I made mention of Wrestle Kingdom because it's New Japan's version of WrestleMania. They have it on January 4th every year and it's at the Tokyo Dome. I can't watch all of their stuff because their PPVs alone generally run about 4 hours plus. As much as I love to watch their stuff, I still watch WWE more because it's easier for me to get my hands on and doesn't last that long.

But they do have a weekly show. Once they got off of the whole MMA kick (well as the Gracies vs. Sakuraba tag team match shows, they haven't gotten completely off of it) from the early 2000s they have gotten back to more modern storylines, stables (there are probably four stables in New Japan right now), and the characters are really good. In fact, I think they do a much better job building gimmicks and characters overall than WWE does. Only John Cena has more charisma than Hiroshi Tanahashi in WWE. There is no better gimmick than Nakamura's 80s stoned rocker gimmick, and there is no better in-ring heel in all of wrestling than Minoru Suzuki.

And the crazy thing is, there isn't any subtitles or English broadcasters (not yet; they've considered it). Yet it's not hard to understand most of what goes on. I follow a couple of puroresu websites (along with F4W/WON) for the intricate details, but you can follow the feuds pretty well without them. Besides, you need a Jim Ross or someone like that to come in and really dedicate themselves to become a part of the show in order for it to be a plus.

They started doing iPPVs about a couple of years ago, and they are by far the most successful at it. Last year's Wrestle Kingdom sold over 100,000 buys; before that I don't think anyone had done over 25,000 in wrestling, especially in Japan where they're used to big wrestling shows being televised on free tv.
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