Flupke's Month in Wrestling: April 2023
ActWres girl'Z - Marvelous - OZ Academy - STARDOM - Tokyo Joshi Pro - WAVE
Front Matter
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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！
The Michelin Guide Star System
One star - Very good
cookingpro wrestling in its category.Two stars - Excellent
cookingpro wrestling, worth a detour.Three stars - Exceptional
cuisinepro wrestling, worthy of a special journey.
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ActWres girl’Z
Beastz Rebellion (ACT, Ayano Irie & Chiaki) vs. MARI, Natsuki & Naho Yamada
24.03 / Shinkiba 1st Ring
This was an almost unbelievably rich show for a sub-two hour Shinkiba card with a limited roster. The opening three-way dance did more than ever to build up Sakura Mizushima as a fiery babyface in the classic joshi mould. The tag match involving Mii, Asako Mia, Naru and Kouki added a satisfying new chapter to the career of everyone’s new favourite weird rookie, while also telling a deeper story about Mii stepping up into her senior role: she reminded me here of Saki Akai in Reiwa AA Cannon, only much sillier. Miku Aono's three-part gauntlet series, in which she consecutively defeated Nagisa Shiotsuki, Koara Fujimoto and Chika Goto felt like an early landmark on, what shall we call it, the ActWres Road? And this match introduced the first genuinely effective mid-match interference spot I've seen in years, as Natsumi Sumikawa took revenge on Chiaki for betraying her unit, hitting her with a surprise Somato and costing her the match. AWG’s rebirth continues to go very, very well, on a number of levels - I felt so enthusiastic about this show that my posting about it on Twitter might just have convinced two people (that I know about) to join the bandwagon.
Beastz Rebellion (ACT, Ayano Irie & Nene Arahata) & Wild Bunny vs. Naru, Naho Yamada, Asako Mia & Yufa
21.04 / Shinkiba 1st Ring
Speaking of successes, I enjoyed this match so much that it took me 25 minutes to watch the first ten minutes of it, and I had to go out to a Chinese restaurant and finish it the next morning. Rookie Of The Year Elect Asako does steal the show here as expected, but only just. There’s a lovely little moment early on where Ayano starts the match for her unit without a word of discussion, where you get this strong sense of her as a budding/thriving second-in-command, ready to fight as many of this squad’s battles as required. There’s also the spot where Yufa drop toe-holds ACT and the entire team of rookies (plus Wild Bunny) run about stamping on her back while Naho screams through her megaphone, in a manic twist on the old Ice Train classic. But Asako doing a Sakura Hirota-style move-for-move impersonation of KAIRI only to claim afterwards that she’s never heard of a wrestler with that name is the beating heart of this thing. Fortunately you don’t have to take my word for it, because the company have cleverly clipped it and uploaded it to YouTube. Stop what you’re doing right now, and watch.
Michelin Guide Star Rating: ☆
CHIAKI vs. Sakura Mizushima
The match that came before this was an intriguing little rookie tournament opener between Kyoka Iwai and Marino Saihara, which promised more than it actually delivered. I don’t mean that as an insult necessarily: Iwai has a very rare and special kind of bitter and twisted energy about her and I can see myself buying with all my heart and soul into future feuds, but there wasn’t actually all that much there in this particular contest; Saihara felt the more polished worker of the two without being the star; it was all very much a work in progress, but I’m very excited what comes out at the end of it. This match, though, felt more or less complete - I don’t know if I’ve seen a single match since the relaunch of this promotion that had the crowd so loudly invested, and these two demonstrated such a knack for pacing that the momentum never dropped. When Mizushima used a classic joshi bridge-out deep into the match it felt earned; the instinctive response of a natural babyface fighting tooth-and-nail against a natural heel. Mizushima didn’t win here, but she already feels like a safe bet for the sort of hometown hero that would one day go on to win the White Belt, if this were Fuka’s first venture.
