The Rise And Fall Of All Japan Pro Wrestling 

Would love more videos on the history of Japanese Wrestling

"The Four Pillars of Heaven" is the most powermetal fucking thing i've ever heard

All Japan reminds me of the AWA that had ownership that didn’t want to change from what made them successful even though the world around them changing.

Between Misawa, Kobashi, and the Jr division Noah took off and for a couple years had NJPW shaking in their boots. Misawa's death really hurt prowrestling... let alone Noah.

I'd love to see something on the Joshi boom of the 90s and the CMLL/AAA "relationship". The GAORA SPORTS channel uploads regular AJPW content from the early-to-late 2000s, and it is still enjoyable. Joseph Motecillo also does a video essay series called "Walking the Kings Road" which is definitely worth a watch.

I’ve spoken to a number of older fans in Japan, and several younger ones. Old guys not only seem to think that All Japan is still the biggest, and sometimes even that Giant Baba is still completing. Younger guys often don’t even know what All Japan is. It’s really weird.

So basically, it all traces back to one event: Giant Baba's death.

Rest in peace, Mitsuharu Misawa

Fun Fact: Johnny Ace aka John "People Power" Laurinaitis was a big star in AJPW

NJPW doesn’t try and convince anyone that they are the only promotion from Japan. The openly acknowledge other Japanese promotions all the time. They’ve run shows over the past year that have included wrestlers from other promotions including their recent BOSJ tournament. They also frequently allow their contracted talent to wrestle for other promotions as well. Satoshi Kojima, who is was trained by NJPW, won multiple titles with the company and is one of the trainers at their Dojo is currently the Pro Wrestling Noah champ. If you enjoy NJPW do yourself a favor and take a bit of time to seek out matches from other promotions. There’s a ton of great, recent content on RU-vid from other promotions.

It's Ironically sad to me what happened to All Japan when Baba died is pretty much what happened to Pro Wrestling NOAH, when Misawa died a decade later.

I genuinely love these style of videos. I know they take a lot more time and research and I hope you keep getting enough views for this to remain viable. To the entire team who worked on it, thank you.

90s All Japan and 2000s Ring of Honor are easily my favourite eras of excellence in all of wrestling

This brings back memories lol. When I was a kid we would exchange/buy recorded VHS tapes of NJPW, All Japan, etc. This was a bit before the 2000's back when internet was slower for most of us and downloading a video literally took hours. There was no western coverage of Japanese wrestling in medias and you could only truly find good info about it on kinda obscure discussion boards. This was before Google, back in the "Webring" days. I had a friend who was really into strong style and pretty much introduced me to it. He had many contacts on discussion boards, mIRC or ICQ and they'd send each other tapes by mail. Just think about it for a second, this huge chain of hardcore wrestling fans who would trade and spread tapes recorded on Japanese TV!!! Seeing Hulk Hogan doing moves I'd never seen in WWF/WCW really was the decisive moment for me. He was faster, more technical, sold pretty well and overall delivered much better performances. I was like "The hell, he can do this?!". I realized Japanese pro wrestling was more hard hitting, more real and you really had to be tough to endure the beatings over there. The Stan Hansen lariats were seemingly the same as clotheslines in terms of looks, but in terms of physicality they were way more brutal. Over time I ended up discovering a whole other world of pro wrestling that I could barely get a glimpse of whenever those guys visited WWF or WCW, and unfortunately they were reduced to jobber roles in many instances. You never would've seen "Hakushi" feuding with the Undertaker... Yet in Japan it happened and it was awesome! All Japan was #2 at some point but never really beat NJPW, but it came quite close at some point for sure.

Never in my life have I seen a wrestler more over with a crowd than Kobashi was the AJPW fanbase in the late 80s/early 90s. They didn't just pop for his big moves or his promos, it was a constant roar from start to finish. If he was selling they willed him to get back up and win, if he was on offence they were cheering because they were so damn happy that their hero was giving the other guy a pasting. I strongly recommend that new fans check it out because there is literally nothing else like it in wrestling since.

Thank you Ross and cultaholic I really enjoyed this. Their history is so convoluted.

90's All Japan was THE shit. To this day i wonder if they would have kept rolling strong if the NOAH Exodus never happened. Nowadays, they might not even be the 5th most well known japanese company (NJPW, NOAH, DDT, Stardom and Dragon Gate all seem bigger than All Japan today).

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Gave a lot of interesting information to fans like me who maybe don't know all that much about the storied history of Japanese pro wrestling. Very well done, and a great presentation by Ross. 👍

Giant Baba is just an interesting person to look at. This why I clicked.

Miyahara is one of the absolutely best wrestlers in the world in the last 10 years. Great video !

