BAHU

All those matches were legit and that pissed off DDT who fired him after that. Yano is also really hard to get along with.

"I'm all for doing it somewhere besides Yokohama but geez, atleast save it for K-hall or something, they had it booked 1 week later." Ito vs. Kodaka probably wouldn't have drawn that great at Korakuen since it had just been done in March. The match wasn't about drawing a huge crowd. It was about getting the belt off Kodaka and back on Ito whether right or wrong that is why they went with Nagoya. The BJW Tag Team Title match and I am guessing the end to Miyamoto/Kodaka long title reign is probably a bigger draw at the moment anyway. "I mean, ok, great, they showed a title can change hands at a tiny show, what's the benefit?" Getting the belt off Kodaka and filling up a small building with the match instead of hurting yourself by promoting the match over something that could do better for Korakuen. It also means at a future Korakuen Hall show that it can be believable that the title change can happen outside of Yokohama. I know when I went to see Ishikawa vs. Takeda the main reason I knew Takeda wasn't going to win the match was because it was at Korakuen and not Yokohama and Ishikawa had even won that title at Korakuen. I still didn't buy Takeda was going to win even with how over he was. "More people show up to the tiny buildings? Are things that bad they can't sell out 350 seat buildings anymore without hot shoting a title change 2 weeks after Yokohama and 1 week before K-Hall?" They didn't sell out the building last time they went for Ito vs. Takeda. It's not something that is going to matter long term but again the main reason it happened was to get the belt off Kodaka. "Those 2 buildings are down significantly from where they were a few years ago. Used to claim 3 to 4000 at Yokohama and full sell outs at K-Hall now except for I think their most recent 1, they hadn't cracked 2000 at Yokohama in years and they're lucky to crack 1000 at Korakuen. All the more reason i'd think you'd want to save your best stuff for those buildings." Kodaka vs. Ito wasn't your best stuff. They had done the match already in Fukuoka and did a little over 600. It's not like they burned money putting that match on in Nagoya. As far as the numbers being down that comes down to the roster being stale because you can only go so far for years with the same guys and the company like every medium and above promotion in Japan besides New Japan (which did its own suffering for years nosediving) and probably Dragon Gate being down. "In the age before monthly PPV's that's exactly what happened in the WWF for like a decade plus, things worked out well enough. Lot of other big companies have been booked like that." They did that for 3 years as the title didn't go to someone new until WrestleMania 1988. By year four (and again Big Japan has been doing this for 6) the title changed at Survivor Series, This Tuesday in Texas, a houseshow, and a Coliseum Home Video exclusive. I mean I don't think the title value was hurt because of what shows Bret Hart and Ric Flair won it at. Losing the title at a house show or a RAW (which I would consider the Nagoya shows to be the equivalent for BJW to WWE) after 6 years isn't the worst booking decision ever especially when the match is made not for the draw but for the outcome. "Unless i'm missing someone, he only defended against 4 people.Tsukamoto, Hoshino, Miyamoto & a previous defense against Ito in March. The division can't possibly be that depleted can it?" There is no one else besides Numazawa and Takeda and Takeda going for the title if it does happen would be a bigger deal at a Yokohama show against Ito than Kodaka as it would hurt Takeda's moment because Takeda/Kodaka/Miyamoto have a lot of the same fan base. It's why they can defend the title against one another and draw pretty good but you're never going to see one of them beat one another for the title.

I actually don't mind the "in front of 341 fans" as that's about how much the Nagoya Diamond Hall holds. It gives the feeling that a title change can happen at a non Yokohama Bunka Gym show. Besides Shuji Ishikawa winning it at Korakuen back in January 2013 (and that's because they wanted Kobayashi to hold the title a full calendar year in 2012 to get a bunch of a awards by the media and couldn't do back to back Kobayashi/Ishikawa matches in the building) every title change since May 2008 has happened at the Yokohama Bunka Gym. That's like if the WWE title only changed hands at WrestleMania and/or SummerSlam every year for 6 years with the exception of one year when it was at a Royal Rumble. Kodaka was also out of challengers so that's why they're going with Ito especially if it really is for what everyone is speculating to drop it to Takeda. The crowd definitely was ready for Takeda to win it last year. The Kasai/Sasaki thing is not really true. Kasai left Big Japan back in 2003 over money issues and probably other reasons not known. When he joined the Apache Army promotion in 2005 and started working in Big Japan for the extra money he was never going to be the top guy because of how he left/how he is still upset at the company over why he left in 2003. He was a FREEDOMS wrestler when he beat Death Match Champion Ryuji Ito in a non title match at Korakuen back in November 2009. It's not that he is with another promotion because they've had other promotion guys hold the title (we just ended a 17 month run of Union Pro guys having the belt).

