambulances stay. The FDNY ambulance left about an hour after the show started, so for the first hour of the show, there were four ambulances sitting there after the show was delayed nearly 90 minutes because there were zero ambulances.
The local promoter in NYC, as an extra measure, made sure there was a Japanese speaking doctor in attendance so there would be no language barriers if there was an injury.
The Japanese commentary on the NYC event was done in studio from Japan as they watched the show commentary team at any of the events. That’s why Toru Yano was on screen but never appeared on any of the nights live.
We are told the Lowell and Philadelphia events will likely be added to New Japan World.
We received a lot of feedback from fans who watched the NYC show, noting it felt unique and different in how it looked from the usual NJPW productions. North Carolina’s Premier Wrestling Xperience handled the production of the shows and Patrick Price from their company was the one editing the shows live as they happened. Price specifically edited the NYC show to have more of an American feel, wanting it to come across like a “rock concert” while the other shows were edited to have more of a traditional NJPW production feel.
The Rock N’ Roll Express being brought in was said to have been a Jado idea.
Backstage in Philadelphia were WWE’s Kairi Sane, Ring of Honor’s Sumie Sakai and Cheeseburger and CZW’s DJ Hyde. Also at the Philly show, for the first time in decades in the building, was former ECW promoter Ed Zohn, who now works with PWX.
Danny Cage and his Monster Factory Wrestling Academy assisted with logistics at the Philadelphia event.
New Japan was really pleased to see there were so many fans who hit multiple nights of the tour.
To answer the number one question we received going into the tour, it appears Jushin Liger was not booked to appear due to his current storyline where he has morphed into Kishin Liger for the first time in many years and the company didn’t want to contradict that turn of events.
There were specific market t-shirts created for Boston and Philadelphia.
Highspots.com provided the ring for the New Japan tour over the weekend.
There is early talk of perhaps doing more United States shows in the first quarter of 2020, but that is nowhere near confirmed.
There is slated to be an invited tryout for New Japan Pro Wrestling tomorrow in Los Angeles.
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