is fale dojo worth it?

10 Jun, 2024

let's talk about fale dojo again. this is the wrestling school that's been under fire on reddit for supposedly mistreating its students and overall being a waste of time for anyone wanting to get into a real pro wrestling career. it's run by bad luck fale, a founding member of the all-foreigner bullet club of new japan pro wrestling.

at the time i read it i agreed, and i couldn't understand why anyone would choose to train at the dojo when other, far cheaper options exist in auckland. that was until i found out that fale dojo is one of the only three places in the world where you can train under the official NJPW title— and up until 2023, when the LA dojo switched its structure, it was the only place you could just pay to get into a NJPW-run training school.

fale dojo isn't meant for local aucklanders, or even new zealanders (though they do seem to make up half of the attendance). it's designed for NJPW fans across the world who really want to work in the promotion and it honestly might be the best and easiest path, at least to getting into a NJPW-affiliated show if not NJPW itself.

fale dojo seems incredibly expensive from the outside. $21K NZD ($12.8K USD) per annum is genuinely pricier than anything i've ever seen with an official degree or not. however, the price doesn't change for international students unlike most educational institutions, which actually makes it one of the cheapest places to study as a full-time student from abroad in the whole country. plus, studying the full year is only optional, with the standard three-month term being $7K NZD ($4.2K USD).

that being said, fale dojo isn't an officially-recognized educational institute. you don't get any sort of degree or diploma from what's essentially learning to playfight for three hours a day. you can't enter on a student visa because you aren't a student, so you have to either study or work elsewhere, which negates the ability to train full-time at the dojo to begin with. there's also housing fees to deal with. ¹

but still, it's NJPW, the second biggest pro wrestling promotion in the world.

i think if you're fairly rich and genuinely dedicated to getting into the NJPW, a three month stint at the dojo for $7K NZD is honestly not that bad. at the very least, it seems like you'll be guaranteed to get into some NJPW tamashii young lions matches in the dojo itself, and if you're lucky, you might get to go to the australian tamashii matches too.

i don't know if it's really possible to make it to japan, but the only other options are:

1. the more competitive LA dojo, which is in fucking LA.
2. learning japanese and trying to establish yourself in a smaller puroresu promo there first, somehow working your way up to NJPW.
3. starting at the indie scene in your home country and hopefully getting so big that you make it to AEW or WWE and eventually get to NJPW.

all of these paths are extremely difficult. and if you were interested in NJPW's signature japanese puroresu style in particular, i can see why working your way up in the american (or american-inspired) pro wrestling industries first might not work.

well, the price is one thing but the quality of the training is another. japanese dojos make younger members do chores for senior members to establish respect and a sense of duty and fale dojo does the same with having the members sweep floors and driveways for 45 minutes every morning before training. the difference is that while japanese dojos are so curated that they pay their wrestlers for training, you're the one who has to pay to do these chores at fale dojo.

but it does seem to help the wrestlers in mastering discipline and respect for elders so whatever, i think it's a funny quirk of the program lost in translation and monetary constraints more than anything.

fale dojo has sent a couple of guys to japan before so i don't think it's a total scam, but i'm just wondering if anyone at NJPW is even keeping track of what fale's doing down here. i still want to try to make it to one of the weekly june shows though so hopefully i get to see what the dojo's like for myself!

#pro wrestling #rant