Exclusive: ROH - New Japan Pro Wrestling Plans Change, News On Their Partnership

Right now the plan is for ROH to book only 2-3 wrestlers from New Japan Pro Wrestling for the Toronto ROH shows in May.

Originally, the plan was to bring in the 8 or more wrestlers like last year which was ROH booker Delirious (Hunter Johnston)'s intent but ROH COO Joe Koff is uneasy about spending that level of money in 2015 on New Japan talent. Last year the company barely broke even on the 2 shows. Johnston believes the partnership can be very lucrative in the long-term and has pitched airing the shows as pay-per-views to recoup the money of bringing in an elite crew like in 2014, but that would disrupt the plan to do the Best in the World June pay-per-view. Gilleland doesn't believe it's worth disrupting their PPV calendar which they are just now establishing and taking on more risk.

Johnston is still working on changing this as New Japan wants the same arrangement as last year, including a few days of training and scouting at the ROH Dojo outside of Philadelphia. Johnston also predicts the dojo will be a much bigger money making venture in 2015.

Originally, Johnston planned to do ROH vs New Japan super shows in Chicago and New York in addition to Toronto, but that changed upon Koff deciding to scale back the New Japan shows.

Koff met with New Japan officials in the fall and expressed his disappointment and confusion over New Japan partnering with Jeff Jarrett to do pay-per-view. There had been internal talk that ROH was going to extend a similar deal to New Japan but was too slow to put it together.