Marvelous
Mio Momono vs. Chihiro Hashimoto
15.03 / Shinkiba 1st Ring
It’s not a surprise that this was a very good match, but it was better than that: this was one of those matches where every second feels alive with possibility. There's a section - the one that ends with Mio pulling herself down from Hash's shoulders into a roll-up - in which multiple reversals happen before either manages to land a move, but it doesn't feel like Jay White-style "Gay Gordons" wrestling so much as an even-keeled tussle between two competitors who are alive to where their bodies are, and eagle-eyed enough to spot and seize an opportunity to turn the momentum.
Mio fights most of the match from underneath, but it feels like she wouldn't have it any other way: even more so than in her first trial series match with Kaoru Ito, there's a sense here that Mio works best when she's fighting against the current. That feeling of adversity is what helps her to unlock her fighting spirit, and Mio’s fighting spirit is some of the purest in all of wrestling- you'd have to have a heart of stone not to be pulled along by her here. This irrepressible energy is counter-weighted by the fact that Hashimoto really doesn't have to do much to put down Mio's comebacks - occasionally all she has to do is stand in the way and let Mio charge into her - but when Mio gets going she is able to pose Hashimoto some problems. This can be elegant, like that roll-up spot, or it can be ugly, as when Mio headbutts Hashimoto to the ground and starts slapping her around in a mount.
Nevertheless, at no point are we led to believe that this is a match-up of equals, which is why the finishing sequence feels like such a stroke of genius. Mio fights with all her might to avoid the Albright - this tenacity in defence calls back to some iconic early appearances in Marvelous, the ones where she really made a name for herself - and succeeds in escaping. She then manages to hit two Germans of her own, in stunning fashion, but it’s an all-or-nothing scenario: Mio has pulled off a superhuman feat with these suplexes, but they aren’t quite enough to put Hash away, and now she's all at sea, having expended so much energy on lifting Hash over her head not once but twice. The very next move, Mio falls victim to the Albright, and the three count.
The good news is that this is a performance of such skill and heart that we can pretty confidently announce Mio is now back where she was at GAEAISM, if she wasn’t already. The fact that this all works so well as a stand-alone encounter when that GAEAISM match casts such a long shadow over this match-up is massively to its credit. The bad news, in kayfabe, is that Mio lost at GAEAISM: she's closing the gap, but the Mio we saw in the summer of 2021 still wasn't her final form, and her growth has been thwarted (again) since then by injury. This didn’t add anything new to the slow burn story of Mio’s comeback, but it did feel like a meaningful revisiting of a highly significant match-up, and the finished product was as exceptional as we all knew it would be.
Michelin Guide Star Rating: ☆☆
OZ Academy
Hiroyo Matsumoto & Ram Kaicho vs Kaori Yoneyama & Momoka Hanazono
12.03 / Shinjuku FACE
Momoka is almost too much here, too tuned in to making the most out of basic transitions, too committed to stuffing a low-key opener with wonderful little details. Almost. It’s probably not fair to pin all this on her either, as all three of the other performers in the ring are exceptionally good at what they do, but this is Momoka’s year and by the end of this match she’s pretty clearly its protagonist - on balance, Ram, Hiroyo and Yoneyama all feel like they’re there to multiply Momoka’s Momokaisms. Almost too much is the best amount of anything.
I stuck this on over breakfast, thinking I’d have a little fun before starting my work for the day, and I ended up having to watch the whole thing over again, because the passages down the finishing stretch were so rapid and so crammed that I could barely make sense of them first time around. On rewatch, clever little motifs emerge: there’s a clothesline spot that Momoka, Yone and Hiroyo repeat at least three times, each time with a subtly different outcome. There’s a tricksy spot where Hiroyo has Momoka in a Powerbomb position but Momoka begs off with such sincerity that Hiroyo lets her go, and then Momoka rolls her up as thanks; this is then refracted in in the finish, where Momoka goes for a high-speed O’Connor Roll off the ropes and Hiroyo simply lands on her half-way round, trapping Momoka underneath her for the three. There’s no need for this level of intricacy - big vs small storytelling can be done very simply, and simple would have been sufficient in this spot - but Momoka simply can’t help herself. She’s like one of those artists that can write calligraphy on a grain of rice.
