After swearing off of wrestling for more than 10 years, I was drawn back in by the launch of AEW Dynamite. I tuned in after hearing about AEW from a few friends, and I was hooked from the first TV match.

Being away from wrestling for so long gave me a funny perspective on AEW’s stars. I didn’t watch these guys persevere through the indies. I didn’t track their comings and goings overseas. I never saw BTE, and I didn’t know about everyone’s successes and failures in WWE. To me, the AEW roster was defined entirely by whatever happened on TV each Wednesday. This blank slate approach led to me being surprised and delighted by the AEW performances all year long.  

After following AEW for its first year, I wanted to dig deeper. And I wanted to catch up! In those 10 years, I knew I missed out on one of the biggest international phenomena in pro wrestling history: the rise of the Bullet Club and the rebirth of New Japan Pro Wrestling.

I had some context for what I missed. I used to watch Japanese tapes back in the 2000s, with a particular fondness for 90s AJPW and the Super J Cup. And I had been a huge early ROH fan, when Japanese promotions had a large influence on the new crop of emerging talent. But I had watched no wrestling since then.   

So where do I start? From my dusty bin of VHS tapes, I knew that watching individual 5-star matches plucked out of time could never match up to the experience of being a fan. To really enjoy the things that make a match special, you need to know it’s context. You need to know who the wrestlers are, what they’re trying to accomplish, and where they are struggling. You need to know how they feel about each other, and you need to know what happened the last time they met. 

So I am starting at the beginning! No, not all the way back to the start of Antonio Inoki’s New Japan Pro Wrestling in 1972. (Maybe someday!) But the beginning of New Japan’s 2010s rejuvenation — the beginning of a world-class run that set the standard for pro wrestling excellence for decades to come. We will mark the start of this run with the January 2012 return of star-to-be Kazuchika Okada to NJPW. Through these years, we will also see the building blocks of AEW take shape.   

Luckily, we live in a golden age of wrestling video. So after plunking down 999 yen for njpwworld.com and subscribing to the Wrestling Observer archives for contemporary news and commentary, I’m ready to go!