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The Alternate Era is a brand new project that will be effectively changing the landscape of all eras of wrestling you have either loved or hated. The Alternate Era will be an anthology series that will be released in seasons, where specific subject matter / storylines / events will be documented in episodic form. While each season will dedicate itself to one specific story, it is safe to assume that the seasons take place in the same universe and that the ripple effects of each season may or may not be felt throughout other seasons.
Each episode will release on Tuesday of every week at 8 pm EST.
For three years, New Japan Pro Wrestling has lived within a strange twilight. Projected to be the beacon of modern Japanese wrestling, it now feels like a company unsure of what it is trying to be. The crowds still attended, the lights still flashed, but the feeling that permeated throughout every building was that of the promotion changing. It is a machine that still ran, but the heart that powered it was faltering.
In 2010, Hiroshi Tanahashi stood untouchable. He was the golden idol, the man who rebuilt New Japan after years of chaos. His championship reigns had turned him into the closest thing to a living monument the company possessed. Fans called him “The Ace” with pride, and management believed he could carry the brand into the next decade. Yet with every successful defense, every polished promo, and every familiar closing pose, a quiet fatigue began to spread. The adoration remained, but it carried less electricity. The audience had seen perfection too many times. They knew what a Tanahashi main event felt like before it even began.
The company’s salvation, it seemed, would come from the next generation. For years, the New Japan system had promised an emerging crop of young lions who would inherit the mantle of leadership. Kazuchika Okada, Katsuyori Shibata, and Tetsuya Naito had all been spoken of as heirs to Tanahashi’s throne. Yet one by one, those promises withered.
Okada’s departure became the first fracture in the company’s armor. Sent abroad on the traditional learning excursion, he found himself disillusioned with New Japan’s handling of his future. A series of contract disputes and perceived mistreatment convinced him that the company did not truly see him as the superstar he believed he could be. When his excursion concluded, he did not return to Tokyo. Instead, Okada appeared in Pro Wrestling NOAH, standing across the ring from Takeshi Morishima with a defiance that seemed aimed as much at his former employers as at his opponent. His victory over Morishima for the GHC Heavyweight Championship was both a coronation and a condemnation. NOAH had made Okada the top star New Japan never trusted. When Naomichi Marufuji later defeated him, Okada left the belt in the center of the ring and raised his hands not as a humbled man, but as one who had proved his point. From that moment forward, he became NOAH’s defining figure, and his absence left New Japan’s future with a void that seemingly no one could fill.
Tetsuya Naito followed a similar road, though his exile was more passive than rebellious. Originally seen as a prospect with quiet charisma, Naito’s struggles to connect with the domestic audience convinced New Japan’s office that he required seasoning abroad. They sent him to CMLL in Mexico, expecting a short stay and a cultural education that would refine his ring style. Instead, Naito found belonging there. Joining the loose collective known as Los Ingobernables alongside La Sombra, Rush, and La Bestia del Ring, Naito thrived as a foreign ally in a land that celebrated his arrogance rather than punishing it. The longer he stayed, the more distant his connection to New Japan became. By 2013, he was effectively gone, his name spoken in Tokyo with the same tone reserved for an old classmate who never came home.
Katsuyori Shibata, the third of that supposed golden generation, chose a different path. Torn between wrestling and mixed martial arts, he drifted in and out of All Japan Pro Wrestling, appearing in sporadic matches that displayed brilliance without commitment. To many in the New Japan office, Shibata’s decision to prioritize his fighting career was a betrayal of the company’s values. In the eyes of the fans, he became a ghost of potential, a man who could have been the next great warrior but chose another battlefield.
Then there was Shinsuke Nakamura. Charismatic, flamboyant, and already an icon within Japan, Nakamura had been expected to anchor the future alongside Tanahashi. But in late 2012, as NXT rebranded itself under WWE’s developmental vision, an opportunity arose that he could not refuse. Nakamura signed a full-time contract overseas, becoming the face of a new era of international wrestling for a Western audience. His departure sent shockwaves through Japanese media. The last of the true New Japan innovators was gone, taking with him a generation’s sense of creative spirit.
With the supposed next generation scattered across the wrestling world, New Japan turned inward. The company doubled down on what it knew: the image of Tanahashi as the unbreakable Ace, and the nostalgia of the stars who once filled the Tokyo Dome. Ticket sales began to slip despite strong cards. Fans still respected Tanahashi, but the drama of his victories no longer stirred the same emotion. The office began searching for a new direction, and in doing so made a choice that would come to define this strange chapter of its history.
