DDT's parent company acquires Pro Wrestling NOAH

General
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It appears the deal is complete. A presser was held this morning to go over some of the immediate next steps. The grounds for the acquisition sound like NOAH had a good year in 2019 but were still struggling financially. Enter DDT to prop them up

  • Sanshiro Takagi will expand his role to become president of NOAH in addition to his responsibilities of DDT and its related brands. In this capacity NOAH, it appears he’ll only be involved at a business operations level. He won’t be involved in creative.

  • It sounds like they’re going to keep the promotions separate for the immediate future, but they’re open to talent sharing when it makes sense.

  • DDT and NOAH will run back-to-back dates at Sumo Hall in November.

  • NOAH will finally be streaming! Tomorrow’s (1.30) Korakuen show will be free on DDT UNIVERSE. They mentioned plans to stream 1-2 NOAH cards per month.

DDT eng on Twitter (who I lifted all of this from) has a full thread here: https://twitter.com/ddtpro_eng/status/1222455423237668871?s=20

My two biggest takeaways from this:

  1. It is so refreshing to see the difference in philosophies between a large company that pushes smaller / struggling promotions down their throat as opposed to acquiring a rival company and preserving what makes them unique and interesting.

  2. WH (the king of all media) mentioned on twitter that CyberAgent (DDT and now Noah’s parent company) dwarfs BUSHIROAD and could totally shift the balance of power if they wanted to. It makes me wonder what puroresu will look like on five years. Does this force AJPW and BJW and a Joshi promotion to team up? I’m excited to see what the future holds.

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