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.
Power Struggle (2014)
The first matches for the event were revealed on October 14, 2014, the day after King of Pro-Wrestling. At King of Pro-Wrestling, A.J. Styles lost the IWGP Heavyweight Championship to Hiroshi Tanahashi, after a surprise return from NJPW original Yoshitatsu, who stopped his Bullet Club stablemate Jeff Jarrett from interfering in the match. The day after Styles' title loss, a match between him and Yoshitatsu was announced for Power Struggle. In pre-Power Struggle interviews, Yoshitatsu was given a new "Bullet Club hunter" character with him claiming that, while working for WWE, he had grown sick of seeing employees wearing Bullet Club shirts and was now looking to eliminate the villainous stable from professional wrestling. Also on October 14, the main event for January 4, 2015, and the Wrestle Kingdom 9 in Tokyo Dome show between IWGP Heavyweight Champion Hiroshi Tanahashi and the 2014 G1 Climax winner Kazuchika Okada was made official. At Power Struggle, the two were set to face off in a tag team match, where Tanahashi would team with Kota Ibushi and Okada with his regular tag team partner Yoshi-Hashi. The third match announced for the event would see Shinsuke Nakamura defend his IWGP Intercontinental Championship against Katsuyori Shibata. The match came as a result of King of Pro-Wrestling, where Shibata and Hirooki Goto defeated Nakamura and Yoshi-Hashi in a tag team match, after which Nakamura nominated Shibata as his next challenger. Nakamura and Shibata had previously faced off in a singles match on July 21, during the 2014 G1 Climax, where Shibata was victorious. In storyline the rivalry between the two dated back to a brawl in August 2004.