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Purotopia Catch-All Thread 2014


Graham Crackers

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Well, they're all Japanese celebrities, so good luck.

 

They're all listed in Alphabetical order in the video description if that help, in Japanese of course. Looks like mostly musicians.

 

【出演アーティスト(五十音順/敬称略)】
井浦新 / VERBAL (m-flo) / オカダ・カズチカ (新日本プロレス) / 氣志團 / 久保田利伸 / 小木"POGGY"基史(ユナイテッドアローズ) / コブクロ / スチャダラパー / DJ LOVE (SEKAI NO OWARI) / DEXPISTOLS / TERIYAKI BOYZ® / NAOTO (EXILE / 三代目J Soul Brothers) / 中邑真輔 (新日本プロレス) / BiS / ふなっしー / 槇原敬之 / MATSU (EXILE) / 水原希子 / YOON (AMBUSH®)/ 若旦那

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I kept on wondering how long it would take me to have a wrestler email me to correct information I had on my website about them.  I have had a wrestling website with profiles on it for 12 years.  So.... 12 years.  But Bernard van Damme was very nice about it.  I've initiated contact before but this was the first time a wrestler just went out of their way to say "some of the information on your website is bizarre."

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A friend and I have been working on translating Shoichi Arai's FMW book that was released in 2002 a month prior to his death. There's a section with details about the business aspect of running Korakuen as well as house shows around Japan that I thought was interesting and informative. VIP most likely means Yakuza I am guessing.

How much do you think we made from a Korakuen Hall monthly shows?

I don't think many people know...

In central Tokyo, we often held the title matches as well.

You might think that we must be making a huge profit from this event.

Let me write about the way we operate roughly.

We have 2 types of events.

One is 'Own Event' and the other one is a 'Sold Event'

Own Event means booking the venue and paying all the expenses by ourself.

Ticket sales is the major income from this.

We sell the ticket by ourself, the ticket agent or asking the local VIP to distribute.

Sold Event means promoters buys the event as a whole package.

And they pay the all the expenses.

First I'll explain about Own Event.

For FMW a Korakuen Hall show was the important income.

The venue cost is 800,000yen (8,000 USD) for a weekday.

The fee for the lighting and the sound engineer, and the other expenses cost around 700,000yen. (7,000 USD)

We were able to hold the event there with 1,500,000yen. (15,000 USD)

If it's full house show (1,800 people), the total sales is 6000000yen. (60,000 USD)

We kept the 4,500,000yen (45,000 USD) profit for a couple of years, and that definitely helped to run the business. We depended on this income a lot.

Own Event doesn't always mean profitable in this economy downturn.

Except the major wrestling companies, it is quite hard to have Own Event unless there is a local born wrestler.There must be some indie promotions that hold an own event, but prepare the loss for it.

For FMW the Own Event's expenses for Non Tokyo show is around 1,000,000yen. (10,000 USD)

The venue cost is apx 300,000yen (3,000 USD), transport fee is apx 200,000yen (2,000 USD), printing fee for thickets and posters and other expenses ads up to around 200,000yen (2,000 USD). Food and hotel bill is at least 150,000yen (1,500 USD). The wages for the temporary venue staff and the other expenses is around 100,000yen (1,000 USD). It's an unexpected bill usually, so let's say it's 1,000,000yen in total (10,000 USD).

When we ran Old FMW, there was the time we couldn't afford for the hotels.

It was cheeky that we entered the hotel at different times and shared 7 or 8 single rooms with 14 or 15 people. Neo FMW didn't have to do such a bad thing. It's kind of a good memory, but you can't get rid of the tiredness without proper rest.

The Disadvantage of having an Own Event in the country side is lack of the ticket promotion. Because we don't have a local branch, ticket sales is weaker compared with Tokyo Area. In this case, we used the local box office or the sports shop as the ticket distributor. Although they charge 10% commission, they pay us the ticket sales on a same day.

And the ticket at the door on a day of the event is 100% profit for us. But the sale is very unpredictable. If it rains,it falls.

If the research of the area wasn't enough, for example there are other wrestling event near by or the local festival or the local election on the same day, that effect the ticket sales.

If we use a local VIP as a ticket distributor the commision is 50%.

We don't want to use VIP but it is neccessary.

Without this sales, venue is not going to be filled.The VIP who has strong connection with local authority usually sales 100 tickets at a time.

We can't sleep pointing them with our legs!

I don't think there is a wrestling promotion which doesn't use the VIP in Japan.

But we can't depend on VIP all the time.

Some VIP don't inform us how many tickets were sold until the last minute, or they don't pay us on time.The worst case is when they just steal the ticket sales.

There was a incident one of the VIP had 300 of our tickets.The ticket value was 6,000yen (60 USD) each. If all is sold,we get half the profit which is 900,000yen (90,000 USD), but he claimed it was stolen.

Annoyingly,it's not only money that's lost but we weren't able to sale the tickets at the door because we didn't know how many tickets and which seats were sold. (seats are all reserved)

There might be 2 people having the same seat ticket and would cause the chaos.

We never know if it was really stolen, we just couldn't ask anymore because they are VIP.

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Here's the second part of it for those interested.

 

That was the bad case of using the VIP. There are some good cases though. We used to have a big event in Sapporo, Hokkaido every year. There was a VIP who sold a lot of tickets, and brought us 4,000,000yen (40,000 USD) each time. The VIP has pros and cons indeed.

