Details on Battle to Get Stardom Match On the Card at Wrestle Kingdom 14

– The Stardom match that will take place as a dark match before Wrestle Kingdom 14 goes on the air was the result of quite the battle behind the scenes. As previously reported, Mayu Iwatani & Arisa Hoshiki will face Hana Kimura & Giulia at the event before the show goes on the air, and will not air as part of New Japan World. This will be the first women’s match on the show since 2002.

The WON reports that there was resistance to having the match at all this year from people within NJPW. According to the site, the plan was to put those stars they want to build around in front of the largest wrestling audience they could now that Bushiroad owns Stardom. There was resistance within the company from New Japan’s side, who argued that in Japan men’s and women’s wrestling have very different fanbases and are viewed as separate products. The match announcement was met with negativity from a vocal portion of the NJPW fans.

The deal was ultimately put together in late November after a lot of red tape was cut through. The Stardom side has wanted it to happen for a while and were told no until pressure came from above, particularly Bushiroad president Takaaki Kidani, to have the match. There was discussion of having it on the 2021 Tokyo Dome show, but Kidani pushed for it to happen this year.

The match cannot be shown on New Japan World dude to the fact that Stardom airs on Tokyo MX and BS Nippon TV, a rival network to TV-Asahi who are co-owners of New Japan World. That makes this the first time that NJPW will be unable to show a Tokyo Dome match on New Japan World. There is a chance that it could be released later on Stardom World but since the overall show is produced by TV-Asahi, that’s not guaranteed.

The fight night of the event takes place on January 4th.