Takaaki Kidani today announced his resignation as Chairman of the Board of New Japan. Rumours had been circulating for a while about his future after his decision to bring in Laughter7 turned out to be an unpopular one within the company. Kidani said he would continue to support New Japan from his post at Bushiroad but will no longer play a direct role in things. Kidani said he believes any hint of New Japan’s “Dark Age” came to an end on January 4th when 29,000 fans paid for a ticket, the largest in many years, and is excited by the future progress of the company.

President Sugabayashi held a presentation with Nakamura in attendance to discuss to global strategy of New Japan. New Japan wants to become better known around the world and the recent iPPVs are just part of the plan. Nakamura said he plans to defend his increasingly valuable IWGP Intercontinental Title around the world if possible to give it a true international feel and continue to differentiate it from the IWGP Heavyweight Title. Shinsuke talked of going to strange places such as the Amazon of Brazil or even North Korea to defend the title!

An English language version of New Japan’s official site will launch in April, giving the same information to English speaking people as Japanese. Spanish and Chinese versions of the site are also under development. Since 2001, I have run Strong Style Spirit and as far as I have seen it has been the only site in English solely focused on New Japan. New Japan did launch a Facebook in English but is now taking the next step of developing a full website. It’s quite possible the website may make this site obsolete, in which case perhaps my site will have outserved it’s purpose of providing information of the world’s best wrestling organization to people in English. If that is the case, for the first time I may have to consider it’s future but for now nothing will change and I fully support New Japan’s decision to launch a site that can reach more people than Strong Style Spirit.

Finally, New Japan announced some key dates for the next year including “WRESTLE KINGDOM VIII” back at the Tokyo Dome next January.

- 4/7 “INVASION ATTACK” @ Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan
- 5/3 “WRESTLING DONTAKU 2013″ @ Fukuoka International Center
- 8/10 “G1 CLIMAX 23″ @ Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan
- 8/11 “G1 CLIMAX 23″ @ Tokyo Ryogoku Kokugikan
- 1/4/14 “WRESTLE KINGDOM VIII” @ Tokyo Dome