DDT Pro Looking To Grow Overseas Markets in 2022
The cult Japanese indy is celebrating its 25th year
2022 sees cult Japanese indy promotion DDT Pro celebrate its 25th anniversary, and the promotion wants to greatly expand overseas to celebrate this milestone.
Cyberfight president Sanshiro Takagi (head of DDT Pro’s parent company) outlined some of his plans to Tokyo Sports, saying, "This year, DDT will be fully conscious of overseas” as the company has adopted a mantra of ‘Global Expansion’ for the year.
Takagi continued by stating he wants to expand the overseas user base for Cyberfight’s distribution service ‘Wrestle Universe’, taking the number of overseas subscribers from the 30% mark to 50%, numbers that will no doubt be helped by Cyberfight's Pro Wrestling NOAH co-promoting with NJPW for the recent NJPW vs NOAH show.
This expansion includes overseas partnerships for DDT Pro, such as that with AEW. Indeed, AEW’s Kenny Omega was once one of DDT Pro’s biggest stars, whilst current DDT KO-D Openweight Champion Konosuke Takeshita wrestled a handful of matches for AEW in April 2021. However, Takagi wants long term expeditions for his talents going forwards rather than a handful of matches here and there.
With the wrestling world looking different after the COVID-19 pandemic ground everything to a halt, now is surely the time for companies to re-evaluate how they do things, and Takagi wants to start this grand expansion by having DDT Pro wrestlers attend English language classes:
"I'm thinking of letting everyone attend an English conversation class,” continued Takagi. “It doesn't make sense if I can't speak English even if I go abroad. So, I won't use Japanese at all in DDT anymore. If I speak Japanese, I'll be fined.”