Korakuen Hall

Kōrakuen Hall (後楽園ホール Kōrakuen Hōru?) is an arena in Bunkyo, Tokyo, Japan, which has hosted many boxing, professional wrestling and mixed martial arts matches. Part of Tokyo Dome City, it is one of Tokyo's biggest attractions. It opened on April 16, 1962 and has a capacity of approximately 1,800 people. The venue hosted the boxing events for the 1964 Summer Olympics. In the rounds of pro wrestling, it is considered as being the Madison Square Garden of puroresu, as all of Japan's largest promotions have run some of their larger shows there, much akin to the WWF/E's monthly show at MSG in the 80's. Korakuen Hall is also known for the fact that every wrestling promotion in Japan, large or small, defunct or not, has run a show there. It often is merely called "hall", in Japan.

In March 2011, as the hall suffered structural damage under the influence of the Tōhoku earthquake, the events scheduled for the time being, including WBC triple female world title fight, were postponed or canceled.[1] The repair work was completed on March 18. The Hall was closed until the next day, then gradually resumed a variety of events.[2]

Tokyo JCB Hall ("Korakuen Hall 2")[edit]
Main article: JCB Hall

It was announced that a new version of Korakuen Hall would be built in Tokyo Dome City, with a construction finish time of around 2008, and it would hold 2,500–3,000 people. After construction completes, Tokyo Dome Corporation, which owns the original Korakuen Hall as well as the Tokyo Dome, would continue to rent out the original Korakuen Hall, lowering rental prices (currently it costs 1,500,000 Yen to rent) to allowing smaller promotions to use the building on a regular basis.

Since its completion, JCB Hall has been used rarely for pro wrestling events after being christened with a Pro Wrestling Zero1 show in early 2008. The extremely high rental fee has prevented JCB Hall from becoming the next big thing for pro wrestling in Japan as it was hyped to be[by whom?] and today is mostly used for concerts and exhibits. During 2009, JCB Hall was used twice for pro wrestling, both times for a tour ending show by Pro Wrestling Noah.

Cultural references[edit]

 * In the manga/anime Ashita no Joe, many matches are held there too.
 * Korakuen Hall is featured numerous times in the manga/anime series Fighting Spirit (Hajime no Ippo) as one of the venues the boxers fight at.
 * Two of the lesser preliminaries in the 20th Choujin Olympics were held here in Kinnikuman while the bigger draws were at Korakuen Stadium.