Thom Fain Launches Monthly Puroresu
An exclusive interview with TJ Perkins is in the first issue.
One of the great things The Wrestling Estate has allowed me to do is to connect with all sorts of wrestling industry professionals.
That is why on a sporadic basis throughout 2020, I will be bringing several exclusive interviews from industry insiders, helping fans learn more about their work and impact on the business.
My fifth interview is with Thom Fain, creator of Monthly Puroresu. It’s a new magazine dedicated to coverage of pro wrestling in the Land of the Rising Sun. In this tremendous interview, Fain discusses the origin of Monthly Puroresu, his media background, pro wrestling fandom and much more.
What are your earliest memories of wrestling?
Thom Fain: “WWF Prime Time Wrestling in 1990. I used to watch it on my parents’ big, boxy, boob tube in the living room and rent the ‘80s pay-per-view cassettes from Blockbuster Video. I loved the ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage and The Ultimate Warrior, whose likeness was even painted on my backpack on my very first day of grade school. Then in 1992, after Shawn Michaels super-kicked Marty Jannetty on The Barber Shop, I watched every week until probably the mid-2000s when McMahon monopolized U.S. wrestling and it started getting kind of lame.”
Have you any standout matches or moments and favorite wrestlers which stick with you?
Thom Fain: “For a period of about 10 years, I never watched any wrestling until I discovered C.M. Punk following his pipe bomb promo. Then I got hooked by Daniel Bryan’s run, and was in and out of watching WWE for a while before I decided they have a shit brand. But credit to both of them for introducing me to the idea of taking indie wrestling seriously. Recently, I’ve been stanning Butcher & Blade in AEW and Minoru Suzuki in NJPW pretty hard. Shingo Takagi and SHO at last year’s BOSJ blew my mind along with Will Ospreay time and again in his big moments. I saw his match vs. El Phantasmo at Super J Cup from the front row, love the work both those guys put in.
Jay White’s win over Tanahashi at Wrestle Kingdom a couple years back comes to mind, his entire run since splitting from CHAOS has been spectacular. The best match I’ve ever seen was Kenny Omega vs. Kazuchika Okada best out of three falls at Dominion ’18. I thought Kenny as a character, as a wrestler, had the best run of anybody since Shawn Michaels. His match vs. Chris Jericho at Wrestle Kingdom that year solidified my subscription and dedication to NJPW.”
Your main background is in marketing and copywriting. Do you find those particular parts of the wrestling industry interesting?
Thom Fain: “I’m overly analytical in general, but yes. I analyze everything from the color palettes being used in promotional graphics to the fonts, to the entrance music selections (my father was a musician AND had a 30-year career as a music educator), in addition to the verbiage frequently used by the announcers and talent. After all, I am a wordsmith above all else. Right now, NJPW is killing it from a branding perspective, and AEW is doing right by the sport in terms of bringing back some of the badassery we’ve been missing since the early ‘00s.”
We connected through our mutual love of Japanese wrestling, also known as Puroresu. Can you remember when you first encountered Puroresu and what impression it made on you?
Thom Fain: “I remember watching Masahiro Chono and Jyushin “Thunder” Liger in WCW, but I’m not a Chris Charlton type. In fact, all the history I know came from his two books and the njpwworld.com archives. You can credit Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega for that, because I only watched highlights on YouTube casually until “Alpha vs. Omega,” but haven’t missed a tour or a tournament ever since.”
It is fair to say that in recent years Japanese wrestling has gone through a revival thanks to the New Japan Pro Wrestling revolution. What do you think have been the keys to NJPW’s success?
Thom Fain: “Western fans have been hungry for a true alternative for years. Sometimes alternative figures would pop up in the U.S., but then get buried on the card or kind of disappear somehow or leave WWE disgruntled. NJPW has been everything right inside the ring since probably 2012, when the bevy of top talent today were young lions or just about to make their mark. As characters, as skilled wrestlers, I’ve never seen as many awesome people under one banner. NJPW really accelerated their pitch to Western fans by bringing Kevin Kelly and signing the AXS TV deal featuring Jim Ross, until that expired.