Michelin Guide Star Rating: ☆
STARDOM
AZM & Mei Suruga vs. Starlight Kid & Mei Seira
23.04 / Yokohama Arena
Twenty months is a long time in joshi, especially these last twenty months. The earth has turned many, many times since FKA Mei Hoshizuki last appeared in the ring: since August 2021 we’ve seen the birth of Prominence, Color’s and NOMADS, the death and resurrection of ActWres girl’Z, the sad collapse of Ice Ribbon, an entire injury-and-recovery cycle for Mio Momono, the return of Mei’s old partner-in-crime Kohaku, Unagi Sayaka’s first GYAN Period, any number of debuts and retirements, the ending of COVID restrictions and a massive opening out to international collaborations, Tokyo Joshi ascending to Sumo Hall, and now STARDOM ascending to Yokohama Arena. It feels fitting that Mei, whose talent always wildly outstripped her name recognition, comes back in at the sharp end of all of that.
In the nearly-two-years she’s been gone, I’d mythologised Mei as one of the very best workers out there from an in-ring ability perspective, as much off the back of forgotten gems like her matches with Riko Kawahata and Chikayo Nagashima in Marvelous as for her involvement in big stories lie GAEAISM. It meant that this match was essential viewing - maybe the only match I felt that way about on this admittedly mahoosive card - but as Mei made her entrance, looking decidedly less confident than she did when she made her first STARDOM appearance back in February 2021, and flanked by Starlight Kid, a source of genuine X-Pac Heat for me, I did begin to wonder - mightn’t I still come away from this frustrated and disappointed, as tends to be the case these days whenever I think I’ll give STARDOM a whirl?
No! Mei is still very obviously a cut above, and this match was designed to play to her strengths, even going so far as handing her a big return win over the High Speed Champion. There’s an athleticism, fluidity and precision to her movements that’s rare even in the high speed pantheon - just look at that dropkick she hits on Suruga early in the match, where she somehow soars about ten feet in the air from a standing start. Her hiatus was longer than some joshi wrestlers’ careers, but overall this match felt like an exhibition of the opposite of ring rust. It’s not just that Seira is even better than I remembered her, it’s that her presence pushes everyone around her to be the best high-speed wrestler they can be as well. Suruga seems quicker than ever, with an almost extra-sensory ability to glide into the right place at the right time. AZM feels like a more inventive presence here than she did in her High Speed title defence against Suruga in this spot last year, where she was tasked with playing the stoical Ace-like foil to Mei’s ceasless creativity.
And Starlight Kid is Starlight Kid. I’m not sure she really gets high-speed as a style distinct from Bushiroad IWGP Junior Heavyweight-ism: the kind of style that’s defined, say, by Mei and Mei getting into a merry tangle of arms while both trying to backslide each other, linking and un-linking until they both end up with their shoulders to the mat, or by Seira getting dumped over the rope to the apron by AZM, spotting Suruga on the floor and deciding to hit a missile dropkick on her former MeiMei partner while her other opponent’s back is turned running the ropes. But her Quebrada off the middle rope to the floor looked nice, and she didn’t dominate things, allowing this match to be exactly the point of stylistic difference it promised to be. I’m still holding out hope she’ll pop up elsewhere, but if STARDOM allow Seira to keep working this groove and make it her own then that’s the next best thing.
Prominence (Risa Sera, Suzu Suzuki & Hiragi Kurumi) vs. REstart (KAIRI, Natsupoi & Saori Anou)
23.04 / Yokohama Arena
Suzu rules. I’d allowed myself to stray from this truth after that terrible, terrible red belt match with Giulia, but it is the truth. She’s always been one of those wrestlers (like Mio, like Mei, like Momoka) that’s capable of stealing the show, even when (especially when) sharing a ring with wrestlers many times her senior. Her facial acting during the finishing stretch here is better than Mercedes Mone’s facial acting during the finishing stretch of her match on this card, and Mone presumably took entire Performance Centre modules on what to do with your face in the finishing stretch. This match relies on its entire cast to keep its many plates spinning, but Suzu is its protagonist, without even really having to try. The gusto and self-belief with which Suzu projected her bike gimmick on debut is the same gusto and self-belief she shows now, defending a title belt against three arguable generational talents in front of 5,000 people at Yokohama Arena.
