ZERO FANS: The Wrestling Show Nobody Attended

                              (Written by jom)

     I am distressed by fanless wrestling shows. It's certainly ironic for me to feel that way, considering a lot of the stuff covered on here has had attendance numbers closer to the size of the average American household than to an actual wrestling show, but there's just something about an entirely hollow arena that perturbs me. Like many who share my sentiment, my disdain was born from the COVID era, where every TV product committed themselves to filming matches in ghost towns, or worse, with LED screens for people. It was an awful time then, and it's usually an awful time now whenever companies make the baffling decision to do it on purpose.

    There are, of course, exceptions. Empty Arena matches are cool. There's a freedom in them that you wouldn't get with an audience, and the intentions there feel fleshed-out enough to make it work as a one-off. Similarly, matches like the Backyard Brawl series from XGF work because the "arenas" are weird dingy warehouses or dirty parking lots. For the environment, the complete absence of people feels fitting, save for maybe a homeless smack addict here or there.

    The biggest exception of them all has neither of these excuses, though. On November 26th, 2006, the uber shindie Shitamachi Pro ran their third ever show, and not a fan was in sight. They weren't running the show in an abandoned trap house. They weren't planning on using the empty arena to their advantage. It was business as usual, which begs the question: what kind of explanation could they have for me to consider this the biggest exemption from my fanless show hatred?

    And that's the thing: there was no explanation. They didn't plan an empty arena show. There was no coordination or theming or grand scheme at play. It had no excuse, because it had no intentions of being a fanless wrestling event.

    Zero fans turned up to watch the show. 

Tarzan Goto's Professional Wrestling

     There are a couple of dates you could pick for the start of the Tarzan Goto Indie Revolution. An easy one is April 23rd, 1995, the day that he and his Shin FMW compatriots left FMW proper. Skipping ahead a few years, November 9th, 1999 stands out as a strong option, the day Goto opened the Indie Wrestler Training School in Sagamihara. For my money, I'd place the revolution's start on June 17th, 1997, the date of the first proper Shin FMW show where Goto wrestled in every single match. It was one of those grand statements of intent that Goto was always great at, and felt like the beginning of a legacy of rookie development, as well as the first instance of Goto creating a place for less known indie workers to prosper.

    Regardless of the exact day, it's undeniable that by the mid-2000s, the Goto Sphere of Influence was in full swing. Wrestlers from the sphere were spread all across the indies, and at least three different arenas had been built just for Goto's wrestling. The most recent of these, Asakusa Indies Arena (a combination wrestling arena and hot pot restaurant), was hosting wrestling on a nearly-daily basis, giving the more obsessive indie fans a chance to watch Goto's finest wrestlers while chowing down on Goto's finest chanko. Many of the wrestlers working in Asakusa were from Goto's own dojo, or at least had spent enough time working there to get a few training sessions under their belt, creating a smaller-scale indie scene almost entirely exclusive to the Asakusa arena.

    One of the groups regularly running in Asakusa, maybe the strangest of them all thus far, was Shitamachi Pro.

The Asasuka Misfit Parade

    Started by Jiro Kurumashita in 2006, Shitamachi Pro was an immediate standout among the lineup of Asakusa promotions, mostly for how weird it was. The first show featured an offer match from Gatokunyan (the Ice Ribbon predecessor), a battle between Australian indie workers, and the debuts of Shitamachi regulars Kanabun and Kurumashita in incredibly weird and awfully worked matchups. Asakusa already had a couple "so bad it's good" companies appearing there irregularly, but none had ever been as trashy as Shitamachi. From the moment the main event ended with a pinfall count where the ref skipped the 1, a star was born.

    Shitamachi's next show was more of the same, including the debut of future ace Bakabon no Papa, Stalker The Great Otakuman's transformation into Asakusa Presley (a weird Elvis gimmick complete with an eyemask with eyes on it), and a big main event between Kurumashita and standout amateur scene freak The Bosconian. The show also drew a solid crowd of 50 people, a perfectly respectable number for the intimate environment of Asakusa. 

    At least, it was on the surface. The fact of the matter is almost the entire crowd were there for a company farewell party. In actuality, only one person had shown up in Asakusa with the intentions of watching Shitamachi Pro, and it just so happened that 49 other people had arrived and simply stuck around for the show.

    Still, Shitamachi's third show in November was set to be the biggest one yet, with sleaze scene top guy Dragon Soldier LAW on the card and a main event set to decide the first Shitamachi Openweight champion. If any show would ever draw in a crowd, it would be that one.

"What if no one comes?"

    The start of the day was business as usual. Ring announcer (and excellent source for this story) Wonderman arrived for the show at 6:00 PM, and began helping the rest of the crew finalize a schedule for the show. For the next hour and a half, nothing seemed too out of the ordinary. Around 7:40 PM, cameraman Yoshino (as in Mutoha's Yoshino, and another great source for the story) arrived from filming that day's NEO show for highlights on a news broadcast. Yoshino was set to film this show as well, which he would then give to SamuraiTV in case they had any interest in including footage on Occupation Of The Indiez.

