donsem43
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Everything posted by donsem43
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Hard to believe that this is the first singles title match that Io has had in five months. I found the way that these two worked this match to be really interesting. Bito's whole approach to the match was to use some really grinding matwork in order to slow Io down so that she could hit her strikes and big moves. In return, Io has to tries to maximize any opportunity that she has to pick up the pace. There were a couple of rough spots during the finish, notable the two of them trying to pull off the old 'rana counter to the Die Hard Kansai, but nothing that really hurt the match. Overall, this was the second straight awesome Korakuen main event for Bito and it's as great as any of Io's other matches from earlier in the year. ****1/4
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One thing you can always rely on Sendai Girls for are tag matches that have an interesting mix of big names. Chihiro was the stand out here, primarily with her outstanding selling. A lot of it is the result of both Meiko and Aja really taking it to Chihiro in this match. Ayako is solid here but her performance gets kinda lost with the other three. A pretty good match, which is what you would expect from the talent involved. ***3/4 -
I wish WAVE Network would post more OVER SUN matches because they few that they have posted have all been really good, if not great. Here they take on NEW-TRA who have been on a bit of a hot streak of their own lately. OVER SUN control the early going with their size and experience advantage but NEW-TRA eventually work their way back into the match with some nice counters and double-teams. The finish is some great back and forth, especially with Ohka dishing out some nasty big boots, including absolutely drilling Kadokura with one to get the win. Fantastic match. ****
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I always go back and forth on which joshi tag team is better, either Best Friends or Avid Rival. In this match, Avid Rival make a strong argument for themselves as they take what should have been a throw away mid-card tag match but turn it into something pretty damn good. Ayako has a quality performance here too and Haruhi put in a hard working effort similar to her title match with Mizunami back in March. Still, this is really all about Avid Rival and just another example how good of a team they are. ***3/4
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Natsu was awesome here. Her "perfect" dancing during the entrance, the camera hogging in the intros and during Hana's early match shtick. She's a great fit for Stardom, unabashedly what they are, "I like to show off for you Daddy." Fantastic stuff!
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Peak Nicopro here as the camera falls off the tripod during wrestler intros. This match is better than their title match from last year mainly due to the improvement of Chihiro has made. Cassandra has an awesome character but her control segments are boring and her overall ringwork is still clunky. Still Chihiro's performance carried this as she keeps getting better at adding drama to her to her big matches. A nice, solid, main event title match. ***1/2
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[2017-11-15-WAVE] Nagisa Nozaki vs Rina Yamashita
donsem43 replied to aguakun's topic in November 2017
Nozaki has been interesting to follow. She was really starting to get some momentum in SMASH before having to leave due to injuries and she has had a strong push since coming back to WAVE at their anniversary show. Nozaki looked very good here working a similar style to Hana Kimura. Yamashita tries to work her typical straight ahead power style but Nozaki smartly uses starts uses Yamashita's approach against her. The finish is a duel of sleeper holds till Nozaki steals pinfall by turning a sleeper attempt into a rollup. Nothing flashy, just good selling and smart work. ***3/4 -
FWIW, here are my current top 20 Joshi matches of the year. I'm still trying to catch up as I'm just starting November shows and some of the stuff from earlier in the year could use a rewatch. I'm hoping to be caught up by the time the big year end shows are up. Rina Yamashita vs. Misaki Ohata (WAVE 10/9) Ryo Mizunami vs. Hikaru Shida (WAVE 6/22) Io Shirai & Meiko Satomura vs. Mayu Iwatani & Chihiro Hashimoto (Stardom 3/9) Ryo Mizunami vs. Misaki Ohata (WAVE 2/11) Tsukasa Fujimoto & Arisa Nakajima vs. Hamuko Hoshi & Mochi Miyagi (Ice Ribbon 7/17) Nanae Takahashi vs. Arisa Nakajima (SEAdLINNNG 1/26) Io Shirai vs. Shayna Baszler (Stardom 2/23) Kairi Hojo & Yoko Bito vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto & Jungle Kyona (Stardom 3/5) Rina Yamashita vs. Chihiro Hashimoto (WAVE 6/22) Hiroyo Matsumoto vs. Kagetsu (OZ Academy 4/12) Arisa Nakajima & Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Misaki Ohata & Ryo Mizunami (SEAdLINNNG 8/24) Ryo Mizunami vs. Rina Yamashita (WAVE 7/2) Yoko Bito vs. Takumi Iroha (Stardom 10/17) Chihiro Hashimoto vs. Aja Kong (Sendai Girls 1/9) Yoko Bito vs. Io Shirai (Stardom 11/19) Hiroyo Matsumoto vs. Hikaru Shida (OZ Academy 8/20) Hikaru Shida & Syuri vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto & Kagetsu (OZ Academy 1/25) Ryo Mizunami vs. Moeka Haruhi (WAVE 3/5) Hiroyo Matsumoto vs. AKINO (OZ Academy 7/16) Tsukasa Fujimoto & Arisa Nakajima vs. Misaki Ohata & Ryo Mizunami (Ice Ribbon 8/27) Edit: Added Bito vs. Io from the 11/19 Stardom show.