In 2012, New Japan offered a massive contract to Keiji Mutoh, luring the aging legend back from his post-All Japan ventures. Mutoh’s return was presented as a celebration of heritage, a rekindling of old glory. What the public did not expect was the full extent of the company’s surrender to nostalgia. Mutoh was not only brought back to wrestle but was appointed president of New Japan itself. His arrival promised a renewal of spirit. Instead, it created an era of conservatism and self-reference.
Hirooki Goto became the first casualty of that shift. After years of coming close but never seizing the crown, he finally won the 2011 G1 Climax and defeated Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom on January 4, 2012. The victory felt like a rebirth to many New Japan fans, the emergence of a new flag-bearer. For a brief moment, fans believed that the future had arrived. But Goto’s reign lasted only a few months before Mutoh’s return overshadowed it completely. At Dominion 2012, in front of a rejuvenated Osaka crowd, Mutoh pinned Goto cleanly to capture the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. The reaction was thunderous. For the first time in years, ticket sales surged. Yet beneath the applause, a more troubling reality formed. New Japan had saved its numbers by reviving its past. The cost was its soul.
Mutoh’s championship reign lasted until King of Pro Wrestling that October, when Tanahashi reclaimed the title in a match framed as the old Ace restoring balance to the company he built. The symbolism was clean, almost too clean. Goto faded back into the background, framed as the perennial contender who could not carry the weight of the promotion. Fans began to pity him rather than believe in him.
By 2013, the company had become an uneasy hybrid. Mutoh ruled as president, projecting confidence through carefully planned press conferences and polite interviews. His booking favored the familiar faces of the early 2000s such as Yuji Nagata, Hiroyoshi Tenzan, Takashi Iizuka, and Satoshi Kojima and an increasing reliance on outside talent. Wrestlers from NOAH and All Japan drifted into New Japan with contracts given by Mutoh. SUWAMA, Go Shiozaki, Minoru Suzuki, Shuji Ishikawa, and Katsuhiko Nakajima were now all frequent names on posters. Their matches were technically excellent, but the emotional connection between audience and roster grew thinner with each appearance. New Japan began to resemble an exhibition of Japan’s greatest wrestlers rather than a distinct identity of its own.
Inside the locker room, morale was uneven. Veterans benefited from Mutoh’s nostalgic favoritism. Younger wrestlers, especially the homegrown talent who had survived the last decade of financial struggle, felt invisible. Karl Anderson and Prince Devitt stood out among them. Devitt had carried the Junior Heavyweight Division for years, winning the junior belt 5 times in 3 years, delivering consistently praised matches, and still finding himself fenced out of the heavyweight scene. This due to Mutoh's emphasis on size in the heavyweight division. His frustration simmered quietly. Anderson, once a promising tag team fixture, now floated in the midcard, overshadowed by imported stars. Each of them represented the unspoken truth of Mutoh’s regime: the company had stars, but it did not know how to make new ones.
As winter turned to spring in 2013, the atmosphere around New Japan felt stable yet brittle. The Tokyo Dome still filled for Tanahashi’s defenses, but the energy was superficial. Fans cheered because they were supposed to. The office celebrated record merchandise sales while quietly ignoring the empty seats in smaller venues. Commentators continued to call Tanahashi “The Ace,” but the phrase felt more like a prayer than a declaration.
Behind the curtain, wrestlers began to question the direction of the company. Some whispered that Mutoh’s era had restored financial health but sacrificed artistic purpose. Others believed the company was simply waiting for a new spark to emerge. Few realized that the pieces of that spark were already standing in the shadows, tired of watching from below.
And so, as Invasion Attack 2013 approached, New Japan appeared whole from the outside. The posters showed Tanahashi and Goto locked in heroic poses, two warriors supposedly destined to decide the future of the company. The press releases spoke of renewal, of the return to greatness, of the continuation of tradition, but of course, those were controlled by the company and their reach.
No one in the building that night would have admitted it aloud, but beneath the surface of every cheer lay a single unspoken truth. The kingdom of New Japan was alive, but it was not breathing. The world was about to change, though no one yet knew how or why. What they did know was that the storm had not arrived. Not yet. But they could feel the air beginning to move.
