Kota Ibushi may very well be out of New Japan Pro Wrestling soon after expressing dissatisfaction with the promotion in a series of tweets recently on May 10.
Ibushi has cited reasons such as unfair treatment and other issues with booking and management with NJPW.
His tweets seemed to target NJPW workers such as Kikuchi, Taichi, and TAKA. He alleged that there’s backstage politics at play involving these names. Ibushi even mentioned Yakuza having links with the promotion.
Now, The Wrestling Observer Newsletter has reported that NJPW’s parent company, Bushiroad, plummeted when links with the crime syndicate were alleged by Ibushi (as transcribed by WrestlePurists):
“Nothing major has changed on the Kota Ibushi front. The only major stuff is that there is the belief that Ibushi’s statements and bringing up the Yakuza have hurt the stock price of Bushiroad, so that has become a serious company issue. Because Ibushi went after Takami Ohbari, the President of New Japan, this may take Bushiroad President Takaani Kidani to intervene.”
Apart from that, a wrestler familiar with the situation said that Ibushi is just waiting to be released from NJPW.
“Another wrestler very close to the situation who knows Ibushi said that he is just waiting to be released and isn’t going to say any more right now. But he said Ibushi has a lot more he could say but doesn’t want to hurt the wrestling industry in Japan by doing so. There is a basic feeling in New Japan that the wrestlers care about the other wrestlers and people like Gedo in management do, and the doctors there very much do, but a lot of management treats them like pieces of meat. They believe they don’t care about the wrestlers themselves and that leads to problems.”
A fan asked Ibushi if he would return to DDT Pro Wrestling, to which the former IWGP World Heavyweight Champion replied, “I don’t have even 1% intention of going back. Sorry.”
In his tweets, Ibushi complained about being pressured by Kikuchi to return to Wrestle Kingdom even before he recovered from the injuries he suffered in the G1 Climax final last October.
He also called NJPW a “black” company (burakku kigyou), which is a Japanese term for an employment system that is considered sweatshop-like. A black company often forces employees to do large amounts of overtime without appropriate overtime pay. Working conditions are also poor in such places, with bullying by seniors being common.
