Flupke's Month in Wrestling: August 2022 (Part Two)
SEAdLINNNG - STARDOM - Tokyo Joshi Pro - WAVE
Front Matter
You can see the original source for each image used in this newsletter by clicking through. 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: @oystersearrings) 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 @oystersearrings です)。ありがとうございます！
Subscribe for free to receive Flupke’s Month in Wrestling every month in 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.
← Click here for part one
SEAdLINNNG
Mei Suruga vs. Kakeru Sekiguchi
17.08 / Korakuen Hall
High Speed matches, done right, are not just normal matches sped up. Even without the special rules about pinfalls, they have quite a lot in common with gimmick matches like one-count fall matches, or DDT’s legendary Ippon Lighttube innovation. Fundamentally, they’re more compelling than your average match, because Taiyo’s presence as referee gives wrestler’s license to work the match in a way that doesn’t let you take your eyes off it for a single second. What The Hundred wants to be for cricket, that’s what High Speed matches already are for pro wrestling.
Which makes Mei, what, Will Jacks? Experts in this style - which is a fighting style, like how pro wrestling might present “shoot style”, as much as it is a match gimmick - have come and gone down the years. Tsukushi is retired, Kaho is all bulked up, Mei Hoshizuki is still MIA, Mio has lost over two years to injury, and the Marvelous/SEAdLINNNG connection seems severed now anyway. Suruga seems a good candidate to become the figurehead of this division, not just because she’s an archetypal speedy goblin, but also because of the pride she seems to take in being able to take this fighting style to her opponents.
Make no mistake, Kakeru can go, but they were careful to tell a story here that had Kakeru as the slower, more methodical wrestler, more and more intent as the thing wore on of working a “normal” match, while Mei literally ran rings around her. There was a little of this structure to Mei’s High-Speed title match against AZM back in April, too - as there, Kakeru’s decision to take Mei down into an Armbar more than halfway through the match marked the first real moment where we as viewers were allowed to slow down and take stock. Kakeru’s job here is to act as the foil, trying to stop Mei in her tracks, providing reactions when she goes full-steam ahead, and she does a very good job of it.
Mei has basically excelled at every kind of wrestling she’s turned her hand to - I fondly remember those early mini-technical-masterclasses against Ancham and Masa Takanashi at Ichigaya - but she’s getting really, really good at this, stringing together holds and ropework and skullduggery with an ease and intensity that looks genuinely effective from an in-ring standpoint. And despite Kakeru’s best efforts at taking Mei out of her comfort zone, Mei still ends up winning her way - that’s to say, with a boggarty jumping Full Nelson takedown into a “cute on purpose” pin. Put Mei up against Asuka or Makoto, who had the match after this one, or Ryo Mizunami or Hanako Nakamori, who were on before her, and she’s still probably not enough an all-rounder to get the job done. But all that really shows is how wedded Mei is to perfecting an image of a particular, quite eccentric fringe style of wrestling, and it just so happens that I believe that style of wrestling to be one of the greatest on Earth.
Meanwhile…Having written about Misa Kagura as a potential new rookie fav a year or so back, I haven’t really seen enough of her to be able to say who she is yet (I’m going to be perfectly honest here, I’m still not sure I get KISSmeT Princess, although their segment with Ram Kaicho and Sumika Yanagawa at Korakuen Hall last month at least created some intrigue). But here she teamed with the aformentioned Hanako Nakamori against Chie Ozora and the aformentioned Ryo Mizunami, and, as Miu Watanabe learned at Ota Ward this summer, a match with Mizunami will show you who you are. Facing her across the ring, you have no choice but to at least try to match her energy and volume, and she’ll throw you around and beat you up a lot, so you have to prove your resilience too. Misa did a solid job with all those things here, at least enough to repay SEAdLINNNG's promotion of her as a likeable underdog babyface/sacrificial lamb.
STARDOM
MIRAI vs. Suzu Suzuki
11.08 / Korakuen Hall
Round two, seconds out, ding ding ding! Since their match at the beginning of July, Suzu has won Catch the WAVE and (briefly) held the Regina di WAVE title, while MIRAI's crowd reactions seem to have gotten even louder. On a mid-5 Star Grand Prix show where nearly every major talent in the company wrestled a tournament match, MIRAI was given the main event slot - a clear sign that the company consider this a significant feud, and MIRAI a defender of company honour. Spiritually not that different from what Suzu’s achieved in the previous four weeks, in other words.
As at New Blood 3, this starts out looking like another match where two generational talents will test each other and where we’ll be lucky if we get any definitive anwers - but then the dam bursts, because MIRAI finds she has something to work with that she didn’t last time. Suzu was reported to have suffered a shoulder injury after the Catch the WAVE final, and the way MIRAI zeroes in on on that weakness here with time running out is brilliantly done. Once again, Suzu has come out looking ultra-confident - this is how she’s going to overcome the fact that this large Korakuen crowd is not on her side, she seems to do as much clap-clap-clapping as Mirai herself. Once again, there’s an exchange of headbutts, and a sense of Suzu poking the bear - maybe unwisely, but she can’t help herself. Again, we’re presented with a pretty clear and effective hero-villain dynamic - but then MIRAI out-villains Suzu, landing a headbutt to that damaged shoulder, and we see the first real breakthrough in this rivalry.