I would say NJPW shows here at Walter Pyramid in Long Beach and at Globe Theater in Los Angeles definitely gave The Elite the courage they needed to produce All-In, and the rest is history. It’s too bad NJPW couldn’t capitalize on Kenny Omega’s dual popularity as much as possible before he and The Elite started AEW with Tony Khan, because it still has a lot of room to grow in the U.S. as Dynamite hits 1 million viewers. The fact that all the egos could not be set aside and a talent share couldn’t be cemented hurt NJPW, but never say never. NJPW still has the best product in the ring and is constantly trying new things. Credit Gedo for his masterful booking, and the company as a whole for actually listening to fans.”
New Japan has made several trips over to the USA in the past five years. Did you see any of the shows live or even watch shows live in Japan?
Thom Fain: “Yes, I missed the Cow Palace show, but was at every other NJPW show in California from ’18 to ’20. I recently bought a travel guide for Japan and intend on visiting very soon, making a boyhood dream come true. I was into Otaku media way before it was cool here, and it would literally be a dream come true to hit Tokyo and Kyoto over a couple of weeks while fitting in a trip to Korakuen Hall.”
In the past few months NJPW has returned to our screens with the great NJPW Strong TV Show. Have you enjoyed what you have seen so far from the product?
Thom Fain: “I caught onto some of the talents being featured on #njpwSTRONG, such as TJP — who we landed an exclusive interview with in our first issue of Monthly Puroresu — during the last couple of U.S. tours the company did. In the absence of popular gaijins at the recent staple events in Japan, I think NJPW has done a great job bringing us something fun being produced in a studio.”
Along with this, NJPW has just announced the two blocks for the annual G1 Climax Tournament! As a bit of fun, who is your prediction to win?
Thom Fain: “I think there will be some drama with Bullet Club, someone from the faction will win. Will it be Jay White? Or will it be EVIL, setting up a rubber match with Naito at Wrestle Kingdom? Or will KENTA emerge as the top heel in the company after screwing Jon Moxley out of the U.S. Title? We will have to wait and find out…but my money is on EVIL. That being said, I’m more in it for the journey. Clickbait sites with social media polls and lots of .gif’s will give you all the predictions you’ll need; I will just say be patient and watch the show. More than a few 5-star matches are in store from the looks of it.”
You are currently the head of new wrestling publication Monthly Puroresu. Where did the idea come for the magazine?
Thom Fain: “Adding to my previous note, I’m getting tired of content being driven by clicks and social media followers; in college, I learned professional journalism writing about music for weekly newspapers and writing baseball for the daily newspapers after reading anthologies by the likes of Hunter S. Thompson, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. I have a strong attention span. I don’t want to interact with content created for goldfish that makes me feel like an idiot; I want something enlightening with awesome artwork and photography that captures the athleticism of the King of Sports. I realized after doing interviews with Lance Archer, TJP and El Phantasmo for WhatCulture there’s not a lot of my kind of editorial floating around the web regarding Puroresu. Wrestling might be considered lowbrow here in the U.S., but I think it is poetry in motion. I think it can be mixed with highbrow, magazine-style editorial and come out looking pretty dang cool.”
Monthly Puroresu has a great selection of archive retrospective pieces and exclusives. Are you pleased with the way the magazine has come out?
Thom Fain: “I think we have room to grow. The stuff that’s in our first issue makes me very proud, but it can always be better. It was a joy for us that guys like Mavs Gillis, Rocky Romero and TJ Perkins liked the idea enough to participate, and I expect we’ll have more exclusive interviews come about after people see what this magazine is like. This isn’t a dirt sheet, it’s for a love of the game. As things are presented and as they unfold. We’re not running a content mill looking for clicks and digital ad partners, we’re just reflecting some of the best moments in Puro’s Western expansion in print, in something you can hold, and we think that’s pretty cool.”
