Japanese Pro Wrestling and Strong Style: NJPW, AJPW and Beyond
Rikidozan and the Birth of Puroresu
Japanese professional wrestling, known at home and abroad as puroresu, begins with one man. Rikidozan was a former sumo wrestler, born in what is now North Korea, who debuted as a professional wrestler in 1951 and founded the Japan Pro Wrestling Alliance in 1953 as the country's National Wrestling Alliance affiliate. In February 1954 he teamed with judo champion Masahiko Kimura against the Canadian Sharpe Brothers in a series of matches broadcast on Japan's new television networks. With few homes owning a set, crowds gathered around televisions placed in shop windows and public squares to watch a Japanese hero chop down larger foreign opponents. For a nation still recovering from the war, the image was irresistible, and wrestling became one of Japan's most popular forms of entertainment almost overnight. Rikidozan was stabbed by a gangster in a Tokyo nightclub in December 1963 and died a week later, but the industry he built outlived him.
Inoki, Baba, and the Two Great Companies
Rikidozan's two most important students defined the next half-century. Antonio Inoki was fired from the JWA in late 1971 after an attempted takeover and founded New Japan Pro-Wrestling on January 13, 1972. Shohei "Giant" Baba, a former baseball pitcher who stood well over two meters tall, left later that year and, with Rikidozan's sons, founded All Japan Pro Wrestling, which ran its first card on October 21, 1972. The JWA collapsed within a year, leaving Japan with two rival majors that would remain the axis of the business for decades.
The two men promoted opposite philosophies. Baba kept close ties to the NWA, brought in American world champions and touring stars, and presented wrestling as a sport of big matches and clean finishes. Inoki chased legitimacy by other means, most famously by fighting boxer Muhammad Ali to a 15-round draw at the Nippon Budokan on June 26, 1976, under rules so restrictive that the bout was widely mocked at the time and is now cited as an ancestor of mixed martial arts. NJPW aired on TV Asahi and AJPW on Nippon TV, and the network split kept the companies from working together for most of the era.
What Strong Style Means
"Strong style" is the term most associated with Inoki's New Japan. In its original sense it described Inoki's belief that wrestling should look like a real fight and that the wrestler should be able to back it up, drawing on martial arts, submission holds and the idea of fighting spirit. In practice it came to mean stiff strikes, hard-hitting exchanges and a willingness to sell only when the audience needs to see it. The style spawned an offshoot in 1984, when Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara and others formed the Universal Wrestling Federation and pushed the realism even further into what became known as shoot style.
All Japan's answer was later nicknamed King's Road: longer matches built on escalating drama, big bumps and dramatic near-falls rather than the pretense of a shoot. Neither style is "more real," and both are taught with enormous attention to detail. The distinction still explains a great deal about why a New Japan main event and an All Japan main event feel different even when the wrestlers are equally skilled.
The 1990s Golden Age
The decade that followed is often called the golden age of puroresu. All Japan's "Four Pillars," Mitsuharu Misawa, Toshiaki Kawada, Kenta Kobashi and Akira Taue, produced a run of matches from 1993 onward that critics still rank among the greatest ever, with American Stan Hansen as their most feared foreign rival. New Japan countered with its "Three Musketeers," Keiji Muto, Masahiro Chono and Shinya Hashimoto, and with a junior heavyweight division led by Jushin "Thunder" Liger, whose Super J-Cup tournament in 1994 showcased flyers from around the world. The IWGP Heavyweight Championship, first won by Inoki on June 12, 1987, became the most prestigious title in the country.
Stadium-scale wrestling arrived when New Japan promoted the first show at the newly built Tokyo Dome on April 24, 1989. A January 4 Tokyo Dome show became an annual tradition beginning in 1992 and has carried the Wrestle Kingdom name since 2007. The era ended in upheaval: Misawa led a mass exodus from All Japan in June 2000 to found Pro Wrestling NOAH, and All Japan never fully recovered. Misawa died in the ring in June 2009 after a routine back-drop, a loss that still hangs over the industry.
Decline and Revival
New Japan lost its way in the early 2000s, when Inoki's fascination with mixed martial arts, derided by fans as "Inokism," saw wrestlers fed to fighters and the IWGP title devalued. Video game company Yuke's bought the promotion in 2005, and card game publisher Bushiroad acquired it on January 31, 2012. Under Bushiroad the company rebuilt around Hiroshi Tanahashi, Kazuchika Okada and Shinsuke Nakamura, launched its NJPW World streaming service in December 2014, and turned the villainous foreign faction Bullet Club, formed in May 2013 by Prince Devitt, Karl Anderson, Bad Luck Fale and Tama Tonga, into a global merchandise phenomenon. Okada's 46-minute defense against Kenny Omega at Wrestle Kingdom 11 on January 4, 2017, earned an unprecedented six-star rating from Dave Meltzer and drew a worldwide audience to New Japan.
New Japan and AEW
That audience helped create All Elite Wrestling. Omega, Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks, all Bullet Club alumni, were the core of AEW's launch in 2019, and the two promotions formalized a partnership with the first Forbidden Door pay-per-view at Chicago's United Center on June 26, 2022. Talent has flowed both ways: Okada joined AEW on March 6, 2024, and AEW's Konosuke Takeshita challenged for the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship at Wrestle Kingdom 20 on January 4, 2026, losing to Yota Tsuji. The same show, before 46,913 fans at the Tokyo Dome, closed with Tanahashi's retirement match against Okada, which Okada won. Tanahashi has served as New Japan's president since December 2023. Forbidden Door 2026 was held on June 28 at the SAP Center in San Jose with CMLL and Stardom also involved, and in May 2026 Bushiroad transferred all its NJPW shares to TV Asahi and CyberAgent, a change the company framed as a bet on its video and digital future.
The Foreigners Who Mattered
Foreign wrestlers, called gaijin, have always been central to the Japanese product. Lou Thesz wrestled Rikidozan in 1957, and The Destroyer became a television star in the 1960s. Hansen, Bruiser Brody and Big Van Vader were the monster heels of the 1980s and 1990s, and Hulk Hogan won New Japan's first IWGP tournament in 1983. The junior divisions made stars of Dynamite Kid, Owen Hart, Chris Benoit as the Pegasus Kid and Eddie Guerrero as Black Tiger. In the modern era AJ Styles, Omega, Jay White, Will Ospreay and Zack Sabre Jr. all held the top title, proving that the path to stardom through Japan remains as open as it was when the Sharpe Brothers stepped off the plane.
