Brian Damage
This Week in Wrestling: Week 33 of 2026
I might have to reinvest in New Japan World again. About a year or so ago, I gave up my subscription due to the quality of New Japan seemingly falling off a cliff. A lot of their stars either jumped ship to AEW, WWE or just plain got older and stale. Now I don’t pretend to be the foremost expert on New Japan Pro Wrestling or any Japanese promotion for that matter. I loved All Japan during the Kenta Kobashi, Mitsuharu Misawa era when tape trading was a thing in the 1990’s. I fell in love with New Japan seeing stars like Shinsuke Nakamura, Tetsuya Naito, Kazuchika Okada and Bullet Club.
There was just so much fantastic talent and was a much different product than what WWE had to offer. As the years have gone on, the roster became depleted and old and losing guys like Ospreay, Okada , Omega, The Young Bucks and Jay White really left voids that simply weren’t or couldn’t be replaced. Things really looked bad for NJPW. I began to question Hiroshi Tanahashi becoming NJPW president.
Well, it seems the rebuilding era has gone into full thrust mode with so many new and young faces emerging for the company. Wrestlers like Yota Tsuji, Konosuke Takeshita, Aaron Wolf, Ryohei Oiwa, Yuya Uemura and Callum Newman. There is so much talent that will only get better and better as time moves forward. I am definitely rooting for New Japan to return to its classic form once again.
My only advice to New Japan is stay away from AEW and any other U.S. promotion. Stop trying to expand globally and just concentrate on continuing to rebuild and get stronger. No offense to AEW, but New Japan needs to separate itself from others for the foreseeable future. Just my humble opinion.
Photo Gallery
Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler had a street named after him in Memphis!
WWE wrestler Bronson Reed looks like he went through a complete body transformation!
Chelsea Green celebrating her WWE title win in Disney World.
Kayla Braxton
NWA women’s champ Tiffany Nieves
Karissa Rivera
Mickie James
Dr. Britt Baker
Torrie Wilson
Video Gallery
Here’s a Konnan commercial straight outta Mexico from 1992…
Superunknown
I agree with you about New Japan. They are pretty much AEW -2.0 at this point. You would think they would realize by now that partnering with these US companies is hurting them. They have took ALL of their talent away.