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[2017-11-04-Stardom] Io Shirai & HZK vs AZM & Starlight Kid
donsem43 posted a topic in November 2017
Io and HZK have been the only team to consistently have watchable matches in this Stardom Tag League. Surprisingly though, this was their best match of the tournament against AZM and Kid. It's getting to be kinda of freaky to see how much better AZM is when she's in the ring with her QQ teammates as opposed to being in there by herself. Even Starlight Kid looked solid, not the typical young who is just going to do a bunch of flippy stuff in a sloppy manner. A very fun match. ***3/4 -
This was one heck of a performance from HZK. She wasn't afraid to get in, and stay in, the face of Kagetsu from the beginning. Kagetsu also has another strong performance as she is fantastic a putting over HZK beating plus having to get creative to fight back. She actually has to resort to cheating to finally win which succeed in making HZK look strong in defeat. Hopefully there are more matches like this to help establish HZK at the top of the card for Stardom. ****
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This match is Ice Ribbon's roster in a nutshell. Fujita is a solid but unremarkable vet who is good at keeping things together. Kurumi is a supremely talented youngster whose on the verge of taking the next step to being a main eventer. Both Maika and Nori are both clearly talented youngsters who just need a few years to develop into more polished workers. The match was really well done from start to finish, especially the finishing run between Maika and Nori. That was a pleasant surprise because I thought that the match would go off the rails at that point but it actually got better. A great snapshot of what Ice Ribbon is now and especially what it could be in the future. ****
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This match came about after Oedo Tai win over Queen's Quest at the last Stardom Korakuen Hall show and is the main event of Kagetsu's self-produced show. This really felt like a touring champion taking on the local star type match. Io controls most of the match by working over Kagetsu's neck, forcing Kagetsu to go all in with big moves in order to stay in the match. They do a great job of ramping things up during the stretch run to provide an exciting finish. Easily Io's best match since her return in August. ****
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Pro Wrestling EVE has posted the second show of their SHE-1 tournament for a limited time.
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This is Sareee's last match as a member of the SEAdLINNNG roster. You can tell how much she meant to the promotion by the fact that she comes out to no fanfare and jobs to a simple lariat from Yoshiko. Otherwise, this is a super fun joshi trios match. They keep up the pace of the match up the whole way with some nice double/triple teams included. The sequences between Sareee/Kobayashi and Mizunami/Yamashita were particularly impressive. ***3/4
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I'm starting to really enjoy La Rosa Negra. She was always improving during her runs in Stardom and consistently shows a lot of personality in the ring. Here, she's certainly capable of keeping up with Arisa in a long match. The match does get a bit flat at the finish because Rosa doesn't really get any good nearfalls so you have don't have any real belief that she is going to win in the end. This is still a good showing though and it's nice to see Arisa get to work a singles match again after spending the summer working tags. ***1/2
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Iroha has the outsider look down with her big Marvelous banner and her WAVE tag title belt. The weakest part of the match was the start where they made it a little too obvious that they were going to go the full thirty minutes. While the body part work in the early going was well done, it didn't really play a part in the match in the later going either. Still, as a whole match, I thought that this match had a better layout and pace than the Io Shirai/Toni Storm match from earlier in the year. Particularly the finishing stretch as they made it seem as though either was ripe to be finish off but question was could either one muster together enough strength to put the other away. While the match has a couple of nagging flaws the performances from each woman was enough to lift this match up to being one of the better ones this year. ****1/4
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Hey, remember when Stardom use to have really good tag/trios matches on their house shows. This was a flashback to more enjoyable times with this match. QQ cut off the ring on Kyona and do a good job with working her over. The best part of this match is how Kyona never really spends enough time out of the match to truly recover from the beating she took early on. She's able to hang in there for most of the match but QQ keep knocking Bito out of the picture eventually hitting a Bombs Away/Moonsault combo for the win. ***3/4
