Pro Wrestling NOAH could be seen as a flash in the pan in terms of professional wrestling. Compared to the long-standing success of the WWE and NJPW, NOAH felt more like a continuation of a promotion, that promotion being All Japan Pro Wrestling, and despite incredible success in the 2000s almost felt destined to fall away and never reach the heights of what came before in All Japan or what would come after in New Japan. NOAH still exists today and has found itself in a rather good stead in 2021, a partnership with New Japan to co-host the third night of Wrestle Kingdom in 2022 is a genuinely big deal for Japanese wrestling that should hopefully push both promotions to a much more successful year than 2021 had been.
NOAH Struggled After The Spilt From AJPW
After the death of Giant Baba in 1999, Mitsuharu Misawa became the company president of AJPW but was quickly removed from his position. Misawa, who had disagreements over the direction of the company with Motoko Baba, Giant Baba's widow, would go on to create NOAH taking 24 of the 26 contracted Japanese wrestlers with him (the two that remained with AJPW were Toshiaki Kawada and Masanobu Fuchi).
NOAH would not be an instant success, Motoko Baba's influence kept the company off of Japanese television until April 2001 and although ticket sales were high the low cost often meant that profits were not being made. To add more pressure to the company, Kenta Kobashi, who was widely tipped to be the headliner for NOAH, required surgery and he would be kept out of main event action for the first few years of NOAH. The big break the company needed came after working with NJPW in the Tokyo Dome in 2002, Misawa and Masahiro Chono went to a thirty-minute time-limit draw and the result helped NOAH gain a much larger audience. Those who turned towards NOAH after this match would then see one of the greatest heavyweight championship encounters of the early 2000s, as Misawa would take on Yoshihiro Takayama in a brutal fight. NOAH's greatest success came with Kobashi's reign as GHC Heavyweight Champion, lasting for over two years and garnering incredible critical acclaim. For NOAH, this brief period of success was still offset by relatively high expenditure costs and the company was struggling to turn a yearly profit. Attendances were very strong for the larger shows but fans wanted to see Misawa and Kobashi and were largely uninterested in the undercards.
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The Decline Of NOAH Justifies The 'Brand Above Talent' Model
Vince McMahon is often ridiculed for claiming that the brand needs to be bigger than any superstar in order for the product to survive. The downfall of NOAH gives his words more credence than expected. With Misawa thoroughly beaten up and broken down after years of grueling and intense matches, and Kobashi receiving treatment for cancer, the GHC Championship scene was freshened up with new talent. While Jun Akiyama and Kensuke Sasaki were proven draws, they were not Misawa, and that is what the fans wanted to see. By the end of 2006, and with attendances falling, Misawa was back to being champion and the quality of his matches was clearly not at the unbelievable standard he had maintained previously. After being defeated for the GHC Championship by Takeshi Morishima in 2008, Misawa still wrestled on every NOAH card trying to keep the promotion he had founded alive. Misawa sadly died in the ring in 2009, after taking a suplex from Akitoshi Saito. Misawa had said that he intended to retire by the end of the year.
Without Misawa, the company floundered and was hit with accusations of involvement with the Yakuza that further harmed the reputation of the company. The final blow to the company as a major Japanese promotion was the loss of KENTA, who signed for the WWE in 2014, and the deterioration of the working relationship with NJPW in 2016. By 2020, NOAH was reliant on partnerships with foreign wrestling promotions and had slipped further away into obscurity. The company was bought by CyberAgent, which owns DDT Pro Wrestling, in 2020.
The story of NOAH is incredibly melancholic, with Misawa's dream to do professional wrestling how Giant Baba had envisioned it trapping him into performing years after he should have to keep the company afloat. Thankfully, NOAH survived the years in the wilderness and looks in a relatively strong position today with some fantastic talent, both old and new, that will be able to demonstrate their skills on the biggest stage in Pro Wrestling, Wrestle Kingdom.
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