A new chat with the head of STARDOM.
It has been seven months since STARDOM confirmed that Giulia, Utami Hayashishita, Mai Sakurai, MIRAI and Victoria Yuzuki would be leaving the promotion.
All five talents made the move over to Rossy Ogawa’s newly introduced Dream Star Fighting Marigold promotion. While being interviewed by Yoshinori Yamaguchi of Proresu-TODAY, STARDOM President Taro Okada looked back at the talent departures and how the fallout was handled.
I feel that it may have conveyed to them how seriously we were thinking about the company (he said about direct communication & honesty with wrestlers about the decision they hand on their hands). Of course, it does not mean that the wrestlers who left the company did not understand that. I believe that the wrestlers who left the company had their own ideas and chose to leave, and that the remaining wrestlers may have had their own feelings about leaving STARDOM. I understood these feelings, and I did my best to listen to the wrestlers and explain the policy to them so that they could make a calm decision. In the end, I said, ‘Let’s do this together, please.’ I think this time of dialogue was the most important for the wrestlers.
We (Bushiroad Group) handle a variety of content, so we have experience in dealing with a wide range of creators, including directors, on-site staff, and voice actors for anime, and people who draw illustrations and create content for card games. I think that professional wrestlers are athletes, but they are also creators. I think Bushiroad’s strength is that we support and sometimes lead creators so that they can work in the best possible conditions. I think that the company’s attitude was conveyed.
He was asked to leave a message for STARDOM supporters. Within his response, Okada mentioned that although New Japan Pro-Wrestling is like an older brother, STARDOM is going to do its best to surpass them with the intention of making the Japanese wrestling scene even bigger.
I hope you will be more patient with us and watch us without hesitation. STARDOM will continue to get bigger and more interesting, and I will do my best to surpass New Japan Pro-Wrestling, even though (they’re) like an older brother. And we are doing this with the mission to make the Japanese wrestling industry an even bigger content. We are aiming for something huge. Of course, there are good things, but there are also things that we don’t like, things that we don’t rely on, and things that we wonder what is going on, so we will improve on those points, and we hope that you will continue to tell us about them.
Coming up on November 17th, NJPW and STARDOM are presenting Historic X-Over II. Here is the advertised lineup as of this writing:
- KOPW Championship: Great-O-Khan (c) vs. TBA (STARDOM wrestler)
- Zack Sabre Jr. & Maika vs. El Desperado & Starlight Kid
- Taichi & Natsupoi vs. Thekla & Clark Connors
- IWGP Women’s Championship: Mayu Iwatani (c) vs. Momo Watanabe
