Harold Meij On His Dream To Connect The World To Japan Through Pro Wrestling

New Japan Pro Wrestling President Harold Meij recently spoke to Japanese Government’s online magazine, Highlighting Japan, where he talked about his dream to connect Japan and the rest of the world though pro wrestling and how he is taking steps to globalize NJPW’s content.

Meij says that professional wrestling has the potential to become an integral part of Japanese culture as much as sushi, or Mount Fuji. His focus is to make it more popular in the promotion’s home country.

“The strong point of pro wrestling is that it is not just a sport, but rather an encompassing experience. Every time a wrestler does a grand move, they change the atmosphere of the stadium and the crowd cheers for their favorite wrestler. When their favorite wrestlers win, there is a rush of applause, when there are foul moves the fans get angry, and when they lose they cry and get upset.”

Meij also explained that his goal for the promotion is to make it popular and appealing to an audience worldwide.

“We have over 100,000 subscribers on our video channel, and almost fifty percent of them are outside of Japan,” he said. “When foreign subscribers visit Japan and attend a New Japan Pro-Wrestling match, they tend to share their experience on social media. So that more people get a deeper understanding of the sport and connect with the wrestlers, we put matches up on YouTube, including videos of the wrestlers themselves, their training scenes and videos of matches with English-language versions of the stirring, perfectly-timed announcements made by the Japanese pro-wrestling announcers.”