    It was around that time that the crew realized that nobody had showed up for the event yet. Everyone started to joke around about the situation, asking "well, what are we gonna do if nobody shows up?". Twenty minutes later, the clock struck 8:00 PM, the show's start time. Nothing had changed. The wrestlers and staff continued to joke around, guessing that people would start turning up shortly. Around 8:15 PM, everyone realized that their jokes may not have been too far from the truth. They waited even longer. Time ticked away.

    Finally, at 8:30 PM, Wonderman, Jiro Kurumashita, and Tarzan Goto began discussing what to do. As far as I'm aware, we've never gotten word on how their discussion went in terms of the finer details. What we do know, however, is that Tarzan Goto made the final call, both as on-site manager and the most senior official at the event. Goto's decision was to run the show regardless of whether any fans had arrived. Inspired by his empty arena match against Onita in 1990, Goto saw the potential held by Yoshino's camera, and decided it was worth running the show just for the sake of it being filmed. As reported in Weekly Pro, the only ones in the building were the wrestlers, the ring crew, ring announcer Wonderman, cameraman Yoshino, on-site manager Goto, the representatives of Mizukami Pro and Gatokunyan (there to discuss unrelated business with Goto), and a boiling pot.

You Wrestle, You're A Wrestler

    The events of the show itself were, surprisingly, very spirited. Tarzan Goto decided to stand ringside with Yoshino, which seemed to motivate all the Shitamachi workers to do their best regardless of the lack of fans. For most of the show, Goto and Yoshino yucked it up, cracking jokes about the wrestlers and the circumstances. Goto mentioned that fans had said before they only wanted to see "a little bit" of Shitamachi, and Yoshino responded that they seemingly didn't want to see any bit of it. It's the kind of thing that makes me wish I actually tried on Duolingo, so I could understand more of what they're saying than just the captioned stuff. 

    Notable happenings of the show included Dragon Soldier LAW's burial by the newly-debuted "Executioner" (Shitamachi's Undertaker), a referee thinking that the English word "four" meant "five" in Japanese (which made Goto nearly die laughing), and Kurumashita becoming the first Shitamachi Openweight champ in a 21-minute match, winning after hitting Bakabon no Papa with seven backdrops in a row. Even if not a single fan was in the building, everyone in Shitamachi Pro put on the kind of show only they could, and the show only happened because of the man running the building. As Wonderman put it, "it's a decision only Goto could make."

Shitamachi Revolution

    The impact of the show was almost immediate. Wonderman sent a fax release of the show's results to Mobile Gong (a now defunct wrestling magazine and website), only for a Mobile Gong reporter to call him right after to confirm whether the details of the show were correct. Gong and Weekly Pro soon published the results, and Shitamachi became the talk of the town as the first genuine "no customers" show in Japanese wrestling history. The footage aired on Occupation a few weeks later, finally giving people visual proof of the complete absence of fans and causing interest in Shitamachi to explode. It was, as Goto had predicted, Yoshino's camera that had made running the show worth it.

    While attendance numbers didn't skyrocket following this show, they certainly began to climb. Most of that had to do with the popularity of the fanless show, but a solid chunk came from the sixth event on April 8th, 2007. A few months before then, DDT had ran an angle where Kota Ibushi asked for special stipulations to his new contract before re-signing with the company. One of these requests was the ability to work a date for Shitamachi. While this was just a one-off joke, Jiro Kurumashita decided to take a chance on it, contacting Ibushi and DDT to ask if they had any interest in actually having Ibushi work Shitamachi. Both said yes, and Ibushi main evented the sixth show, going to a 15 minute draw against Asakusa Presley before working an impromptu ten man tag. For this show, Shitamachi drew 60 fans, a number they would hover around on every show for the next two years.

    Shitamachi continued to run shows on a regular basis until 2009, when the Asakusa Fight Club closed its doors. After an extended hiatus, Shitamachi returned as "Shin Shitamachi", and returned to running shows irregularly for the next three years. Many of the older characters began to cycle out, as new faces like Kunihiko Mitamega, Tsuneo Yoshie, and Kani KING took over the cards. Shin Shitamachi Pro ran their final show on July 15th, 2012, ending with Bakabon no Papa, now Shitamachi Openweight champion, defending the title against Kunihiko Mitamega. The show drew a reported 50 fans, a number Shitamachi could've never imagined would be legitimate back in 2006.

    If there's one overall lesson to learn from the story of Shitamachi Pro, I'm not exactly sure what it is. Maybe that funny doesn't equal money until it does? Always film everything in case it makes you famous? Bank on Kota Ibushi? I'm just not sure. The only thing I can say with certainty is that Shitamachi Pro's explosion in popularity proves something I've never doubted: always trust Tarzan Goto.