From the images and snippets you have shared online, Monthly Puroresu looks great and has some beautiful and unique artwork from a variety of artists. Has seeing some of the wrestlers interpreted artistically highlighted different aspects of their personalities to you?
Thom Fain: “I’m a failed graphic designer who turned into a pretty good journalist over time. Many of the Japanese wrestlers have endeared themselves to me, from Io Shirai in NXT to “The Holy Emperor” Taichi in New Japan. I’m also the kind of guy who could use an extra kick in the nuts to stay fit in the weight room. Seeing extreme feats of athleticism performed by guys like Ospreay or even indie talents like Alex Zayne and Flyin’ Brian Jr. here in the West continues to encourage me to find, as Tanahashi would say, an Iron Will. It’s amazing the benefit that has for your mind, in addition to your body. To that end I feel like I owe something back to the sport.”
We’re a team serious about its love for the King of Sports.
— njpw reporter (@MonthlyPuroresu) September 3, 2020
And we think it’s cool that you can have, hold, and read an English puro mag that covers the biggest stories and stars
𝘔𝘖𝘕𝘛𝘏𝘓𝘠 𝘗𝘜𝘙𝘖𝘙𝘌𝘚𝘜 𝘐𝘚𝘚𝘜𝘌 #1
TJPインタビュー（日本語）
👉https://t.co/iPRbTiL3dE pic.twitter.com/Dpkpa6K1K7
Is your target audience diehard New Japan fans, newbies or a mixture?
Thom Fain: “My days as a content strategist working for tech startups led me to, first, always know your audience. So, I’ve come up with these audience archetypes. You have your diehard fangirls of certain wrestlers, some of whom follow my Twitter. They want all the content they can get about Jay White or Kota Ibushi or whomever. Then there’s the casual, Japanese-American 20-something browsing Nijiya or Daiso who sees the magazine on a rack and decides they’d like to browse what’s current.
Then you have your hardcore dweebs, like my roommate who watches four hours of anime daily, but need a kick in the groin and something attention grabbing to keep up with wrestling. Then your WWF Attitude Era fans who ditched the WWE, but deep in their soul still love pro wrestling, just need something purer. Maybe they discovered Kenny Omega on AEW Dynamite recently, and want to see where he perfected his craft. The hardcore NJPW fans or people with a wealth of knowledge like Chris Charlton might enjoy the artwork, but would otherwise probably not find our magazine interesting — outside of our exclusive interviews.”
You have a great list of content for the first issue including an exclusive interview with TJ Perkins. How did that go?
Thom Fain: “Some weird cosmic stuff aligned for that to happen. TJ is someone I can relate to, and he’s shared a lot with me privately. He has been instrumental in my understanding of pro wrestling as a business, but then also for me to understand the “fighting spirit” which remains the soulful undercurrent of New Japan both in the LA Dojo and in Japan. It was by luck that an off-handed comment of mine found the attention of The Rock one day on Twitter, who responded to both of us and put TJ over. Ever since then, we’ve gotten to know one another a bit and there are others who have found my feed on Twitter and started to enjoy my perspective. As a team, Monthly Puroresu is incredibly diverse, and I think the names you’ll see in future issues will be equally as interesting.”
People can pre-order Monthly Puroresu now on your website. Is it available in both physical and digital form?
Thom Fain: “I want to do something different. Everyone and his mother has a wrestling podcast or a social media brand with gif’s and ‘hot take’ style content. We are doing physical magazines only with legitimate longform, although if you’d like a PDF, you can DM me on Twitter at @MonthlyPuroresu and I’d happily oblige your request.”
Lastly, where can people find you on social media, and connect with you to find out more developments surrounding Monthly Puroresu?
Thom Fain: “We recently onboarded a social media manager, who is helping me with some photo shoots and getting an Instagram started. Right now Twitter is best or you can grab your copy of the magazine at monthlypuroresu.bigcartel.com.”
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