ChocoPro Roundup: #315, #316 & Masa Takanashi's 20th Anniversary
Classic Gatoh Move, Chie's Come A Long Way & Masa Deals With A Pretty Tough Knot
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Chie Koishikawa vs Mei Suruga vs Miya Yotsuba, ChocoPro #315 (10/6/23), Gatoh Move
Matches like this are what made me fall in love with Gatoh Move. Is it perfect? No, of course not. It’s a tad messy, and they indulge in a few three-way tropes that I don’t love. However, I don’t think it needed to be perfect. It was three Darejyo graduates going out and messing around, which with the way Gatoh Move do things, meant it was mainly an opportunity for them to have a laugh. Gatoh rookies tend to have an exceptional grasp of the basics, but they’re also clearly taught to enjoy wrestling, and watching wee bouts like this back in the days when they did daily uploads to YouTube helped me realise how special that can be. More than most companies, Gatoh understand the value of having a lovely time, a facet of their philosophy that I will always celebrate.
Chie Koishikawa vs Shinno Hagane, ChocoPro #316 (11/6/23), Gatoh Move
It’s easy to forget what Chie was like when she first returned to ChocoPro in the darkest depths of the pandemic. Before the world went to hell, she’d only had 17 matches and didn’t wrestle from April to September of 2020. It wasn’t long after her return that she quit her job to go full-time as a wrestler, but she still wasn’t the Chie we know today. She was quiet, not quite shy, but seemed unsure of when to speak up. When appearing on live streams with Best Bros and Emi, she’d often slip into the background, speaking when spoken to and struggling to stand out amongst those huge personalities. All the ingredients were there, including that boundless energy, but she wasn’t fully formed and ready to go. She had to figure out how to channel it.
And I was thinking about that Chie as I watched this main event. In fact, I think about that Chie every time she opens a ChocoPro show, cracking jokes with the fans and looking like someone who has spent their entire life controlling an audience. I know the last few years sometimes feel like a century, but it hasn’t been that long, and she has come so far. There are now 295 matches (at the time of writing) under her belt, and she’s more likely to bounce to the moon than fade quietly in the background. That energy is still wild and chaotic, but she’s learning how to focus it, and it was pivotal in her earning this shot at her Egg Tart partner’s title. An opportunity which, if you haven’t already figured out by my tone, she smashed out of the park.
The most impressive thing about this main event was that she did it all while retaining her innate Chie-ness. It’s one thing to grasp who you are in a wrestling ring, but it’s another to revise that version of yourself as you rise up the ranks. Chie wouldn’t have been the first person to make it to the top and discard what makes her unique in an attempt to fit into that main event style, but if anything, she was more Chie than ever. All the charging about the place while making weird noises and faces was front and centre, as she even unleashed a demonic grin when Hagane complained about the bruises she was leaving on his leg. Chie wouldn’t win her first singles title match, and I never really expected her to, but she proved that she could occupy that spot while still being her, which is even more important than something as silly as a result.
Plus, we now live in a world where we can wonder where Chie goes next. It’s been a little under three years since that return, so where will she be three years from now? How much further can she go? I have no idea, but I hope in the future I find myself looking back on this Chie and marvelling at all the things she has done since.
Masa Takanashi vs Shuji Ishikawa, Masa's 20th Anniversary (16/6/23), Gatoh Move
Setting Masa up with Shuji Ishikawa was like handing him a particularly complicated knot and challenging him to untie it. Except it’s a massive knot that will hit you really hard. Which, admittedly, is not something most knots do. Still, my point is that Ishikawa is a big lad, and in the cramped, tight confines of Ichigaya Chocolate Square, finding a way to take him down was a hell of a challenge. Throw in that he’s a bit of a violent fucker, and the odds were definitely against Takanashi, even if the whole shebang was happening to celebrate his 20th anniversary as a wrestler.
And that this was the Masa show played into how great it became. Everyone in that room was on Masa’s side, willing him to find a way to pull this off, but in front of a hot crowd, plan after plan fell apart. When he tried to wrestle, Ishikawa’s long legs and arms let him reach the edge of the mat, allowing him to easily break submissions. Then, when it became a violent brawl, Big Shuji was in his element, even when everyone else on the card came to Takanashi’s aid (a moment somewhat reminiscent of Akki vs Minoru Suzuki all the way back on ChocoPro #1). Eventually, Masa resorted to going to the Yoshi-Tonic repeatedly, succeeding at hitting it into the Ichigaya wall, but even that couldn’t get the job done. Masa had a hundred different ideas, but Ishikawa was batting them away, a response up every non-existent sleeve.
It was the kind of result which might have been frustrating in other circumstances. Masa was playing on home turf, with an excited crowd and a roster of wrestlers backing him up, so it probably wouldn’t have hurt Ishikawa to throw him a bone. However, at this point in Takanashi’s career, that stuff doesn’t matter. He’s proven himself a hundred times over, and the result of one match isn’t making the slightest difference to what he does. It’s much better to sit back and enjoy watching these two old warriors put together something that worked to perfection and was right up there with the best of the ChocoPro stuff we’ve seen this year.