AXS television recently announced the return of New Japan Pro Wrestling to the network after a two year absence. At one time, the station aired both New Japan and WOW Wrestling. Once Anthem Sports (the parent company of IMPACT) purchased the network, it eventually aired only Impact.

The Ratings for Impact can swing from week to week but ratings over the last several months shared by Wrestlenomics have swung around 80,000-110,000 viewers per week. The network's overall prime time ratings are under 50,000 viewers.

This leads one to pontificate on a potential New Japan rating on Thursday nights as shoulder programming to Impact. 

At one time, NJPW may have been considered the second largest promotion in the United States, in a close race with Ring of Honor (its sometimes partner). However, AEW has absorbed much of that enthusiasm and even featured some New Japan talents and headlined with former New Japan "foreign" stars like Chris Jericho and Kenny Omega.

Some feel like pro wrestling has reached a saturation point on domestic cable television. A recent MLW special on VICE with a Dark Side of the Ring lead-in reached around 40,000 viewers. While the raing was multiple times its weekly beIN network ratings (shared by Wrestlenomics), it was still a disappointment for a Dark Side audience that delivers over 100,000 viewers. 

Once new programming arrives on AXS in March of 2022, the number should be interesting to follow. In a recent survey I conducted, most felt the weekly average would be well below 100,000 viewers and even below that of Impact:

While ratings were not available for AXS tv when New Japan first aired on the network, the Wrestling Observer had written that the weekly rating was thought to be around 200,000 viewers per week. One thing that we can be assured of this time around is that a rating of just above half that would be considered a win.