Classic All Japan is probably the favorite promotion of your favorite wrestler

I think we often forget how wonderful Ross' oration is when he isn't bouncing around screaming at everyone. Good job that man. 👍

So 2022 was the 50th anniversary of NJPW? That's cool

Rise: Baba...and then the Pillars. Fall: Baba Dies. Misawa leaves.

Awesome video. I've always been so intrigued by Kawada staying with All Japoan, supposedly because his relationship with Misawa had deteriorated so dramatically at that point.

Beautifully done boys.

Thank you for this video, the four pillars of heaven completely changed everything in the wrestling world for me at the time. At the time, I imported All Japan Wrestling feat Virtua for the Sega Saturn, and in my opinion, probably the best pure wrestling game ever (with the most painful looking moves)

Thanks for this video. I was just thinking about what happened to the company. I hear a lot about NJPW nowadays, but nothing about All Japan.

If you are younger or have just never seen AJPW from 80s and 90s, do yourself a favor and find some to watch. Its incredible and by far the BEST period of ANY Japanese Wrestling Promotion.

To me Mitsuhara Misawa and Kenta Kobashi are the greatest pro wrestlers of all time. Period. Misawa can rest easy knowing the landmark his legacy has created.

90s AJPW has some of THE BEST matches EVER !!! Ill fight you dammit ! LOL !! But for real they had legendary matches . Some of the best of all time . Watch Joseph Monticello vids on here if your new to AJPW . Walking the Kings Road series. You wont be disapointed I promise

Wow. I only started learning about All Japan in within the last 2-3 years honestly, same with Pro Wrestling Noah since I've been more of a New Japan fan since 2018's Wrestle Kingdom 12. Still, it's a shame that All Japan is essentially just "another company" nowadays. Hopefully things can get better for them with some more time.

Well documented and nicely illustrated! Would love to see a similar video about the rise of the Japanese indy style birthed by Toryumon in the early 2000s.

Great video. Really well done and very interesting. Great job Ross and editors!

Really interesting video with the dulcet tones of Ross as a bonus! Good work from all involved. That's worth a rewatch just to try and take it all in!

Always love anything on Japanese wrestling these guys do, thank you very much

This was really well done!! Kudos to all the cultaholic crew for a great job done!!

This video and the fmw one are probably the best wrestling documentaries I've watched in ages. Cultaholic have come along way baby. It's good to see.

Anyone who has this belief that the Japanese wrestling scene is always respectful and serious, cases like this are far from uncommon. It's no less farcial or underhanded than North American.

Awesome video 💯 I'm a big AJPW fan I love going back and watching some classic All Japan shows from the 90's and I enjoy the Muta era of All Japan as well I still have hope that one day to see this beloved promotion rise from the ashes to return to the Kings Road 💪 ... Please do more videos on Japanese Wrestling 🙏

That's one hell of a saga! Great video Ross (and editors!)

It's common these days for old school fans of wrestling (people that go back further than 92 especially) to blame ECW for a lot of what they don't like about modern wrestling, and there is definitely truth in that opinion; but i have long believed 90's all japan style did as much, or more damage to professional wrestling as anything else. It was video game wrestling.

This was wonderful to watch , Thank you Cultaholic , makes me love Virtual Pro Wrestling 2 even more. Amazing history.

Well done Team Cultaholic and Ross on the voice over. Really enjoying the documentary style series’

Fascinating video, I've been excited for this one ever since Ross mentioned that he was working on it on the podcast a couple of months ago!

It’s fascinating to me that arguably even STARDOM has surpassed AJPW these days.

I would love to see the rise and fall and rise again of NJPW

Fascinating video. I grew on Houston wrestling and knew wrestling in Japan was big. This video gave me my first more in depth experience than anything I've ever seen on Japanese wrestling.

Great video and a great narration by Ross, would have loved to hear Maffew do this and see how many names he couldn't pronounce though!

Great video Learned some stuff I was unaware of, I had some knowledge of AJPW, but not much past Baba's passing

I remember reading about this back in PWI back in the early 2000s as the years went by I always wondered what happened to AJPW and ironically would look all over RU-vid for a video explaining the decline and finally have one...good job.

Great job lads, loving the smooth Rossilicious narration

Here from the podcast, great to see AJPW expert Ross in action!

Great stuff, I'd love to see more videos like this. Both historical and those that cover the Japanese behind the scenes information.

Great to see big wrestling channels talking about different companies

Big fan of classic AJPW so I appreciate the hell out of this video, especially the accuracy. Great job guys!

Amazing vid. Super informative

Great job with this, really enjoyed it.

FINALLY!!! Thank you! I’ve been asking for this one for years!!

