Wrestling World 2000

The January 4 Tokyo Dome Show is NJPW's biggest annual event and has been called "the largest professional wrestling show in the world outside of the United States" and the "Japanese equivalent to the Super Bowl".^[2][3]

Wrestling World 2000 featured professional wrestling matches that involved different wrestlers from pre-existing scripted feuds and storylines. Wrestlers portrayed villains, heroes, or less distinguishable characters in scripted events that built tension and culminated in a wrestling match or series of matches.^[4]

Among these matches featured a series of stories that were followed throughout the year or in the following months before Wrestling World. At the beginning of 1999, at Wrestling World 1999 Keiji Muto would defeat fellow stablemate of nWo Japan Scott Norton for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship. Watching the match was then sidelined Masahiro Chono (he has been out of action since September of 1998 due to a neck injury,) who had disagreements with how Keiji Muto was directing the stable after Chono's injury. Following the match, Chono would storm out and would leave nWo Japan not long afterwards, forming Team2000 with a returning Akira Nogami now referred to as AKIRA during a handicap match on the 5th of February 1999 where Chono would face off against Keiji Muto and Hiro Saito. During the course of the year, Team2000 and nWo Japan would face off against each other in an all-out war, with both sides constantly facing off against each other in 6-man or regular tag bouts. By the end of 1999, the stage was set as following Keiji Muto's loss to Genichiro Tenryu for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship on the 10th of December, Muto and Chono would face off against each other, with the condition being that whoever loses must disband their faction. As well, Scott Norton and Don Frye would also face off against each other, with both men being apart of the respective factions (Frye for Team2000, Norton for nWo Japan.)

Meanwhile, Genichiro Tenryu and Kensuke Sasaki have been engaging in a feud since Genichiro Tenryu beat Kensuke Sasaki at NJPW Final Dome on October 11th, 1999, pinning Sasaki with his own trademark move, The Northern Lights Bomb.

Following this, Tenryu had been taunting Kensuke Sasaki, taking Sasaki's finisher and using it for his own benefit even while also discrediting the move. Tenryu would even use the move to win the IWGP Heavyweight Title against Keiji Muto.

With the two at odds with one another, the match was scheduled to be the main event of Wrestling World 2000 for the IWGP Heavyweight Championship.^[5]

Kazuo Yamazaki would announce his retirement in November of 1999. Yamazaki, a famed wrestler from The UWF and UWFI promotions, would have his retirement match against his student and occassional tag partner Yuji Nagata.^[6]

Shinya Hashimoto and Naoya Ogawa since January 4th 1999 have been at war with one another, with Ogawa famously shooting on Shinya Hashimoto, and ever since then the pair have been facing off against each other in one-on-one matches with Ogawa always coming out victorious. In order to have one final shot against Ogawa, Hashimoto would have to face off against him in a tag match, with Hashimoto selecting Takashi Iizuka to go off against Ogawa and Kazunari Murakami, a protégé of Inoki and former member of UFO (Universal Fighting Organization, a MMA and Pro Wrestling hybrid company ran by Antonio Inoki) and PRIDE

Murakami, on the last televised show of 1999, December 10th, would storm the ring and call out Iizuka before Iizuka's match, with the pair having to be separated. Afterwards Ogawa would come into the ring too, before being pulled away by company president Tatsumi Fujinami.^[7]

With all of the stakes high, the show was a culmination of a year's worth of storylines coming to an end or adding another chapter into them.