Launching date confirmed for new Japanese Women's promotion in New York
The first event from the new Japanese Women's promotion launching in the United States will be Thursday 9/21 in New York City, with the premiere event in Manhattan, PWInsider.com has learned. There will be a number of announcements next week in relation to the debut. This will be the day after AEW Grand Slam 3, so fans coming into town for AEW's latest stadium show would be able to attend both events.
The following names are confirmed for the promotion:
*Legendary former All Japan Women's Pro-Wrestling and WWE star Bull Nakano, who will be actively involved for it behind the scenes as well as featured in an “on camera role."
*Arisa Nakajima - Seadlinnng star who is also a four-time JWP Openweight Champion as well as a former JWP Junior and Princess of Pro-Wrestling Champion. There are a lot of Japanese women's wrestling fans who consider Nakajima one of the best in the world right now.
*Risa Sera, the former Ice Ribbon star and two time champion who now leads the freelance stable Prominence and appears regularly for STARDOM, where her team won the Triangle Derby tournament and then the Artist of Stardom Trios Championship.
*Tomoka Inaba - 20 year old star who wrestles for TAKA Michinoku's Just Tap Out promotion and Sendai Girls' Pro Wrestling. She has held the Queen of JTO Championship several times as well as Sendai Girls' Junior Championship. From an in-ring standpoint, she's considered one of the finest younger talents in the world but has never wrestled here in the States.
As we've previously reported, the project is something that has actually been planned and worked on for several years. We have also confirmed that some of the point people behind the new promotion were actually consultants for Bushiroad, the parent company of New Japan Pro Wrestling and STARDOM for a number of years.
PWInsider learned more about the planned business model for the new promotion, which is expected to hold its first event in New York City this Fall. We are hearing the brain trust behind the company have been really focused on building out its ecosystem of content. We are told there there has been a big huge focus on developing short and long-form anime content related to the wrestling, a very unique strategy given a number of major streaming services, including Netflix, Amazon, Apple and more are spending billions of dollars on anime.
Due to this strategy, we are hearing that many of the wrestlers who have signed could have slightly modified names and characters, so that the company can legally license the rights and trademarks without any potential conflicts.
