The State of Joshi City

With recent changes to my Internet activity and real-life interests, I wanted to address the future of this website.

As many have noticed, I have not updated the website in over three months, and no longer use social media. To be honest, I have never been a fan of social media, I think it brings out the worst in people and while it can have its uses, being on Twitter is not and never has been my idea of a good time. My main purpose the last few years of being on social media was to promote my shop and website, and without those things being updated I made the decision to fade off into the sunset. The Joshi City email address has also been deactivated, which I realize leaves most people with no way to contact me but that’s the Internet for you, people come and go. But nothing bad happened to me, its just shifting interests and wanting to be more “offline” than “online” in my personal life.

The reason the website has not been updated is simply shifting real life interests. I’ve always ebbed and flowed when it came to what wrestling I was interested in. I doubt anyone has followed my online wrestling presence over the last 20 years, but Joshi City is my third regularly updated website. I started with Wrestling Encyclopedia in 2003, which focused on American and Japanese wrestling. As my interest in US wrestling faded, I created Puroresu Central, which as the name implies focused on Japanese wrestling. And then in 2015 when I lost interest in the male promotions, I created Joshi City to focus on just Joshi wrestling. Each site was less popular than the last as I got more niche, but my goal was always to provide great information on something that I was personally invested in.

Unfortunately, over the last six months I’ve lost interest in wrestling in general. Besides watching AEW and WWE PPVs with my brother in the most casual sense possible, I haven’t been watching wrestling regularly and have not been keeping up with the storylines. Its not that the quality of Joshi wrestling has gotten worse, if anything its even better, it just hasn’t been gripping me and I am not one to force myself to engage in a hobby that has become a chore. My wrestling websites have always been updated out of the passion I have for the sport, its not about making money but providing information for something I am personally engaged in, and once it becomes something I don’t look forward to updating its time to take a step back.

As for the future of Joshi City, the website isn’t going anywhere for the time being. Even though the server costs money, its not outside of my budget, and I don’t like taking down my websites if I think they still have valuable information. Even the Puroresu Central website is still up (and gets visited fairly often via Google searches) and I haven’t updated it in six years, even if its not freshly updated there is still a lot of great content here that I think will continue to help new fans. Also, the website may still see minor “behind the scenes” updates, at least to keep the rosters somewhat current as those are the pages that get the most visits.

Will the website ever be regularly updated again? Its too early to tell. My interests come and go, something that doesn’t excite me today may excite me again in a few months, its hard to say. The chances of me returning to social media is slim to none as its not something I liked in the first place, but the vast majority of the visits to Joshi City come via search engine, not social media, so I’d have no issue updating the site even without it. But its probably not likely I’ll be making a grand return to regularly update the site anytime soon. Still, the content will remain and I’ll occasionally check the rosters and make adjustments when I have a free moment. Its been a fun journey, and if Joshi City is my last wrestling website, I feel I went out on a high note and the site has helped a lot of new Joshi fans over the years. And I hope by keeping up the content it will continue helping both new and old Joshi fans for years to come.