10 Wrestling Clichés That Need To Die
4. NJPW Has No Story
Ask any wrestler who has performed in both countries what they see as the main differences between Japan and the US, and there's a good chance they'll tell you the former is less preoccupied with theatre and more with athleticism.
It's not exactly untrue, but it's perhaps a little lazy to extrapolate from that watching an NJPW show is therefore tantamount to grabbing seven or eight five-star matches from YouTube and watching them back to back, divorced from their context, over a period of three hours (although that is a good way to spend a Friday evening).
New Japan has recurring storylines and feuds - it's just that they are rarely expressed through the use of 30-minute top-of-the-show promos wherein two wrestlers grab a pair of microphones and trade verbage.
The main hurdle to getting its foreign viewers to invest in the NJPW product, of course, is the language barrier. But their English commentary team generally do a super job, and anyone who dipped their toes into the Omega-Okada trilogy this year will have known they were watching something special.