Thank you so much for making this! I'm still new to Japanese wrestling but I always knew about All-Japan. I had always wondered what happened to AJPW. Now I know.

Great video! I’d love more of this kind of thing in the future

Fascinating video. Thanks for the history lesson, Ross!

Great job, beautifully done!

Videos like this is why I am here. Thank you guys.

Love content like this. Great work!

Happy anniversary misawa, rest in peace

70’s/80’s All-Japan is the best wrestling ever put to tape. It’s legitimately sad to see how they’ve fallen.

Great video Ross.

I enjoyed that. Well done, fellas.

I'm glad that there's a video on All Japan, shout out to Kento Miyahara for holding it down

Man, what a good video. This was entertaining and very informative!

I met Kobashi-san years ago during the Pro Wrestling NOAH European Navigation tour fan event. He's actually a lot shorter than you'd expect and a remarkably humble person.

As a regular watcher of AJPW. I think you did a great job

Thanks for this, Japanese wrestling has so much interesting history that not many people know about

Yo Cultaholic, please do more videos about Japanese Pro Wrestling & other Japanese Promotions such as Frontier Martial Arts Wrestling, Inoki Genome Federation & of course Pro Wrestling Noah. I would love to see an entire huge video about the history of New Japan or that of the life, career & legacy of Rikidozan or of the likes of Kenta Kobashi, NJPW's living legend Hiroshi Tanahashi, NJPW's Three Musketeers & All Japan's 4 Pillars of Heaven to name a few. How about also videos about Mexican Lucha Libre organizations like AAA & CMLL and Mexican stars like El Santo, Mil Mascaras & Blue Demon or of British Pro Wrestling also. Loving these types of videos from you Cultaholic. Keep it up dudes👍

I used to love New Japan Pro Wrestling and favorite era of Pro Wrestling is : 1987-2010 (WWF/E)

Thank you for this wonderful video.

Excellent work guys!

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ / 5 Very informative and in depth reporting. I feel interested to watch some Japanese Wrestling now.

90s ajpw is my favourite wrestling and I have loved this video thank u rossy drip drip

We don’t deserve you Ross❤️ fantastic work sir

I still watch all Japan on RU-vid. Lovely video and Lovely that its Ross and not Sam

very good ross, love your work

Spectacular video!

Fantastic stuff here, truly.

Amazing video. Very interesting

Love these history videos keep them coming

This was very good, I love AJPW, but it gets pretty murky after 2000, this is a great way to get the whole story.

ALPW 2002 was my favorite year from the organization. At one point it look like they'll be around for a long time

I agree! A beginners history of Japanese wrestling would be most welcome 👍

Nicely done.... 🙌🏽🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Love that jeremy clarkson impression ross

Been waiting for this!

I always really like hearing about all Japan in the 90s and the Four Pillars of heaven and the precursor to them as well . of classic wrestling it is my favourite era because it's just Big meaty men many murdering each other with horrific looking moves YEAH FUCK YEAH.

The way I look at it, Japanese wrestling is almost an inverse of what's happened in the US. In the US, there used to be a ton of large promotions that all had their own stars. Georgia Championship Wrestling had guys like El Mongol, Buddy Colt, Bill Watts and Mr. Wrestling 2. Jim Crockett Promotions had Harley Race, Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes... and so on. As time went on, everything funneled down to the point where there was only WCW and WWE (with ECW being the biggest little dog in the fight), then down to WWE. And as much as we're aware of other companies existence, it's only NOW when WWE has really had competition, after around 20 years of being the solitary King of the Mountain. Japan was kind of the opposite. JWA was THE promotion. While there were smaller companies running shows, they weren't competition... same as ROH was never competition for WWE. JWA splitting led to AJPW & NJPW. AJPW's problems led to more companies rising up, NJPW's staunch refusal to change led to even further divestment. It's only become more prevalent now for new companies to form out of disputes and changes in power. GLEAT formed 2 years ago after Noah was sold off, FMW relaunched last year after Atsushi Onita decided he wasn't ready to retire and wasn't liking the money companies like BJPW and DDT paid him. While NJPW might be the current Number 1 in Puroresu, they aren't at the top of a mountain like WWE has been. It's more like they're on a small hill and everyone else is just building around them, with NJPW's house being taller and easier to see than anyone else's... for now.

I'd love to see a rise and fall of CMLL. Here in Mexico, AAA completely took over as the top top

Honestly that bit for Kawada was a thing of beauty

Very much looking forward to this one

It's really mind boggling how a Japanese wrestler in the 1950s could be more famous in Japan than Hogan, Austin, or the Rock at their peaks COMBINED in the States. Are there any taped matches of Rikidōzan on RU-vid?

That was a good video. Thank you 😊