Kamen gave it to Kanemura in that match also. Kanemura wrote that he was hit in the back of the head with a chair so hard during that match he felt like he was going to die after it.

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.

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.

Nope

I have got the chance to hang out with Ricky Fuji for several hours a couple of times and got to meet his 7 year old daughter who probably has more charisma than a majority of wrestlers. He is a really good guy and one of the nicer people I have met.

I think it's a mix of things. FREEDOMS not wanting to be considered Big Japan light where they offer nothing that Big Japan can't, Takashi Sasaki while he was champion of FREEDOMS for a year not wanting to just be in the midcard in Big Japan which meant he was not going to let himself job that whole time because it would look bad for FREEDOMS champion losing to Isami Kodaka and others if needed, and Jun Kasai is obviously really banged up and probably shouldn't be wrestling 7 straight days in front of 100 people in Hokkaido. They are still obviously working together as the Big Japan young boys are still the one putting up the ring for FREEDOMS when they run Korakuen and Great Kojika/Nikkan Lee work for them reguarly.

She got the nickname from a Hollywood writer for the TokyoPop series thought she looked like a mother in law due to her being big and unattractive. It was never an actual nickname in FMW.

I've been going to Japan every year to meet and hang out with old FMW wrestlers and still run a website based off those wrestlers so no you are not the only one who misses FMW OSJ. I met Combat Toyoda in 2011. She has a Korean BBQ resturant way out in Chiba. It was one of the highlights of that trip.

Kaoru Fuyuki isn't a wrestler. She's the one to date Hashimoto after Fuyuki died and witness him die right in front of her at the dinner table just two years after Fuyuki's death.

Contracts and loyalty and not like NOAH just has that much money to just offer deals some one can't refuse.

I'm not sure NOAH could sell out Shin-Kiba. Yeah, okay.

He's advertised as Buffalo for the Gannosuke show. His new name going forward.

He said he would cut his wrist for an extra time out.

"Current, BAHU. Stuff like SHIN FMW, SHIN W*ING, XWF, & the stuff like that." None of those are current. Shin-W*ING and XWF ended in 2010. XWF didn't have anything make video after their first show in 2008. XWF became the Apache Army that I talked about in the other post. Shin-FMW for all purposes ended in 2011. They still run every couple of months but it's just the smallest of independent wrestlers working very small shows and has nothing to do with FMW. Nothing from them has made tape since 2010 though. I went to one show live in 2010 and it was a fun main event live because the wrestlers are brawling all around you but the rest of the show sucked and I don't think the brawling translates to video because everything on the video I saw from other shows was not good.

As far as post FMW promotions are you talking current or since FMW ended 12 years ago? Fuyuki Army had a great four month stretch from September-December 2003 that was the closest to what FMW was. WMF in 2002 was pretty good as well. If you are talking about current promotions there is only two really at this point. FREEDOMS can range from good to just boring and Apache Army most of the time just isn't very good. Kanemura vs. Kishiwada from 7/14/13 was probably the only thing I have seen recently that I liked from Apache.

Kintaro Kanemura will be promoting a 25th anniversary show in June at Korakuen Hall. He wants the undercard to be matches from other promotions like how Weekly Pro did back in 95 at the Tokyo Dome. Probably the best idea to get the show to draw.

They won't make it to the USA if I don't buy them though. I am Lynch's source now for them.

I bought them for 20,30, and 40 dollars and I am selling them for 5 each!

