Japanese Government to Lift Restrictions on Crowd Cheering at Events, Will Ospreay Comments

– Per Kyodo News, the Japanese government is planning to lift the countries COVID-19 restrictions on events. This will allow spectators and attendees to shout, clap, and cheer at events when they are filled to capacity. As many fans have noted, the COVID-19 rules greatly affected Japanese wrestling events for NJPW and other promotions.

Fans are allowed to cheer or raise their voices at professional sports, gaming events, or concerts, but only when attendance is within the upper limit of 50% capacity of a given venue. Since Japan is now seeing a downtrend in cases of the coronavirus, the government now intends to lift the restrictions that have been in place since early on during the pandemic.

Attendees will still need to continue wearing their face masks despite some of the regulations being lifted. Will Ospreay also commented on the news on his Twitter, which you can see below.

Ospreay wrote in his statement, ” “The ‘clap crowd’ era has officially gone. Today I just f**ing partied with an audience in Japan. Haven’t felt that in three years and its one of the main reasons I fell in love with Japanese wrestling. … Today was everything for me, man.”

Let’s Fucking Go Bruv 👑 pic.twitter.com/OAdkPpEUmo

— ᵂⁱˡˡ ᴼˢᵖʳᵉᵃʸ • ウィル・オスプレイ (@WillOspreay) January 27, 2023