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The card for New Japan Pro Wrestling’s biggest show of the year, NJPW Wrestle Kingdom 20, is starting to take shape and it has already gotten the wrestling world talking. Hiroshi Tanahashi will wrestle the final match of his career against AEW Unified Champion Kazuchika Okada, Olympic gold medalist Aaron Wolf will make his wrestling debut against EVIL, and Konosuke Takeshita will defend the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship against Yota Tsuji. With such a loaded card already, it’s easy to see why tickets for the event have been selling well, so much so that in the latest episode of “Wrestling Observer Radio,” Dave Meltzer stated that Wrestle Kingdom 20 could be the biggest event at the Tokyo Dome in several decades.
“Tickets have moved extremely quick since [NJPW] made that announcement [of the Tanahashi vs. Okada match] on Saturday. It’s probably going to be the biggest real Tokyo Dome number in over 20 years,” Meltzer said. “Paid [tickets] at this point is probably in that range already, in 20 years for sure, maybe not 25. There were some interpromotional stuff years ago in the early 2000s I think may have beaten it, like when [Mitsuharu] Misawa wrestled [Masahiro] Chono or something. But it’s the best advance since the [Antonio] Inoki retirement and that was in 1998, so it’s the best advance in 27 years.”
The Antonio Inoki retirement show that Meltzer mentioned still holds the record for the largest attended wrestling show at the Tokyo Dome with a reported number of over 70,000 people. The Tokyo Dome can no longer hold that amount of people, meaning that record will remain in tact regardless of how well Wrestle Kingdom 20 does. However, if the show surpasses 43,000 people, it will beat every Tokyo Dome show held in the 2010s, and if it reaches more than 60,000 people, it will become the first NJPW show to reach that figure since 2001.
Please credit “Wrestling Observer Radio” when using quotes from this article, and give a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.
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