The bike gimmick is the one that drew me in, but her current gimmick is the one that will make possible whatever it is that she wants to do with the rest of her career. The day after this show took place, Suzu wrestled Jun Kasai at Korakuen Hall, and announced her graduation from Prominence, though not from deathmatch wrestling, as translator extraordinaire Mr. HAKU later confirmed for us on Twitter. Suzu later confirmed that STARDOM would be her “main battleground” going forward, and so be it: STARDOM is what the wider world thinks of when it thinks of Japanese women’s wrestling, and Suzu’s face deserves to be right at the centre of that image, for many years to come.
Tokyo Joshi Pro
Kyoraku Kyomei (Hyper Misao & Shoko Nakajima) vs. Yuki Arai & HIMAWARI
15.04 / Korakuen Hall
This match has probably been overshadowed by the tag team debut of Max the Impaler and Pom Harajuku in the match that followed, but for me it was easily the highlight of a largely delightful B-show. The hook was so simple and so immediately effective that it’s a wonder if it isn’t used more: SKE48 member Shiori Aoki made her first appearance in a wrestling ring here as guest referee, with hilarious consequences.
Intentionally putting an inexperienced referee at the centre of your match does a wonderful job of highlighting the unseen work match referees do. Intentionally putting an inexperienced referee at the centre of a match featuring Hyper Misao does a magnificent job of highlighting the sheer number of times she tries to cheat in any given match. Aoki is completely hoodwinked by the first of Misao’s attempts here, missing the cold spray assault on HIMAWARI which paves the way for an early Kyoraku Kyomei victory, but her blushes are spared when referee Kiso, supervising from the timekeeper’s table, reminds her that you have to shout “gong!” before the match can officially start. Aoki is adorkably dilliget after this early slip-up, and her reactions breathe new life into hoary old spots like the old feet-on-the-ropes pin attempt. You find yourself watching with baited breath any time Aoki is called upon to do anything: it’s a similar defamiliarising effect to the one you get in an ippon light-tube deathmatch or a match with one-count rules, only funnier and less tense.
The funniest spot of all, and my nomination for funniest spot of the year so far, comes towards the end of a match, during a high speed-style exchange between HIMAWARI and Shoko. Shoko scores a two count off a roll-up and Aoki, dilligent to the last, makes sure to loudly and deliberately signal “TWO!” to the timekeeper and audience. While she’s doing this, however, HIMAWARI has managed to reverse Shoko’s roll-up into a pin of her own, racking up at least a visual five-count until Aoki clocks what’s going on. They repeat this enough times and with enough comic timing that I’m belly-laughing by the time the sequence is over. Max and Pom were an absolute delight together, but I have to go with my belly here.
Michelin Guide Star Rating: ☆
Mizuki vs. Nao Kakuta
15.04 / Korakuen Hall
Calling something a “breath of fresh air” doesn’t necessarily mean that you were sick of what came beforehand. Sometimes a single narrative thread is so compelling that it’s worth suspending other possibilities in order to tease it out more fully. This was Tokyo Joshi’s first major singles match main event since April 2021 not to feature either Yuka Sakazaki, Shoko Nakajima or Miyu Yamashita. I’ve been nothing if not effusive in my praise for the way that TJPW have built their Princess Road storyline at the top of the card since Miyu took the title from Rika Tatsumi a month after that April 2021 Korakuen show. But this match still floated in with all the newness of warm Spring breeze.
