Wrestle Kingdom 9
On August 10, 2014, NJPW made two announcements. Firstly, Wrestle Kingdom 9 would be held at the Tokyo Dome on January 4, 2015. Secondly, NJPW revealed a partnership with Jeff Jarrett's Global Force Wrestling, which it approached about bringing the event to a new market. On November 4, GFW announced that it would present the event live on American pay-per-view television and that it had a PPV market of 125 million homes.
Wrestle Kingdom II
As part of a new working relationship, the show featured wrestlers from the Orlando, Florida-based Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA) promotion. The matches involving TNA wrestlers were shown as a special "Global Impact!" broadcast in the United States. TNA wrestlers were involved in six of the ten matches, which included Kurt Angle making a successful defense of the Inoki Genome Federation's version of the IWGP Heavyweight Championship (known as the IWGP 3rd Belt Championship in NJPW) against Yuji Nagata. The show also featured wrestlers from All Japan Pro Wrestling (AJPW), Dradition and Pro Wrestling Zero1-Max.