The January 4 Tokyo Dome Show is a

professional wrestling Professional wrestling, often shortened to either pro wrestling or wrestling,The term "wrestling" is most often widely used to specifically refer to modern scripted professional wrestling, though it is also used to refer to Real life, real- ...

event produced annually on

January 4 Events Pre-1600 *46 BC – Julius Caesar fights Titus Labienus in the Battle of Ruspina. * 871 – Battle of Reading (871), Battle of Reading: Æthelred of Wessex and his brother Alfred the Great, Alfred are defeated by a Danish invasi ...

in the

Tokyo Dome is an indoor stadium in Bunkyō, Tokyo, Japan. It was designed as a baseball stadium following its predecessor, Korakuen Stadium (whose former site is now occupied by the Tokyo Dome Hotel and a plaza for this stadium). In Japan, it is often us ...

New Japan Pro-Wrestling (NJPW) is a Puroresu, Japanese professional-wrestling Professional wrestling promotion, promotion founded on January 13, 1972, by Antonio Inoki, and based in Nakano, Tokyo. It is currently majority owned by card-game company Bushiroad, with TV As ...

(NJPW), a Japan-based

professional wrestling promotion A professional wrestling promotion is a company or business that regularly performs shows involving professional wrestling. "Promotion" also describes a role which entails management, advertising and logistics of running a wrestling event. Within ...

. NJPW has promoted events in the venue every January 4 since Super Warriors in Tokyo Dome in 1992. Since its debut on

pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program ...

in 2007, the January 4 show has been branded as Wrestle Kingdom. The January 4 Tokyo Dome Show became NJPW's premier annual event and the biggest event in Japanese wrestling, similar to what WrestleMania is for

WWE World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) is an American professional wrestling promotion. It is owned and operated by TKO Group Holdings, a majority-owned subsidiary of Endeavor Group Holdings. A global integrated media and entertainment company, ...

and American professional wrestling. It has been described as "the largest professional wrestling show in the world outside of the United States" and the "Japanese equivalent to the

Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual History of the NFL championship, league championship game of the National Football League (NFL) of the United States. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966 NFL season, 1966 (with the excep ...

". Since 2014, NJPW has scheduled supporting shows on the days before or after January 4, including a second Wrestle Kingdom show in the Tokyo Dome between 2020 and 2022. The first two January 4 Tokyo Dome Shows were also the last two WCW/New Japan Supershows. All the Dome shows have featured championship matches, including several titles not owned by NJPW. On three occasions (

1998 1998 was designated as the ''International Year of the Ocean''. Events January * January 6 – The ''Lunar Prospector'' spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for Lunar water, frozen water, in soil i ...

2006 2006 was designated as the International Year of Deserts and Desertification. Events January * January 1– 4 – Russia temporarily cuts shipment of natural gas to Ukraine during a price dispute. * January 12 – A stampede during t ...

and

2013 2013 was the first year since 1987 to contain four unique digits (a span of 26 years). 2013 was designated as: *International Year of Water Cooperation *International Year of Quinoa Events January * January 5 – 2013 Craig, Alask ...

), no titles changed hands during the show. The

2019 This was the year in which the first known human case of COVID-19 was documented, preceding COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic which was declared by the World Health Organization the following year. Up to that point, 2019 had been described as ...

show, which featured eight title matches, was the first in which all contested titles changed hands. Some of the earlier January 4 show attendance numbers have been disputed. Officially, the 1993 Tokyo Dome show set the attendance record with 63,500 fans packing the Tokyo Dome, while according to

Dave Meltzer David Allen Meltzer (born October 24, 1959) is an American journalist, author, and historian who reports on professional wrestling and mixed martial arts. Since 1983, he has been the publisher and editor of the ''Wrestling Observer Newsletter' ...

, the 1998 show holds the record with an attendance of 55,000. The lowest attendances for any Dome Shows were for the 2021 event, held under attendance restrictions due to

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by the coronavirus SARS-CoV-2. In January 2020, the disease spread worldwide, resulting in the COVID-19 pandemic. The symptoms of COVID‑19 can vary but often include fever ...

; NJPW announced an attendance of 12,689 for the first night and 7,801 for the second. Prior to COVID-19, the 2007 and

2011 The year marked the start of a Arab Spring, series of protests and revolutions throughout the Arab world advocating for democracy, reform, and economic recovery, later leading to the depositions of world leaders in Tunisia, Egypt, and Yemen ...

Dome shows drew the lowest unofficial gates, with only 18,000 in attendance. As of 2021, the January 4 shows (including matches held on January 5 as part of two-night events) have hosted 328 matches (not including

dark Darkness is the condition resulting from a lack of illumination, or an absence of visible light. Human vision is unable to distinguish colors in conditions of very low luminance because the hue-sensitive photoreceptor cells on the retina are ...

or pre-show matches), 126 of which were title matches leading to 69 title changes in total. The 2005 Tokyo Dome show had a 16-match card, the largest of any single-night show, while

2001 The year's most prominent event was the September 11 attacks against the United States by al-Qaeda, which Casualties of the September 11 attacks, killed 2,977 people and instigated the global war on terror. The United States led a Participan ...

2002 The effects of the September 11 attacks of the previous year had a significant impact on the affairs of 2002. The war on terror was a major political focus. Without settled international law, several nations engaged in anti-terror operation ...

, 2007,

2016 2016 was designated as: * International Year of Pulses by the sixty-eighth session of the United Nations General Assembly. * International Year of Global Understanding (IYGU) by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the Internationa ...

2018 Events January * January 1 – Bulgaria takes over the Presidency of the Council of the European Union, after the Estonian presidency. * January 4 – SPLM-IO rebels loyal to Chan Garang Lual start a raid against Juba, capital of ...

and 2019 featured 9 matches, the lowest number of matches on a single-night show (again, not counting dark or pre-show matches). The first two-night show in 2020 featured a total of 16 matches, tying the 2005 show for the most in a single event, but each night featured only eight matches, fewer than any previous Dome Show card. The second two-night show in 2021, affected by COVID-19, had only 6 matches scheduled for each night.

Events

Footnotes

References

External links

The official New Japan website
{{New Japan Pro Wrestling events, January 4 Tokyo Dome Show Recurring events established in 1992 1992 establishments in Japan

Events

See also

Footnotes

References

External links