"I always have trouble with smaller promotions to determine what is a good draw and what isn't a good draw. Common sense dictates none of these small promotions make money with sub 500 attendances but they all last for years anyway." Well what kind of promotion are we talking and what kind of building are we talking about? Since this thread is about FREEDOMS I guess we will use them. They mostly run Shin-Kiba monthly and Korakuen three times a year. Their average at Shin-Kiba is around 150 (although they will get in the 200's every now and then). Shin-Kiba is 1000 dollars to rent out the building. Tickets are 50/40 dollars. So even if just 150 people bought 40 dollar tickets that still comes out to 6000 dollars on tickets. Now there is of course other payments they have to make like paying the wrestlers (Naoshi Sano told me FREEDOMS does not pay well) as well as just misc. costs of just promoting a wrestling show. Then you add profits off expensive DVD's that are 30 dollars, t-shirts that are 30-50 dollars, and just other merchandise that makes both the wrestlers and the promotion money. You also have to add in sponsors that pay the promotion and wrestler that have dinner with the wrestlers afterwards as well as advertisements. Now running at Korakuen Hall is around $16,000 to run although I know that if you can get it for less if you downsize the building which is what FREEDOMS did for this show. So this show did 428 fans and just assuming that everyone bought tickets at 40 dollars which I know is not the case then the show would have done $17,120. So I know this show probably lost money overall but this isn't something that would kill a promotion and is more an exception than the rule. "Some promotions don't even sell their events on DVD online and yet still survive." Does not mean they don't make money off DVD's sales at the shows. Also, they might be sold online and you just don't know about it. Just because Jeff Lynch does not get it in does not mean someone in Japan can't order it online. VKF and Ring Shop cover numerous promotions and sale online even internationally but they don't make it out of Japan that much anymore.

HEAT-UP is Kazuhiro Tamura's promotion. It uses a lot of the regular Freelance guys like Kenichiro Arai and Yuko Miyamoto. Occupation of the Indies now that it only airs once a month airs a lot of their shows since they don't do highlights of the bigger independents anymore. Secret Base still runs every month at Nishi-Chofu Martial Arts Arena. They draw about 50 people. Everyone left Style-E and formed U-File.

Great Kojika and The Winger won the tag titles defeating Takashi Sasaki and Tatsuhito Takaiwa. Show bombed big time drawing 428 fans. Problems were the tag team tournament never really got over drawing wise, the lineup was not announced until three days earlier as they wanted everything undecided going into the Nagoya show which is fine and all but now when the Nagoya is just 4 days before the Korakuen Hall show. There was a really bad storm going on in Tokyo so that probably messed up any chance at last minute ticket purchases and the only outside names that are not usually on the Shin-Kiba shows already were The Great Sasuke, Yuji Hino, and Shuji Ishikawa which is not the best group of guys for outside draws. I think FREEDOMS had to expect something like this. I would have guessed 500 something myself but no question the show and the tournament as a whole was a bomb for the promotion. Big news that came out of it though was GENTARO announcing he would return to the ring on May 2nd at Korakuen Hall. I believe it's going to be against Takashi Sasaki but nothing is official. My earlier post from a couple of months ago was Takashi Sasaki vs. GENTARO's chosen opponent which ended up being Yuji Hino.

So there is one show left before the semi-finals and finals show at Korakuen Hall on March 13th for the King of Freedom Tag Team Tournament. Jun Kasai and Masashi Takeda are out due to Takeda's injury so Kasai will be facing Yuji Hino in a Hardcore Match instead at Korakuen. The winner of Takashi Sasaki/Tatsuhito Takaiwa against HIROKI and Daisuke Masaoka advance into the Semi-Finals for the A Bracket along with Kamui and SUSUMU who already have advanced. B Bracket has Mammoth Sasaki/Toru Sugiura against Brahman Shu/Kei with the winner advancing to the semi-finals. If Great Kojika/The Winger defeat Minoru Fujita/Kenichiro Arai then they advance but if they lose there's the possibility of a three or four way tie at that point. I also ended up getting in from Japan a bunch of FREEDOMS DVD's from 2013 that had not made their way over here due to Lynch losing his connection. I got the Kasai Death Match Tournament shows as well some stuff from June and September as well.