Japan Pro Wrestling (JPW)

[4.0] "It's nearly impossible to rate JPW as a promotion. Their first three tours only happened due to the resources loaned to them by AJPW, and after that money losses pressured them to pare down to single JPW-branded events. But, you see, they were always forced to be a satellite to All Japan, compromising their original goal to be "a ring not controlled by Baba or Inoki". Sure, the original UWF also had to change gears, but when the original concept for the first UWF fell through, the talent who had followed Shinma to build it were able to retool the promotion because of their interest in promoting the shoot-style that had previously been relegated to their dojo experiments. Really, the promotion that JPW reminds me of most is WAR. Or rather, JPW strikes me as what an enterprise like WAR would have been compromised into had it occurred a decade earlier, with the IWE having recently died, the UWF's credibility being contingent on their insulation from the rest of the puro industry, and the Japan indie scene still half a decade off from its birth in Pioneer Senshi. If I were rating the original Ishingun as a stable (I haven't yet because I don't really know their New Japan work), they would be an easy 8-9 for their importance and just how special their big matches against All Japan's best became when they finally got on the same page. But as a promotion, Japan Pro Wrestling never really had a chance, and it hurts their case that most of their events were still during the feeling-out process of the interpromotional feud, leading to them only having held a couple matches that I would really go to bat for."