WWE wants to leave its imprint in every major wrestling territory. Last year, the company introduced NXT UK in the United Kingdom, and now it seems they want to expand their reach to the Land of the Rising Sun.
As quoted by Ringside News , the Wrestling Observer Radio ‘s Dave Meltzer revealed that the company is trying to establish another NXT territory in Japan, and they’ve even been speaking to some established national companies in a bid to help them achieve that goal.
“They’re definitely working on it. They’ve talked to a number of companies in Japan. They’ve tried to buy companies in Japan. I don’t know of any deals that have gone through. The ones I’ve heard about didn’t go through. They wanted to buy NOAH, so it didn’t go through.”
Japan is a global hotbed for wrestling, so it’s understandable why established companies don’t want to become another subsidiary of WWE. However, WWE could very well rid those companies of influential talents as they want to recruit some notable Japanese names to work behind the scenes in a potential Japanese iteration of NXT.
“There’s talk about different people being hired as Japanese trainers, big names. I don’t wanna say until I get it confirmed, but there are two big names that have gone around as far as them hiring. Yeah, they wanna do NXT Japan , absolutely. They’ve been making moves in that direction.”
#WWENXT ??? Ahoy, #spicygirl !!?? pic.twitter.com/r7PNHRaJ0t
— KAIRI /??????? (@KAIRI_official) October 17, 2019
As documented by Sportskeeda back in July, Meltzer reported that WWE reportedly held talks with Dragon Gate and STARDOM as well. Unfortunately for WWE, however, they won’t be able to acquire the latter company as it’s been taken over by another conglomerate.
Last night, Fightful ‘s Sean Ross Sapp took to Twitter to announce that New Japan Pro Wrestling’s parent company, Bushiroad, has acquired STARDOM. Whether or not they purchased the company to prevent WWE from gaining a strong foothold in Japanese wrestling remains a mystery at the time of this writing.
Earlier this year, The Inquisitr reported that WWE has also been planning to launch a NXT brand in Canada. The report also claims that former superstar Santino Marella will be involved somehow, though details pertaining to his role remain unconfirmed.
While most wrestling fans will attest that the quality of action across the current NXT brands is the best in WWE, the company’s attempts to expand into more foreign territories could be interpreted as an effort to monopolize the industry.