(Don’t worry, I’m still planning on covering today’s spectacularly mid-looking BOSJ show, but this is obviously more important.)

After 14 years of ownership by the trading card company Bushiroad, NJPW has been sold to TV Asahi – its longtime broadcast partner – and CyberAgent, a digital media company that also owns Pro Wrestling NOAH, DDT Pro-Wrestling and Tokyo Joshi Pro-Wrestling. NJPW will become part of TV Asahi’s organization.

This is a significant change for NJPW, but not an entirely unexpected one. Bushiroad has its fingers in a lot of pies and brings in a lot of revenue, but it, like most Japanese companies, has been facing significant financial headwinds in recent years; it even borrowed a fairly significant sum earlier this year to help cover its operating costs. NJPW isn’t a money-loser – prior to recent changes in Bushiroad financial reporting that obfuscated its performance, it typically ended up in the black by a few million U.S. dollars each year, and its performance has stayed roughly the same since then – but it does have a certain amount of value, so divesting of NJPW to help Bushiroad pay off its debt and concentrate more thoroughly on its core business makes a certain amount of sense. NJPW and Bushiroad’s relationship has deteriorated in recent years, with NJPW people complaining about Bushiroad’s tightening purse strings, particularly when it comes to offering wrestlers contracts that can compete with those offered by AEW and WWE in the U.S. The departure of Kazuchika Okada, in particular, is often laid at the feet of Bushiroad and its president, Takaaki Kidani, and Okada has cited poor dealings with Bushiroad as one of the reasons he left the promotion. Recently, NJPW’s Yota Tsuji publicly called out Bushiroad, suggesting on an NJPW show and in the media that wrestlers should be paid more, and NJPW President Hiroshi Tanahashi has suggested the same thing, albeit more diplomatically.

TV Asahi already owned 22.7% of NJPW and has been in business with the company for 53 years. It taking over primary ownership makes as much sense as anything, as NJPW’s media infrastructure is already under TV Asahi, so it’s likely that little will change with regard to its broadcast and streaming efforts. What’s more, the members of NJPW’s leadership team have existing relationships with TV Asahi, so the public-facing transition will likely be fairly seamless.

However, there may be some pain points between the two, particularly when it comes to creative. For instance, it’s easy to envision TV Asahi having some ideas for Aaron Wolf that involve him being featured more prominently than he currently is, which would be welcome in some regards – he needs to wrestle someone other than the House of Torture, stat – but, also, because he’s been screwing around in House of Torture matches for the past five months, he’s nowhere near ready from an in-ring standpoint to hang in main or semi-main events. Wolf’s presence is clearly very important to both NJPW and TV Asahi, so they need to figure out a plan that’s going to get him ready for a more prominent role.

The influence of CyberAgent is less clear. It could certainly mean there will be more crossover events between NOAH, DDT and NJPW, although the relationships between those companies are already good, so it likely will not affect much in the short term. The only notable issue is the looming specter of WWE’s influence over NOAH, although that is reportedly on the wane, with WWE’s programming relocating from CyberAgent and TV Asahi’s ABEMA streaming service to Netflix in Japan in the fall.

Stardom is not part of this deal, which raises the question of whether or not it will maintain a relationship with NJPW moving forward. Stardom’s Syuri is the current IWGP Women’s Champion.

It’s difficult to imagine that this will affect NJPW’s long-standing relationships with CMLL and AEW, as Bushiroad didn’t really have anything to do with them, but we shall see. It is too early to tell for sure.

Of course, when an American hears that a media conglomerate is taking over a wrestling promotion, it’s difficult for them not to think of the assassination of WCW by the coward Time Warner, but that was a much different situation. It obviously remains to be seen what will change with NJPW moving forward – something surely will, be it subtle or significant – but NJPW and TV Asahi have been partners for more than half a century, so hopefully it’s a positive change moving forward. CyberAgent is the wild card, and it’s definitely worth keeping an eye on its influence in the coming weeks and months.

I’ll definitely have more on this as it develops.