Getting Dome: Live Wrestling in Japan

There's one bit of Internet Wrestling Community (IWC) lore that I've never understood and it's the idea that wrestling just hits better when it happens in Japan. Or to be more specific, it's that a match happening in the Tokyo Dome adds like two or three extra stars if you're going off of Dave Meltzer's scale. Did Meltzer originate this shit? If so, fuck him. But then on the other hand, I think there's maybe something to it.

I don't mean to brag too much, but I've been to my share of wrestling shows in Japan. Mostly in Tokyo and mostly over a decade ago, but the point still stands. I got to watch wrestling in Tokyo, I got to see legends in the ring, and I also got to see some pretty great fucking wrestling in the meantime. So in this blog post, I wanted to walk down memory lane a bit while also giving my thoughts on the last show I saw, Wrestle Dynasty. But let us begin at the beginning and that means going all the way back to 2006.

October 6, 2006 - Pro Wrestling Noah Autumn Navigation '06 ~European Catch 1: Korakuen Hall

I actually wish that I had more memories of this show than I do, but sadly I don't. I remember that I had talked my partner at the time into coming with me and we left school early to make the train we needed to. We came from the far western side of Tokyo Prefecture in order to get to Tokyo Dome City and there was a typhoon coming through the area as well, but it was more than worth it for my first taste of in person Japanese wrestling action.

You have to understand that at this point in time, NOAH was the top of the heap of Japan's major promotions. It was also the most visible to western audiences at the time thanks to their partnership with Ring of Honor. Joe vs. Kobashi had just happened the previous year and fans in America were just becoming acquainted with the likes of KENTA and Marufuji. On top of that, stars of the past like Mitsuharu Misawa and Akria Taue were still running strong, even if more slowly so they were still drawing bigger than average crowds off the backs of nostalgia back then.

Otherwise, this show wasn't terribly memorable. I didn't fully realize what I was in for, not being overly familiar with the Japanese touring style of running a bunch of tag matches on shows to lead into a big stadium event. But while I was disappointed that I didn't get to see any huge singles matches, I would be lying if I said I didn't like the show. It was a lot of fun and I got my first ever live look at legends like Misawa and Taue. Fuck, I even got to see 2 Cold Scorpio! Do you know how cool 2 Cold Scorpio actually is? I bet you don't, because you've never seen him wrestle. The highlight of the night was a tag team match that pit Yoshinari Ogawa & Kotaro Suzuki vs. Ricky Marvin & Nigel McGuinness and they tore the house fucking down.  

Overall, I didn't get what my little 21 year old brain wanted out of this show. But looking back on it today, it was a great experience. It remains my only time inside of the storied Korakuen Hall but it remains one of my favorite venues to have been in for wrestling. We sat higher up in the stands, but I am convinced there's not a bad seat in there as it felt like I was right on top of the action the entire time with a great view of everything that was happening. If you are ever in Tokyo, I can't recommend enough going to see pro wrestling at Korakuen Hall.

January 7, 2007 - NOAH The First Navigation '07 Tag 1: Differ Ariake

Differ Ariake used to be Pro Wrestling NOAH's home base in Tokyo. I think that Japanese pro wrestling fans would remember it, but as far as small Tokyo wrestling venues go it was perhaps not as well known as Korakuen Hall is. Differ Ariake is gone now, and they've built Ariake Arena on top of it which is still used sometimes for wrestling and is much larger. I think that's what I remember most about Differ, compared to Korakuen. They hold about the same capacity, with Differ being slightly smaller but Korakuen Hall feels like a big venue. Differ Ariake felt like you were sitting in your local gym to watch an indie show. This is not a bad thing, mind you.

I have to admit that I don't remember much from this show aside from two things. First, the entire thing kicked off with a contract signing for Takeshi Morishima challenging Mitsuharu Misawa at the Budokan at the end of the First Navigation Tour. This was a huge deal due to Morishima was a long term project in NOAH and they were grooming him to be their next, big, heavyweight main eventer and lots of people thought this was going to be his crowning moment. It wasn't, he's lose and go on to have a legendary run as ROH World Champion before capturing the GHC Heavyweight Title the following year, but more on that later. 

The other memorable thing was getting to see The Briscoes for the first time and to cap that shit off, they actually challenged for and won the GHC Jr. Heavyweight Tag Team titles. Was it a memorable match? Eeeeh? I guess it was because I got to see a title change live, but the match itself was rather anti-climatic in terms of quality. It did lead to a memorable match at the Budokan between The Briscoes vs. Kotaro Suzuki & Ricky Marvin. Sadly, I did not get to attend that show because Budokan tickets were wildly out of my price range and I had blown my holiday gift money on getting floor seats at Differ Ariake. I learned my lesson for the next time though.

