NJPW Cow Palace to Air on AXS?
NJPW will be running a major show at the Cow Palace in San Franciso on July 7th, and right now the event is being advertised for a 5:00 p.m. start time locally. At this point, neither New Japan or AXS TV have officially announced if the network will carry the upcoming special, but really the only reason for any promotion to run an event that early in the evening is if it’s being broadcast on television or pay-per-view for the 8-11 p.m. hours on the east coast.
After their first two events in the U.S. sold out at almost instantaneous speeds – not quite at the level of ALL IN but comparable – for a number of reasons tickets for the Cow Palace show are still very slow and way, way under where they expected to be. Because of the demand being so great previously, they’re running their biggest venue yet, and they may run into trouble unless sales pickup soon.
Because there have been so many big, traveling shows this year already, that sect of the wrestling community has been bled dry between Wrestle Kingdom, the Royal Rumble weekend, WrestleMania, New Japan in Long Beach and now ALL IN. It doesn’t help that because NJPW Dominion, their second biggest show of the year (think the New Japan equivalent of SummerSlam) isn’t until June, they can’t announce anything for the Cow Palace until basically right before the event.
Young Lion Suffers Concussion
According to the Wrestling Observer Newsletter, NJPW Young Lion Ren Narita suffered a concussion during the ongoing Best of the Super Juniors tour, and is expected to be off the road for the next two weeks. The New Japan English website has him out of action until June 2nd, so he may even be able to make it back in time for the end of the tour, and won’t miss Dominion if there are any plans to use him on the card.