That Princess Road storyline - the one about Miyu, Yuka and Shoko pushing each other to increasingly ridiculous limits and pulling the rest of the company up with them - probably reached a conclusion at Ittenyon. The changing of the guard in the Grand Princess main event didn’t come after a match which went further than Miyu and Yuka did at Korakuen Hall in January, but instead took a sideways step and told a different, more morally complex kind of story. Tokyo Joshi ‘23 was the climax, and Grand Princess was the season finale. Mizuki’s first title defence was emblematic of a show which felt like the premiere of a new season, one where Rika Tatsumi appears to be launching a new trajectory as a reliable wrestler of semi-main event title match bangers and there’s enough new rookies on board to make the likes of Suzume and Arisu Endo into seniors by default. This match won’t earn as many MOTY nominations as Miyu and Yuka will for their match in this same spot three-and-a-half months ago, but I’m happy for that to be the case - happy to have slightly less intense wrestling which does new things for different characters.
To come to the match itself - this was a follow-up to the theme established at Korakuen Hall last May, when Magical Sugar Rabbits defended the tag titles against Free WiFi. Here’s what I said about that:
Outside of Hyper Misao matches, shenanigans are used so sparingly as a matter of course in TJPW that when Hikari cunningly trips Yuka head-first into an exposed turnbuckle ring and then immediately rolls her up, it works as a properly shocking, heart-in-mouth moment. Even within this match, Hikari and Nao aren’t cheating the whole time…but merely peppering in shortcuts where they know they can get away with them, and where they’ll create a big advantage. They’re wily and strategic about it, and they succeed in making both their opponents, but especially Yuka, lose their cool.
But then comes the reaction: MajiRabi are this season's indomitable champions, so the provocations don’t throw them off their game so much as make them even more determined to succeed. There’s something frightening about the way Yuka and Mizuki combine to dispatch their opponents in the end, Yuka first taking out Nao with a Magical Merry-Go-Round that drops her directly onto her face, and then Mizuki crushing Hikari with an almost-superhuman stalling Cutie Special. There’s a bitter, “fuck you” tone to the climax that I don’t recall seeing in any MajiRabi matches to date…and all it took to bring it out was a couple of deathmatch sickos seeing how far they could push their luck.
When Nao hurls Mizuki into several rows of chairs early on in the match, it looks like we’re about to watch a singles match re-dub of that tag title defence. But looking back, the differences between these two matches are arguably more notable than the similarities. Nao is more vulnerable here than she was when she had her partner by her side, less successful in rattling Mizuki psychologically. It’s a more desperate, striving kind of performance from Nao, still charismatic enough to justify her billing but almost babyface-adjacent at points, while still leaving plenty of space for bad tempered Big Boots to the face. Nao manages to execute her A-game too, hitting two backpack stunners, but Mizuki has been hovering around the throne for long enough that she wasn’t about to give up the crown at the first time of asking. She’s all business, winning via submission without needing to hit a Cutie Special or Whirling Candy. The first title defence for a first-time champion is always a significant test and Mizuki passed it here with flying colours, elevating her opponent to “proven main event” status in the process.
Hakuchumu (Rika Tatsumi & Miu Watanabe) vs. Daisy Monkey (Arisu Endo & Suzume)
22.04 / EDION Arena Osaka #2
There were some perfect moments in this. There was the moment where Suzume hit her weird side-creeping headscissor takedown on Miu to clear her out of the ring, and followed it up with a springboard splash to the outside which almost went wrong - Suzume connected with the top rope with her shin, not the soles of her feet. Suzume is at the crest of a wave and becoming smoother, quicker and generally more technically polished by the day, so it’s a pleasure to see that there’s still remnants of scrappiness in her game, of thinking fast to overcome limitations. There’s the way Suzume sells Miu’s backbreaker, and the way Suzume and Rika tease the finish from their 2022 Princess Cup match reminding everyone that Suzume has an arguable edge over the champion ahead of their upcoming International Princess title match, at least in terms of head-to-head. And then, best of all, is the moment Rika captures both Daisy Monkey teammate in a double chokehold, and Suzume wriggles free to hit a Ring-a-Bell while Rika is still on her knees. It all works excellently as a set-up for their singles match, but it’s spicy enough even without that context.
