January 4 Tokyo Dome Show

The January 4 Tokyo Dome Show is a major professional wrestling show, held by Japanese professional wrestling promotion New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW), held annually on January 4 in the Tokyo Dome. NJPW often invites other promotions, Japanese and international, to participate in their January 4 Tokyo Dome Shows as well including several companies that have been involved in scripted inter-promotional rivalries such as UWF International (UWFi), Big Japan Pro Wrestling (BJW), All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), Pro Wrestling Zero1 and Pro Wrestling Noah, as well as representatives from the Mexican Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL) promotion. The shows have regularly featured wrestlers from American promotions such as World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) and has on these occasions been shown either partially or in full in the American market.

It has become an annual event that starts the new year in NJPW since its inception in 1992. NJPW have held shows at the Tokyo Dome as far back as April 24, 1989, but their January 4 show has become the most anticipated show on NJPW calendar. It is Japan's biggest wrestling event and NJPW's premier show, similar to what the WrestleMania is for the WWE. The first two January 4 Tokyo Dome Shows were also the last two WCW/New Japan Supershows. Since 2007, when the event was renamed "Wrestle Kingdom in Tokyo Dome", the Dome shows have been broadcast on pay-per-view (PPV). As of 2016 all the Dome shows have featured championship matches, including several titles not owned by NJPW. On three occasions (1998, 2006 and 2013), no titles changed hands during the show. The 1993 Tokyo Dome show set the attendance record with 63,500 fans packing the Tokyo Dome, while the 2007 Dome show drew the lowest gates with only 18,000 in attendance. As of 2016, the January 4 shows have hosted 272 matches (not including dark matches), 86 of which were title matches leading to 38 title changes in total. The 2005 Tokyo Dome show had a 16 match card, the largest of any of the shows, while 2001, 2002, 2007, 2013 and 2016 featured 9 matches, the lowest number of matches on a show.