Meltzer also went into depth discussing the details of Ogawa’s departure. That includes contextualizing Ogawa’s role in the promotion and how the relationship with Bushiroad formed and eventually soured.

“This thing’s been brewing for months,” Meltzer said. “Rossy Ogawa founded STARDOM 13 years ago, and five years ago, in 2019, … he basically wanted to sell, stay in charge, and wanted a bigger company to help grow it. … WWE wanted to buy it, and Bushiroad wanted to buy it, and of course he sold to Bushiroad.”

According to Meltzer, a sale to WWE would have reflected poorly on STARDOM, and selling to Bushiroad, the owner of NJPW, made sense. The company invested a lot of time and money into STARDOM and things were reportedly going well until the COVID-19 pandemic had a major effect on business. While a great deal of money went into production and publicity over the last several years, Meltzer said that talent and employees didn’t see significant pay increases, which led to discontent. Additionally, Ogawa was not satisfied with his position in the company.

“When it came to booking decisions, [Bushiroad] wanted to book really wacky stuff, and [Ogawa] didn’t want to book really wacky stuff,” Meltzer continued. “They were overruling his booking. … All these wheels were in motion a long, long time ago. He was going to go, and he had given his notice.”