Magical Sugar Rabbits (Yuka Sakazaki & Mizuki) vs. Max the Impaler & Pom Harajuku
22.04 / EDION Arena Osaka #2
Here was a match that had fun with physics. If you were drawing each of these competitors you’d use a different scale for each of them: Mizuki is whispy and sylph-like, Pom is a Bambi on long, wobbly legs, Yuka is squat and sturdy like a Geodude, and Max dwarfs them all in every respect. Max - who has learned to respect the rules of tag team wrestling - mainly sees Pom as a potential projectile here, but we do also get the minor miracle of Pom using a headscissors to fling Max into a downed Magical Sugar Rabbit in the corner. Every hit Max makes looks like it has quadruple impact, and it was fascinating watching Yuka up her Terminator game to overcome this mountain of an opponent, even managing to (almost, not quite) hit a Magical Merry-Go Round on them down the stretch. A cartoonish visual feast to rival any NEO Biishii-gun match, carried off with all the polish of a latter-day TJPW main event.
WAVE
ASUKA, Risa Sera & Toru Sugiura vs. Rina Amikura, Tetsuhiro Kuroda & Yuki Miyazaki
12.03 / Korakuen Hall
I’m not about to make some blanket statement like “Japanese wrestling doesn’t have faces and heels”, but there was something that came up in Yappy’s State Of The Union Twitch stream last month that at least gave me a sense of why “booing the bad guys and cheering the good guys” isn't as big a feature in the Japanese wrestling I watch as it is in the British events I've attended live over the years. Yappy spoke of a structure of feeling around victimisation that, in her experience, makes workplace bullying both more likely and more devastating: in Japan, in any given conflict, and for whatever reason, people are just as likely to sympathise with the tormentor as with the victim.
Of course, this needn’t be thought of as some exotic trait - just look at the recent Yorkshire County Cricket Club scandal for an example of how a deep-seated sympathy with the oppressor can be found even in those places where “fair play” is sacrosanct. But a feeling for the underdog does at least permeate the stories we tell ourselves. Some of my best experiences of live wrestling have been reflections of this feel-good version of the social contract: Jetta was a laughing stock at the 2017 SHE-1 tournament, losing in record time to Meiko Satomura and Emi Sakura, but by 2018 her failures had turned her into the most beloved wrestler in the promotion, and her time limit draw against big bully Kasey was maybe the purest, most cathartic face-heel showdown I've seen in person.
All of which is to say that this match might have been slightly better if it had taken place in front of a crowd that was willing to commit to booing the villains and cheering the heroes. But only slightly. On the one side of this hardcore match, we have a rag-tag gang of lovable misfits - an FMW nostalgia act, a deathmatch ingenue, and Yuki Miyazaki. On the other side, we have a slicker, younger outfit that are clearly their superiors in every way - the pioneer of women's deathmatch wrestling in the 2010s, a current top guy in FREEDOMS, and an internationally-renowned prodigy. There shouldn't be any doubt over whose struggle you're supposed to get behind here.
In case there was any doubt though, Rina Amikura is here to bleed, to scream, to push herself to places she's never been before, so that you know. This is one of the more relatable pro wrestling performances I've seen that involves being busted open with a barbed wire-wrapped steel chair. Amikura spends a lot of the early going in deep emotional distress, but she manages to overcome it as the match progresses, and she ends up being a useful partner for her teammates. In a crucial turning point, she hits a Back Senton on a ladder which has both Sera and ASUKA under it, taking out ASUKA and allowing Miyazaki to retrieve the Shogi board she uses to set up the finish (not before being Brainbustered onto it herself, mind).
It's a brilliant performance. It's convincing, it's affecting, and it draws out a streak of all-too-human human fear and frailty that isn't always present in the way we talk about deathmatches, lest we dwell too long on what a horrible, brutish business this all is. Amikura walks a tightrope, painting a sympathetic picture of vulnerability and bravery while stopping just short of making things too uncomfortably real. If the crowd had actually got on her opponents’ backs this could have been a year-defining spectacle, but for one reason and another that's just not the kind of crowd we're dealing with here. Instead we'll have to settle for those loud, raucous “AAMIIN!” chants that greeted her comebacks, which are almost certainly the most over Rina has ever been.
Michelin Guide Star Rating: ☆