Suzu instantly finds herself in a desperate situation, and starts spamming finishers in an attempt to finish the job quickly, but MIRAI knows what she’s doing. Whatever move Suzu hits, and however she positions herself in the follow-up pin attempt, MIRAI is able to find the injured arm and grab hold of it, and to use the momentum of her kickout to twist Suzu's body into the Miramare. It’s effective strategy and brilliant storytelling- in my review of the last match I confidently stated that while MIRAI may have the physical advantage, Suzu had the psychological edge, but here MIRAI has the brains and the mentality to spot this momentary chink in Suzu's armour and to exploit it ruthlessly. First fall to MIRAI, then, but this is far from over. For one thing, Suzu never actually tapped out - referee Barb calls the match after a quick-fire consulation with the ringside doctor and Hiragi Kurumi, who’s here as Suzu’s second. But even if that weren’t the case, you’d still feel Suzu would insist on her right to reply, and I can’t wait to see how she fires back.
In other 5 Star Grand Prix news…The same record-breaking Korakuen crowd that saw MIRAI defeat Suzu in the main event were also treated to thrillers between Tam Nakano and AZM, and Natsupoi and Hazuki. There was also an all-Oedo Tai clash between Momo Watanabe and Starlight Kid which, whether intentionally or unintentionally, told a very satisfying story about supposed villain Kid getting called on her bullshit. While Kid enlisted the services of Ruaka for a bit of gentle skullduggery against her unit-mate, Momo secured the full support of Oedo Tai’s injured leader Natsuko Tora, who helped Momo to set up the loaded kickpad spot that ultimately won her the match. Take that you faker!
Suzu returned for her second match of the tournament at Osaka Prefectural Gymnasium on the 20th, in a losing effort against Hazuki. This match was really all about Hazuki, and she seems to be riding a wave of momentum right now which should by rights take her all the way to the tournament final, at least. Suzu is a strong contender in STARDOM canon, and MIRAI’s win came because she was able to cleverly exploit a very visible and very unfortunate weakness. Here though, Hazuki just looked on another level - so fast, so explosive, so strong, and so damaging with her kicks. Every title match she had during her second run was a blast, but she was forever being pipped to singles glory by peers. I’m all in on this being her year at last…
…The face/heel vibes underpinning Suzu's clashes with MIRAI were there in purer, more crystalline form in Risa Sera's clash with Momo Kohgo, which was a surprising highlight of this Osaka show. Kohgo has gotten better than I imagined she would during the time I’ve not been watching her, and there was one spot in particular here - a sort of 619-type wraparound kick delivered to Sera's leg as she tried to climb to the top turnbuckle - that reminded me of some of Rika Tatsumi's more dazzling offence. The relative power dynamics meant that Sera could really lean into being a bully here, and she did it expertly, at one point hurling Kohgo into a row of chairs with arguably the nastiest Giant Swing she’s ever executed. The sympathy generated for Kohgo off the back of this properly extreme spot was off the charts, and her fightback felt like lightning in a bottle. Great work all round…
…The semi-main saw Saki Kashima pick up a surprise-not-surprise tournament win over Syuri, in what was probably the most drawn-out of all her big upset scalpings. There was a weird structure to this one, because Saki (probably wisely) offered almost no attempts to try and go toe-to-toe with the Red Belt champ, choosing instead to just hit quick bursts of smash-and-grab offence whenever the opportunity presented itself. This asymmetrical strategy made the sections where Syuri was on top curiously anemic - there’s only so interested you can be in watching an Ace beat down a lower-level talent who isn’t fighting back - but there was a good amount of drama to those rare moments where Saki did strike. Her desperation after the first failed Revival attempt made it look though she’d all played her cards and had nothing left in reserve, but in the end she was able to stick it out and raise her game, reversing Syuri’s reversal into a kind of Super-Revival for a pinfall that wasn’t exactly a surprise, but was no less sweet for that.
Tokyo Joshi Pro
Raku vs. Hyper Misao
28.08 / Korakuen Hall
The third Tokyo Joshi all-female audience show, the first to take place at a venue the size of Korakuen Hall, reminded me unexpectedly of the Pool Wrestling match which aired at the end of February, and about which I had this to say:
Another profoundly enjoyable thing about this whole spectacle was the way it toggled between laying down a slightly non-canon reading of the assembled characters (Raku, it turns out, is capable of simultaneously subduing up to nine opponents with a single lullaby) and presenting intensified versions of character traits we already know and love. Maybe the best example of the latter came in what was probably my personal highlight of the match, when Misao dragged Sayuri Namba over to the waterslide at gunpoint, and Rika fought her off, only to then recklessly hurl Namba down the slide herself. I like seeing Rika in serious matches, but this wild, sadistic streak is a side to her persona that she’s cultivated and which just feels electrifyingly right for her as a performer, and she’s often given freer reign to draw it out in lighter-hearted matches. Likewise for Hikari being the first person in the match to use an actual wrestling move when she layed out Rika with a thrust kick - that’s so Hikari, but it stood out here a million times more than it would have done in a match where thrust kicks were expected and normal.
