AEW, IMPACT and NJPW working together a year ago would’ve been something very unlikely to happen, but in 2021 is as real as you can get. All these forbidden door getting opened has the potential to be something special.
It will be very interesting seeing how this relationship between three top promotions will evolve into. One important thing to think about is if ROH will also be involved in this partnership IMPACT-AEW-NJPW have going right now? So far some of ROH’s talent have been part of NJPW’s Strong shows, but could we see someone like Bandido or Ryu Lee on Dynamite or IMPACT ? that’s the billion dollar question.
Not only have NJPW, AEW and IMPACT benefited from this open borders we’ve seen with promotions lately. The Joshi scene has gathered a lot of attention thanks to the AEW Women’s Eliminator Tournament. Joshis from Marvelous, TJPW, OZ and other promotions will be part of this exciting tournament. STARDOM , who is owned by the same parent company as NJPW (Bushiroad), could be one day work with AEW and IMPACT and help the promotion get more attention to their product in western fans.
IMPACT and AEW recently got their first bump in the road of their relationship with the Sammy Guevara situation and both promotions need to be cautious of things like this don’t become a recurrent thing and sour the relationship down the road. Things like this always happen in the relationships of this type, but let’s hope for the sake of both promotions this doesn’t escalate.
IMPACT & NJPW seem to finally be working again together with Juice Robinson and Dave Finlay going to appear on IMPACT soon. Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer recently mentioned of Kazuchika Okada could make an appearance on IMPACT soon.
Right now, all wrestling borders seem opened and that could be one of the most exciting things to happen to wrestling in years. It will be interesting to see if promotions like NOAH, DragonGate, CMLL, AJPW, and others will also open their borders and join this wave that is happening right now.
