ChocoPro Roundup: #307, #308 & #309
Obi's Anniversary, Mei's New Favourite Pose And A Rumble
Front Matter
The image used in these reviews are linked to the Twitter account responsible for them: simply click through to bring up the original post. If you are a photographer whose image I have used here, and you do not grant me permission to reproduce your work, please let me know (Twitter: @FlupkeDiFlupke) and I will remove it. Thanks!
写真家さん、ここにイメージが写すことが許可しなければ聞いて下さって私は大至急除きます (ツイターの @FlupkeDiFlupke です)。ありがとうございます！
Subscribe now!
Subscribe to Marshmallow Bomb for free to receive all our posts direct to your inbox, or donate $5 a month to access the full archive. A portion of every subscription supports Amazon Frontlines, an organisation dedicated to working with Indigenous peoples to defend their way of life, the Amazon rainforest, and our climate future.
With Emi Sakura set to return to America, Gatoh Move loaded up the weekend before Golden Week with three shows in three days. ChocoPro is frantic at the best of times, but as we head into May, it goes into overdrive, which is never a bad thing. As a general rule, the more chaotic Ichigaya is, the better, and all those outings were a lot of fun. However, this is a busy time for wrestling, so here are the matches that I feel are particularly worth your time.
Orepan (Chie Koishikawa & Sayaka) vs Killer Queens (Emi Sakura & Mei Suruga), ChocoPro #307 (29/4/23), Gatoh Move
It doesn’t matter how long she spends in America doing five-minute matches or being misused by Tony Khan and his goons (does he have goons? I don’t know how it works over there), beating Emi Sakura in Gatoh Move means something. However, for Chie and Sayaka, opportunities to get that upset win over Sakura have been somewhat lacking recently, taken away by her being out of the country.
That meant that while this match featured the all-star team of Mei and Emi, it was all about Orepan, who were out there looking to earn themselves a scalp. You won’t often see Chie exchanging slaps across the face with someone, but the chance to put Emi down brought that out of her. Sayaka, meanwhile, happily tried to suplex Mei out of the window before laying some of those thudding forearms down on Sakura, giving it everything she had. You could taste how desperate they were to make a point, and if Emi was hoping for a relaxing afternoon, she was left painfully disappointed.
And as much as I would love to have Emi Sakura back wrestling in Gatoh Move every week, I think this counts as another advantage to her American sojourn (alongside it letting her have some time off). With Gatoh Move’s minuscule roster, it’s only natural that the same handful of matches will pop up repeatedly, taking away the air of excitement to a Chie or Sayaka wrestling the boss. With Emi out of the picture, that excitement has started to return, and this match crackled with the tension of two people trying to show how far they’ve come. Ultimately, they didn’t get that scalp, but they left a mark, and sometimes that’s enough.
Black Comaneci (Antonio Honda & Tokiko Kirihara) vs Sayaka Obihiro & Kojio, ChocoPro #307 (29/4/23), Gatoh Move
Before I get onto the meat of this match, I wanted to quickly mention that Antonio Honda eliminated Kojio from proceedings by whacking him with a giant inflatable hammer, causing him to tumble backwards through the Ichigaya window. That was some beautiful Looney Tunes ass shit.
What I want to focus on, though, is the magic that is Honda vs Obihiro, a combination that always delivers. If you’ve never seen an Anton vs Obi match, you might have some preconceived ideas of what it looks like, and you’d be somewhat close. It was, after all, an outing where someone got hit with a giant hammer, and there is no small amount of silliness whenever they get together. However, that only tells half the story. Because the other thing you will always get from Honda and Obi is the moment when they flip the switch and start laying into each other. I’ve seen it who knows how many times now, but it never fails to get the blood pumping as these two lovers of nonsense throw all that to one side to beat the shit out of each other.
This time, though, it felt extra special. Two years previously, on the tenth anniversary of Obi’s debut, Honda yelled at her to show him her ten years, pushing her as hard as he could, and there was a sense that, in her defeat, she fell short of his expectations. On her twelve anniversary, she didn’t make the same mistake. Obihiro survived what Honda threw at her and struggled away with the win, bundling him up for the three despite her partner tumbling out of the action. Two years on from that brilliant main event (which is my favourite of theirs), Obi proved she is far from done, and as they sang together in the aftermath, tears flowing down her face, you got the impression that she and Honda’s careers will be intertwined till the end.
Mei Suruga & Andreuw Tang vs Emi Sakura & Shinno Hagane, ChocoPro #308 (30/4/23), Gatoh Move
There are certain wrestling gags that I will never stop finding funny. I’m talking about spots like a tall person and a short person doing a big boot together or basically any of Sakura Hirota’s antics. Sure, I know what’s coming, but that’s part of the joy of it. While comedy can be subversive and weird, it can also be comforting, and wrestling, with its propensity for signature spots and sequences, is the perfect place for that. All of which is to say that Mei Suruga forming a tag team and gleefully spamming their pose is something I have laughed at before and will laugh at again.
It helps that Mei and Andruew Tang have incredibly similar energies, making up for their lack of height by being the most exuberant people in the room. In another’s hands, their insistence on continually returning to Tang’s pose could have easily slipped into annoying (something that Akki played with on commentary). However, alongside those outsized personalities, they’ve also mastered likeability. It didn’t matter how many times they returned to it, I found every single pose funny, much like when Mei does the same thing with Antonio Honda as part of Apple and Honey.
On top of all that, Emi and Hagane were an inspired choice of opponents because while I didn’t find Suruga and Tang’s antics annoying, those two definitely did, and they were itching to dish out a kicking in response. They are two great party-poopers, providing the perfect foils for Mei and Tang to bounce off and giving us an incredibly entertaining match in the process. I haven’t watched any SPW, but if these lads who are turning up in ChocoPro are an indicator of the quality, it’s probably worth checking out.
Emi Sakura Farewell Rumble, ChocoPro #309 (1/5/23), Gatoh Move
The last time I wrote about a ChocoPro Rumble, I mentioned that while I enjoy all of them, I wasn’t sure they’d ever matched the chaotic joy of that first Halloween one. Well, that opinion might now be outdated. In Emi Sakura’s latest farewell (she’s off back to America), a packed Ichigaya kicked off Golden Week with a slice of madness that was all over the place and all the better for it. Whether it was Emi siding with DPW over her own promotion, Chie crawling through people’s legs or Mei gnawing on Akki’s arm, this thing barrelled along, out of control and never pausing for breath.
And it’s during matches like this that Chocolate Square shines. Not just because the cramped confines of the room add to that sense of chaos, but the fans being on top of the action means every reaction and laugh is absorbed into the match. Even watching at home, however many miles away, you feel like you’re part of something. A wild and out-of-control something, but something all the same, and that’s what Gatoh Move has always excelled at. It’s a company held together by sticky tape and love, and it’s never more apparent than when there are umpteen of them battling for space on that mat, but it is also what makes it so incredibly special.
That it could all fall apart at any second is a huge part of why I love it, and nonsense like this is why the longer it stays together, the better.