10 Times Wrestling Promotions Came Back From The Dead
4. NJPW - 2010s
It's dead.
Inokism almost literally killed New Japan Pro Wrestling in the early 2000s.
In a bid to capture the MMA zeitgeist, founder Antonio Inoki, a man in reverence to wrestling as a martial art, reimagined the promotion as shoot league in a bid to legitimise his by-definition illegitimate crop of new pro wrestling stars.
The irony was fatalistic; stars, like the legendary Shinya Hashimoto and prospective Ace successor Yuji Nagata, were both pummelled in humiliating losses that shattered their auras and drawing power. This was more hubristic harebrained scheme than philosophy; the experts were always going to annihilate the amateurs, and the drama and credibility was dwarfed by the Pride league all of this was so transparently patterned after. Imagine Brock Lesnar Vs. Ricochet from Super Show-Down 2020, except this time it's real - and it happens a lot - and you're close.
Antonio Inoki essentially presented a series of wolf versus lamb matches, and the wolves won, as would be obvious to anybody who wasn't a complete raving f*cking lunatic driven to madness by slapping a procession of people in the face who just longed to feel his hand. That hand slapped the cheek of the very industry he had once saved.
It's alive!
Inoki was forced out - imagine Yukes as Homer and Inoki as Grandpa in the wheelbarrow - and Hiroshi Tanahashi gradually restored faith in pro wrestling with his beautiful face, rippling body, rock star charisma and a level of craft universal in its immersion and yet intricate in its detail. Tana was one for the discerning dads, the magnetised kids, and the horny everybody.