In a certain sense, a show designed to inspire and boost the female fanbase, and a show where wrestlers gad about in swimming costumes getting all wet could hardly be further apart. But the two shows were united by this sense that we’re in a slight parallel universe here, even if it’s one that ends up reaffirming everything we know and love about the chracters in question anyway.
Everyone on this show, from the bright, breezy opener to the blockbuster six-person tag main event, were aware that they were playing to a substantial number of fresh faces here. For a Korakuen show, this card was light on matches that advance major storylines in any significant way - there were no titles matches, and while the main event did see Wrestle Princess III headliners Shoko Nakajima and Yuka Sakazaki facing off, it also worked perfectly well in isolation. It was really only the semi-main between Yuki Kamifuku and Yuki Arai, which laid down some pretty intriguing stakes for Reiwa no AA Cannon’s upcoming tag title defence against Kamifuku and Mahiro Kiryu, that would constitute an “essential watch”, if by “essential” all you mean is that you’d have a poorer read on current storylines without it. Really, though, this whole show was essential, because it was match after match of the Tokyo Joshi roster trying their best to show potential new fans who they are, and why they should stick around.
The thing with showing new fans who you are is that it can have results you didn’t quite anticipate, and that was never truer than here, where Misao got maybe her biggest babyface crowd response ever, at least outside of her matches with Jun Kasai and Sanshiro Takagi. The flip-side of this is that Raku looked truly villainous for the first time in her career, not in a Starlight Kid-esque evil laughter sort of way, but in a Rika Tatsumi-esque “oh my god this cute smiling girl is actually a psychopath” sort of way.
Misao came prepared for Raku’s lullaby tactics, bringing her alarm clock from home and chugging one-a-day caffeine supplements by the bottle. Raku sang her to sleep anyway, and then put clips on Misao’s ears and ripped them off, as if she had every intention of tearing flesh, and then brained her with the clock. From there, the match became a story of Misao fighting back from underneath. She sprays Raku in the eyes with the cold spray, of course, but then she has to use it on herself, to wake her senses back up and to dull the pain of Raku’s earlier ear-work. She’s fully sympathetic, and when she wins it’s to adulation from the crowd. On first impressions, the crowd don’t necessarily know about Raku’s place in the pecking order, but they do know that there’s a ruthless monster lurking underneath that sunny exterior, and Misao is their hero. After the pool wrestling show I was surprised to find myself comparing Raku to New Jack; here, in news that adds up but is no less surprising, she had her Aja Kong moment.
WAVE
Suzu Suzuki vs. Miyuki Takase
17.07 / Korakuen Hall
It took this match to make me realise that these two are actually quite similar wrestlers. They’re both charisma monsters who aren’t necessarily must-watch because they have great matches, but whose energy in all the areas that aren’t strictly technical - character work, crowd work, expressing themselves and showing the crowd a good time - makes their matches great. There’s also not that much to choose between them in terms of where they are in their careers - Takase debuted a couple of years prior to Suzu but took a while to really warm up, and won her first singles title only half a year before Suzu won her first singles title; the last really memorable time they were on the same card together prior to this tournament was at the excellent AWG x Ice Ribbon collab show in late 2020, where both were successful in defending their titles against challengers from the rival promotion.
Takase won this competition last year, of course, but Suzu has that intangible set of advantages that come from following the punishing, trailblazing path she’s followed. And this match does play out as a genuine tussle of equals, with Takase showing greater tactical nous early on (targeting Suzu’s back, which will later pay dividends when Suzu can’t bridge off a German Suplex) but losing some of that composure later on when Suzu starts asserting dominance. Over on his excellent round-up blog, Stuart has already pointed out that this match told the story of Suzu’s resilience, developed over the course of last year’s deathmatch trial series. Takase’s power offence is destructive, but here it’s less decisive than it might have been against an opponent that hadn’t been jumping off ladders and falling into thumbtacks for the past year. Frustration creeps into Takase’s game, and Suzu is canny enough to take advantage.
I failed to keep up with the tournament this year, but this felt like a really competitive, high-level, high-stakes final, that moves the Regina belt closer to the heat centre of the wrestling landscape than it has been in quite a while - arguably even more so now that it’s clear Suzu’s was a transitional reign, a way of getting the belt off an injured Nagisa Nozaki and onto international superstar Hikaru Shida. The reign this title decider kicked off had no real impact, but with or without that legacy this match still feels like an important landmark for 2022, one I had fears wouldn’t quite live up to the billing, especially since the brief tag team pairing of Suzu and Takase at Golden Week 2019 was one of the best things I’ve ever seen in my life. In a pinch, GAMI trusted these two to headline WAVE’s biggest show of the year, and if it wasn’t already abundantly clear what we’re dealing with, Suzu and Takase are both serious, mature main event wrestlers now, and fully capable of living up to their hype.