Full Details on New Japan Network

[Big Red Machine]

Source: [urln=http://www.f4wonline.com/more/more-top- ... we-network] http://www.F4WOnline.com [/urln]

By Dave Meltzer

The press conference is still going on but this is what we know:

*The web site is http://njpwworld.com

*The price is 999 yen per month. The conversion rate is favorable right now as that price is $8.40 in the U.S., $9.60 Canadian and 5.38 pounds.

*There will be a full lineup of live events, basically every major show will air live. There are four shows in December, including late Saturday's tag team tournament finals. That show will be the only one not airing live, likely because they were still working with Niconico. It will air on an eight-hour tape delay but everything else is live. Niconico will still air that show live. There are five shows in January, including Wrestle Kingdom, the 1/5 Korakuen Hall show (Raw after WrestleMania show), and the two Fantastica Mania shows from Korakuen Hall, as well as a 1/30 show.

*There will be a lot of archived content including what appear to be documentaries surrounding some of the legendary matches in New Japan history including Antonio Inoki vs. Willem Ruska, Inoki vs. Hulk Hogan, Tiger Mask vs Dynamite Kid, Keiji Muto vs. Nobuhiko Takada, as well as all of the major events as well as the G-1 Climax movie that playerd this year in movie theaters in Japan.

*Takaaki Kidani said that New Japan is right now the No. 2 pro wrestling company in the world as a business, but No. 1 as far as wrestling goes, and their goal is to surpass WWE and be No. 1 as far as business.

*They are taking a similar risk as WWE, in the sense they are undercutting the price of iPPVs, as the big shows have been 1800 yen, and the Tokyo Dome was last year around 3500 yen, looking to increase volume with the lower price. WWE was not successful in the same strategy. They also also apparently giving up Samurai! TV, as the shows that were formerly on Samurai! TV, like the Korakuen Hall shows, will now by on the service.

*If you time your order, you would be able to watch the entire G-1 Climax series for $8.40 instead of $150 from two years ago and $110 this past year. When it comes to the U.S. market, they are undercutting themselves, but the U.S. is not their primary market.

*Right now they are showing on the screen the Inoki & Sakaguchi vs. Karl Gotch & Lou Thesz match.

*There are hundreds of matches historically, including everything of significance from the past three years, and some matches every year dating back to 1972.

*The first year goal is 100,000 subscribers.