NJPW President Takami Ohbari recently spoke with Proresu-TODAY about the June 9th All Together Again event, which NJPW is running in conjunction with Pro Wrestling NOAH and AJPW.
During the interview, Ohbari reveals that he’s been wanting to hold this joint event ever since he became NJPW President back in 2020. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 outbreak would temporarily halt those plans.
Actually, I wanted to hold this event (All Together) right after I became President in 2020. Before that, I had been working with other organizations to petition Dr. Hase. Since I became President, I have placed great emphasis on horizontal ties. Of course, in the case of Corona, our first objective is to work together to overcome hardships, rise up together, and give back to the fans who supported us during this period.
Ohbari continues stating that another reason to run the show was to continue to inspire wrestling fans with great pro-wrestling, even if it did come from rival companies. Ohbari believes that the biggest competition the sport faces is people finding new hobbies and no longer having an interest.
However, from the perspective of a single New Japan company, if whether you watch New Japan Pro-Wrestling or not becomes equal to whether you watch wrestling or not, we can’t get our customers to come back. If they can find various good points in the wrestling industry, they will not say, I don’t watch New Japan Pro-Wrestling anymore, so let’s go camping or play golf, but they will say, let’s watch NOAH, or let’s watch All Japan. It is sad to see fans go to other organizations, but even if they become fans of other organizations, as long as they continue to love pro wrestling, they will have opportunities to see and hear about the events and interesting things happening in New Japan. That way, depending on our efforts, they have a chance to come back someday. It is much harder to fight against other hobbies and habits.
Elsewhere in the interview, Ohbari spoke about the COVID-19 pandemic and how it nearly put NJPW out of business. You can read his comments about that here.