5. Shattering Attendance Records
Sports: The Japanese passion for the real sport of baseball cant hold a candle to their fanatical devotion to pro wrestling. Although invented in the states, baseball is a cornerstone of sporting life in Japan. Its so popular that Japans National Tourism Organization claims many fans are surprised to hear that Americans also consider it their national sport. Nippon Professional Baseball is the countrys equivalent of Major League Baseball and their 2014 season average attendance at games was 26,457. The Tokyo Domes 2015 baseball season average attendance was 42,470. Japans most highly attended pro wrestling show, PRIDE Shockwave at Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, more than doubled baseballs figures in 2002 with an astonishing 91,107 fans. New Japan Pro Wrestling is the countrys current leading promotion and even their 1998 Antonio Inoki Retirement show drew 70,000 wrestle-heads to the Tokyo Dome.
Wrestling:Football players may think of themselves as stadium gods but like Scott Steiner cutting a promo, the numbers just dont add up. Consider that fourteen WrestleManias had more spectators than the first Super Bowl in Dallas, which only had 60,000 people in attendance. For twenty-three years WrestleMania III held the North American live indoor sporting event record with 93,173 fans filling the Detroit Silverdome, a fact Vince will let few people forget. Though WCW is just a memory these days, Billionaire Ted still holds one prize over McMahons head, the largest Pay Per View event in wrestling history. Collision in Korea was perhaps the ballsiest move in international sports-put on a joint collaboration between WCW and New Japan Pro Wrestling in the isolated, antagonistic, Communist nation of North Korea. Their gumption paid off-340,000 people filled May Day Stadium in Pyongyang over the course of two days and Scott Steiner managed to not get himself arrested for mouthing off to Kim Jong Il.