 

Let me explain about a 'Sold Event'.

The promoter buys our rights for the event. To be chosen, you have to be a popular wrestling team.

We would sale an event for 1,500,000yen (15,000 USD). It's a lot cheaper than our Korakuen Hall profit though it was more expensive than the other indie company's Sold Events.

Usually, in the sold event, it’s a promoter's job to sell tickets, and book the venue. Apart from that, we have to arrange and pay all expenses like tickets and event posters printing fee, transport and food.

 

Long time ago in Japan, people who hold a comedy show would be called 'a Promoter'. Wrestling promoters are basically the same as them. We turn up to the venue, make the wrestling ring and fight as usual. The profit from Sold Event is fixed rate. It doesn't matter if it's a full house show or empty show, we get paid the 1,500,000yen (15,000 USD). Usually, we would get a loss profit when the ticket sales are bad, but not with a Sold Event.

But, there are different types of promoters. Some try to pay less because of the poor ticket sales, or the wrestler who's on a poster didn't appear. Once we didn't get paid at all. Those sort of unexpected incidents are such huge damage to us. We just had to suffer from it.

 

It's quite famous that Yakuza was behind RIKIDOZAN's wrestling events. I must say that even nowadays the relationship with promoters in wrestling business is still very complicated. FMW had about 10 events a month. Average rate was about 6 Own Events and 4 Sold Events.

As I mentioned before, we had a monthly event at Korakuen Hall, we also had an annual big event at Kawasaki Baseball Stadium. The profit from the big event is not stable. Sometimes it rises and falls, but still it was very important income for us.

 

The most profitable big event was the Kawasaki Show in September 1997.

The main match on the card was Hayabusa & Jinsei Shinzaki vs. Kenta Kobashi & Maunakea Mossman. Looking back whole FMW history, it was a great match. I can tell that with confidence. All Japan’s top Heavyweight star Kobashi against FMW's new hope Hayabusa. I remember I was watching it with sweating hands.

 

For this event, we paid 20,000,000yen (200,000 USD). Total net sale was 55,000,000yen (550,000 USD). Amazingly, the profit was 35000000yen (350,000 USD). That era was the most successful time for FMW.

You may think FMW would never falls into the financial difficulty only looking at that number. But to carry on, the business cost is more than you think. We have to spend to keep it going.

 

This is only our case, the rent for our office and Dojo cost 700,000yen (7,000 USD) monthly, parking for the advertising car, gas & electric bill cost 300,000yen (3,000 USD) monthly. That’s a total of 1,000,000yen (10,000 USD) that goes out from our pocket. Then there’s everyone salary including the wrestlers which cost 9,000,000yen (90,000 USD) per month. That’s pending 10,000,000yen (100,000 USD) a month in total already. Then there’s the production fee for our pay per view which is about 3,000,000yen (30,000 USD), food bill and employee insurance, and the other expenses all together must be around 500,000yen (5,000 USD). So the monthly expenses are apx 13,500,000yen. (135,000 USD) Then if we add the PR/Printing fee it becomes more than 15, 0000,000yen (150,000 USD).

 

In reality, it wasn't enough. We were still paying from a previous loan, and taxes. We had to pay the venue fee in advance as well.

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Zues & The Bodyguard? That would be kind of a shitty team to challenge for the All-Asia titles let alone the big boy tag belts. For shame AJPW.

 

Your hatred is misplaced and baseless here, ultimoDANK. Zeus is coming off of a fine run in the CC, and bodyguard is probably the most improved wrestler in Japan over the past three years. They work together really well as a team, and they match up nicely with Suwama and Doering. There is nothing, whatsoever, for AJPW to be ashamed about.  

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I just watched a match where a wrestler avoided the Shining Wizard by simply moving her knee out of the way, so her opponent had no way to complete the move.  It blew my mind.  Has anyone else ever avoided a Shining Wizard like that?  Just moving their knee to the side so the wrestler can't 'step up'?  Even though it was a comedy match, it still struck me as probably the best way to avoid the move.

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Moving the knee should result in the attacking wrestler flailing/falling to the ground since the attacking wrestler was counting on springing off the knee. Of course, an eventual counter to the knee being moved away would be something like the Boma Ye, provided the attacker sees the knee being moved in time.

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I've been watching NOAH this year, and I'm digging it more than I was a while back. If they had like three more good hands, (four with KENTA gone, I guess) they'd have a pretty solid roster. How's their business doing these days?

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Is Big Japan having a down year or is it just no one around here watches it? Only one match nominated.

 

Did everyone just go elsewhere to talk about puro?

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I refuse to go anywhere else.  I used to go to the puroresufan forum, and nothing against them but I decided years ago that one forum was enough for me.  I waste enough time here, I have other things to do in my life :)

 

I think there was only one or two people before that watched Big Japan and would pimp it out, dunno if they stopped watching or have migrated somewhere else.

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Is Big Japan having a down year or is it just no one around here watches it? Only one match nominated.

 

Did everyone just go elsewhere to talk about puro?

I skip most of the garbage stuff but there hasn't been much high end Strong BJ yet this year. Sekimoto just came back and Okabayashi being out are not helping things. I did really like Koji Kanemoto vs. Kazuki Hashimoto from 1/2/14.

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