How long does NOAH have left?

[SOR]

For those unaware last year NOAH was said to have Yakuza connections which obviously hurt business earlier this year NOAH refused to pay Kenta Kobashi what he felt he was worth so 5 of NOAH's top performers (Akiyama, Aoki, Kanemura, Shiozaki and Suzuki) left earlier this year and joined All Japan.

NOAH still has a few stars but the crowds are dropping. Now with the whole Kenta Kobashi show over with they no longer have the interest in the Kobashi card to help them and I can see crowds dropping big time.

This once great promotion is now stuck with pushing wrestlers like the TMDK and filling cards with Freelancers.

How long until NOAH is done? I personally give them 2-3 years before they merge with AJPW. What do you think?

[Lupin the Third]

I didn't think they'd last long after the death of Misawa. But they're still going, even after 4 years.

[Fundertaker]

Well, NOAH always had the problem of not being able to make new stars out of their wrestlers. They could indeed raise to a certain level of popularity, but with most NOAH fans being old-school All Japan fans that wanted to see Misawa, Kobashi, Taue and Akiyama and didn't really care much for anyone else, it would always be hard. Didn't help that in 13 years NOAH debuted so few new homegrown native wrestlers (and out of the whole roster right now, only Sugiura, Taniguchi, Genba and Komano debuted in NOAH) that could replace the older faces that clogged up the undercard and, though to that, didn't really put over the youngsters for quite a while even if they were gaining a bit of steam, thus halting almost everyone's growth at a certain point in time.

What NOAH has now is those "Not quite there" guys being the main stars and thus have these mediocre attendences to a once building filling (at least in the Tokyo area. They've always had trouble drawing outside of Tokyo) promotion.