Jay and Mark Briscoe posing with their newly won GHC Jr. Heavyweight titles. Photo by me!

July 22, 2007 - ROH Live in Tokyo: Differ Ariake 

I remember getting tickets for this as soon as I could and making sure I was a little higher in the stands to get a really good look. I was probably more excited for this than anything else because it was my last chance to go out and do something before my academic year in Japan ended and it was also my first (and only) live Ring of Honor show. I was psyched! The card didn't look spectacular on paper and a last minute withdraw by KENTA from the show due to injury slightly damped the mood, but I was really excited for it. I got to meet Cary Silken before the show and we shook hands and be actively seemed happy to have run into someone who spoke English and wasn't a wrestler.

This one I can easily tell people to go seek out. It's on the Honor Club service and the bigger matches aren't too hard to find on YouTube should you so desire to find them. Nigel McGuinness challenged Takeshi Morishima in the main event and everyone was dead certain this was where Nigel was going to take it but he ended up suffering a brutal loss. Naomichi Marufuji teamed with The Briscoes for a fun six-man tag against Ricky Marvin, Matt Sydal, and up and coming star Atsushi Aoki, and Delirious and Roderick Strong had an entertaining Fight Without Honor. The match of the night though was Bryan Danielson taking on Go Shiozaki. They tore the fucking house down, I don't know how else to phrase it. I had seen Shiozaki in tag matches and like Morishima he was being groomed for the main event in NOAH but he held his own with The American Dragon in one of the best live matches I've ever seen in my life. Watch it if you haven't.

After that, it would be quite awhile since I got see a wrestling show in Japan. I moved there for work in 2017 but time and financial constraints would make it hard for me to get to shows. And that leads us to the final event on this journey.

January 5, 2025 NJPW/CMLL/AEW Wrestle Dynasty: Tokyo Dome

I happened to be back in the country during New Year's and said, "Fuck it, I'm going to the Tokyo Dome." Ticket price was maybe a little steep to sit on the floor but I made up my mind that I was either going to go to this year's Wrestle Kingdom or Wrestle Dynasty and I settled on Wrestle Dynasty because I figured the chance to maybe see Konosuke Takeshita vs. Tomohiro Ishii was worth it even if the rest of the card seemed dull on paper. I don't want to rehash the entire card because of everything I've mentioned in this post it's the show that most people would have likely seen and have the most memory of due to recency. It was an excellent show from top to bottom and getting to see wrestlers like Takeshita, Kenny Omega, Zack Sabre Jr, Mercedes Mone, Hiroshi Tanahashi, and Katsuyori Shibata live for the first time was memorable. But I want to talk about the Tokyo Dome itself.

The Tokyo Dome is a hell of a place to watch wrestling. I mentioned at the start of this piece the long standing joke among online wrestling fans that if a match happens in the Tokyo Dome, Dave Meltzer will automatically add some stars to it just because it happened there. And if it's a Kenny Omega match, he's ready to go over the five-star limit. I don't know if that's inherently true, but I'd be lying if I said there wasn't a certain aura around the place. It's enormous inside, but weirdly when you're sitting on the floor it feels smaller the closer you get to the ring and entrance set up. It shrinks even more when you look back to the dugouts and see the wrestlers sitting around and watching the matches like it's an indie show and they're at the merch table. I've been to historic venues before, most notably the former ECW Arena in South Philadelphia and not even that held the same feeling of sitting in a place where wrestling legends had some of the greatest matches of their careers. I think that the wrestlers feel it, too. It's hard to fully describe, but if you're a wrestling fan and you ever set foot in there you might understand what I'm talking about. Maybe something happening in the Dome does automatically make it better?

Oh, I would be remiss not to mention the food. The Tokyo Dome is a whole ass baseball stadium and as such it has a fantastic selection of all kinds of things to eat, though I did not have the time to try much. I had what passed for an Australian meat pie during my day there and it was pretty good but I wonder about the authenticity. It's also extremely easy to get a beer there as well thanks to the army of beer vendors who make the rounds during the show, but it's worth remember that the entire Tokyo Dome City area is cash free. I don't know how they pulled that off since most of Japan still runs on cash payments everywhere, but yeah that place is one of the few exceptions to the rule there I suppose. 

That's all for this one, thanks for reading if you made it this far. This was a fun trip down memory lane as opposed to raging about shit that makes me angry. Love and peace win the day!