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This is the third match that this two have had this year. They split their two matches earlier this year in the Catch the WAVE tournament with Yamashita winning in the final over Ohata and subsequently taking the Regina di WAVE title from Ryo Mizunami, Ohata's tag partner in Avid Rival. The match starts out as a matchup of power versus technique. Ohata gets some early success by trapping Yamashita's right arm in various submissions which limits Yamashita's main offensive weapon. This force Yamashita to be more careful with how she uses her arm. She adjusts how she applies her sleeper by turning so that more of her body weight is on Ohata and she's more selective as to when she uses her lariats. Ohata does control a fair bit of match by having a lot of smart counters to Yamashita's attacks but in turn Yamashita always has the trump card of being able to hit the smaller Ohata really hard. Towards the finish though, Ohata starts to build to much momentum and hits too many of her big moves allowing her to put away Yamashita. Just an amazing match that managed to use simple story telling in an incredibly effective result. Easily the joshi match of the year, maybe even the last couple of decades. ****3/4
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Nice to see the Beginning Pro girls make tape since that doesn't happen very often these days. The both of them put in very plucky performance against the veteran team of Bolshoi and Leon. While they lack the experience and offensive fire power that their opponents have, both Anou and Maki do a terrific job of looking competitive. A high quality veteran/youngster tag title match that shouldn't be skipped. ****
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More NEW-TRA? Oh yeah! Bonus points here for the reuniting of Yamashita and Kobayashi, who had a fun youngster team in late '15/early '16. Kadokura looked great here again and should seriously get talked about more as one of the top youngsters in joshi. The real highlight here is the matchup of Yamashita and Iroha. The two of them show fantastic chemistry here and it's a shame that Yamashita loses the Regina di WAVE title in just a few days as a title match between the two of them could be something really special. As for this match, it goes a little too short to be great, as it feels like the match ends just as it's start to ramp up. Still worth checking out though. ***3/4
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Just finished watching Rina Yamashita vs. Misaki Ohata from WAVE's 10/9 show. This match isn't just the best match joshi match from this year, or the last few years, it's one of the best in post-peak AJW ('97 pre-exodus) era. I know WAVE Network is a terrible value for a wrestling streaming service but it's a real shame that people are missing out on the great year that Yamashita, Ohata, and Ryo Mizunami are having. All three should be in the discussion with Hiroyo Matsumoto for being joshi wrestler of the year.
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NEW-TRA showing up in Stardom is a much needed breath of fresh air, too bad they are not around for very long. Iroha looks awesome here, especially in the way she carries herself as she comes off as a big star from another company. Both Tora and Kadokura looked really good here. The big difference between the two of them is that Kadokura has more viable offense, so you can buy that she could possibly end a match on her own. A very good match between two teams of young talent in joshi. ***3/4
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This is for Bito's newly won Wonder of Stardom title. The match is also in the same building that Kyona won the tag titles earlier in the year with Hiroyo Matsumoto, so there's intrigue as to whether she can win her first singles' title here. Kyona controls the early going with her power but Bito manages to stay in the match with her kicks. With a longer build to the finish, this match might have been up there with Kyona's run of title matches from earlier in the year. Even so, this match ended up being the lone bright spot in a pair of really awful shows for Stardom. ***3/4
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[2017-09-24-Sendai Girls] Chihiro Hashimoto vs Meiko Satomura
donsem43 replied to aguakun's topic in September 2017
This was one hell of a performance from Chihiro. She looked like a true champ here, keep her composure while Meiko was actively trying to show her up. The build to the super, nasty powerbomb on the floor was absolutely fantastic. Unfortunately, Satomura's selling got really spotty after that which took away a lot of the effect that the big moments of this match should have had. While those moments didn't kill the match for me it definitely kept this match from being a top joshi MOTYC that some have touted it as. ***1/2 -
This match looked like something that would be on Mid South/UWF TV in the mid-80's. Just two big wrestlers going right at each other in a hard, physical way. In her pre-match promo, Bito said that she had to avoid being crushed but unfortunately that's exactly what happens with Viper topping things off with a flip dive off the apron. Bito manages to survive though but she has to swing for the fences if she has any hope of winning. A nice book end to a solid tournament for Viper and a surprisingly strong one for Bito. ***3/4