Sareee Produce Sareee-ISM (16/5/23) Review
Sareee's Back!
Front Matter
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She’s back! After over two years in the wilderness, Sareee returned to Japan with Sareee-ISM, ready to reintroduce the world to her violent brand of wrestling. Her first opponent? Chihiro Hashimoto. That’s how you stage a comeback!
Rico Kaiju and Yurika Oka fought to a time-limit draw
We kicked off with a battle between two of the scene’s more talented youngsters. This was the sixth singles match between Oka and Kaiju, with Oka winning four of those previous meetings to Kaiju’s one, so these two are no strangers to each other. However, it had been a good seven months since they’d last wrestled, which at this stage in their careers is a decent chunk of time, so it’s always nice to check in on how they’re doing.
I think this match can almost be split into two, and sadly, the first part was disappointing. It felt like Oka and Rico never quite figured out what they were going for. While there were flurries of good action, it struggled to be more than that, as it all felt a tad directionless. Stuff like the grappling, while technically solid, never seemed to have a purpose and played into that feeling of disconnect. I don’t know if they let the time limit get in their heads, but there was a lot of stuff here that felt designed to fill the minutes rather than push towards a conclusion.
Thankfully, the second part went someway towards making up for that, as the home stretch exploded into a frantic rookie sprint. It’s nothing we haven’t seen before, but as mentioned, these two are incredibly talented, and watching them fire into each other with dropkicks was a lot of fun. Plus, there were a couple of golden moments hidden in that youthful enthusiasm, like Oka responding to Beast Kid blocking a suplex by simply switching to a DDT or Kaiju coming off the ropes with a beautiful springboard dropkick. It was proof that these two can get on the same page, and while I didn’t love the bulk of this match, they’re both young and talented enough that there is a decent chance the next one will win my heart.
Verdict: They’ll Have Much Better Showings
Arisa Nakajima & Akari defeated Miyuki Takase & Ibuki Hoshi
A second on-the-card tag between four people from different companies would typically be a chance for wrestlers to go out and have a bit of a jam session. I’m not suggesting they’d goof off, but when you throw some random people together, there has to be a degree of playing things by ear, so they’re much more likely to go out and have some fun. That is unless you put Arisa Nakajima in the match.
Arisa’s first act upon tagging in was to boot Ibuki in the head, and it only really got more violent from there. It’s not like everyone else involved was going light, but whenever Arisa took the floor, she was determined to leave a literal mark on everyone she came across. That was particularly true when she paired up with Hoshi. Perhaps it’s the young Ice Ribbon wrestler’s growing reputation as a hard-hitter (those heavy chops have left marks on a few people’s chests), but Nakajima seemed determined to put her in her place. Although to give the younger Hoshi her credit, she dared to stand up to the devil. It obviously ended badly for her, but she ate those blows and came back for more, even daring to slap Nakajima across the face. Rather her than me.
It all served to elevate what was already set up to be a good tag match. You’re rarely going to get anything below excellent when Takase is involved, and I suspect I’ve been somewhat sleeping on Akari (and, let’s face it, the rest of Pure-J), who more than held her own in there with some of the best. It meant I came in expecting a jam session and was treated to something even better, which has to go down as a good job all-round.
Verdict: Arisa Is Being Violent Again
Jaguar Yakota & Nanae Takahashi defeated Kaoru Ito & Sareee Hirota
We’re at the point where if you’re having an anniversary/return/memorial and Sakura Hirota doesn’t turn up cosplaying as you, then you’ve probably done something wrong. She pre-empted Sareee’s return by coming out dressed as the Sun God and then learnt what happens when you pretend to be a wrestler known for hitting hard. There was a point where Nanae was stamping on her head where poor Hirota looked like she was regretting her life choices.
But as enjoyable as all that was, it was not the highlight of this match. It’s safe to say Ito left most of the heavy lifting to ‘Sareee’, spending a lot of the action on the apron, but when it came for her to get involved, she threw herself into proceedings. As she’s repeatedly proven in Marvelous, when you play to Ito’s strength, she can still fucking go, and her interactions with both Nanae and Jag slapped. In short bursts, she’s light enough on her feet to bash into people with the best of them. It made for some genuinely thrilling wrestling and a reminder that while time will beat you up, it can’t take away everything you’ve learnt.
Ultimately, this was the jam session I was expecting from the last match, but I have zero complaints about that. These four have more talent in their little fingers than most wrestlers do in their entire bodies, and watching them bounce off each other (both literally and figuratively) is always going to be a joy. A classic? Probably not. A load of fun? Definitely.
Verdict: I Had A Lovely Time
Chihiro Hashimoto defeated Sareee
There was a moment in this match where Sareee came off the top rope with a double stomp, violently crashing onto Hashimoto before sitting back with a giant grin. That’s her wrestling. It’s the wrestling she hoped to bring to WWE, but which was never going to thrive in that environment, so she is now taking it home, ready to stomp her way through all and sundry. It’s been two years and four months since we last saw it, and damn, it’s good to have it back.
She didn’t pick the easy route back either, as she tried to unleash that violence on the brick wall that is Big Hash. These two are a perfect pairing, as while they both hit hard, they do it in different ways. Sareee is explosive, looking to create distance and come flying in, while Hashimoto is pure power, able to drag you to the mat and squeeze the life out of you. They both dabble in the other’s world, but if Sareee was going to win, she needed to find a way to get away from Hashimoto’s grasping arms and beat her down.
And there were flaws. One of the ways that Sareee tried to take Hash out was to go after the arm, and the damage she dished out never quite paid off in the rest of the action. There was one particular moment where Hashimoto grabbed onto the ropes to block a Sunset Flip Bomb out of the corner that pulled me out of the moment, as my initial assumption that her arm would be far too beat up for that counter to work didn’t come to pass. However, minutes later, they started dumping each other on the head with suplexes, and that stuff became easy to forgive. There is a time for pulling things apart and seeing how they fit together, and then there is a time for jumping up and down and cheering the violence. Sareee vs Big Hash was very much the latter.
Plus, this was essentially a tune-up match. The last time Sareee wrestled for over ten minutes was in August of 2021, and that was the only time (according to Cagematch) she did that in WWE. She doesn’t look like someone who has been out of the game, but she basically has been, and you got the sense here that Big Hash was simply more prepared to engage in a twenty-minute war, making her victory somewhat inevitable. When you keep that in mind, the occasional niggly mistake is easy to forgive, and on the whole, this was a triumphant return. I can’t wait to see what she does next.
Verdict: Welcome Back!
Overall Show
Well, that was great. Even with an opener that didn’t click, Sareee returned to Japan with an impressive show capped off by her delivering big in her first match back. I’ve no idea what her plan is now, but I am excited to see where she fits into the current scene, and judging by this, whatever she’s doing, it will rule.