donsem43

Utami vs. Syuri from the Stardom Cinderella show is the modern Devil vs. Chigusa.

Isn't part of the reason for a lack of footage is that there was a ban on women's wrestling in Mexico City that didn't end till the mid-80's? Personally, my favourite is the WWWA/UWA unification match on 9/17/84. This version does have hilariously bad (and subtly racist) English commentary but it is less clipped than the version from the last run of AJW Classics. The only real underwhelming match they had was the hair/mask match.

Way hyped up for the GAEAism show happening on 6/13! It has been built entirely around an interpromotional angle between Sendai Girls and Marvelous and has a very 90's feel to it as you feel like there is actual hate between the two groups. The line up doesn't have anything that jumps out as a potential MOTY but the booking has been so good in the build up that you want to watch the show just to see where everything goes, which is something that is becoming exceedingly rare in modern wrestling. I really encourage everybody to go check out the highlight videos on Sendai Girls' and Marvelous' YouTube channels to catchup on the build to the show.

This is for the WWWD tag titles with the 2AW team of 3A (Sasamura & Shingaki) challenging the champs Luminous. Outside of Best Friends matches, tag wrestling in joshi has been fairly lackluster the last couple of years but this felt like a much needed bright spot. Both Takase and Sasamura were terrific, as you would expect, but both of their junior partners hold up their ends at least. Shingaki, especially, looked good here with her arm work on both opponents. It's nice to see at least some Diana shows start to pop up because you get to see hidden gems like this. ****¼

This was just tremendous! The match worked off the build as it truly felt like a "put up or shut up" moment for Ito. In the end, she came off as someone who is believably tough as opposed to being a gimmicky meme wrestler. Yamashita put in a career best performance here, which was great to see as she had pretty much been coasting for the last while. Would say that this is the best match in TJPW history. ****¼

This was my kind of match. Really enjoyed how it mostly built out of Maika's early arm work and Utami going after the back. You could conceivably say that Maika lost because she stopped going after Utami's arm. They also mostly avoid falling into the typical Japanese main event troupes which was a bit refreshing. ****¼

Kinda weird seeing Satomura go up against a big power wrestler who as happens to be a peer. This gets off to a hot start with them both getting right into each others faces but Meiko gets too aggressive allowing Genki to catch her and press slam her to the floor with no one there to catch her. Most of this match has neither of them not giving the other much room to breathe, if one of them does back off even a little bit she ends up paying for it. The finishing run is a bit more standard than the rest of the match although the actual finish is great with Satomura knocking Genki down to one knee allowing Meiko to hit a sudden Scorpion Rising for the win. I wish these two had a rematch that was the main event of a big show because that could have been something special but this is still a great slugfest on its own. ****

This is the final of a tournament to crown the first ever Actwres girl'Z tag champions that has been ran on various shows the previous few months. SPiCEAP (Honma & Ozaki) have teamed semi-regularly for the last few years and seem to get better each time out with this match here being a true top tier performance. Sekiguchi and Aono do quite a job holding up their end, neither of them is a real standout but they have manage to form a quality team together. Overall, just a flat out tremendous tag match from a promotion that most likely flies under a lot of people's radar. ****1/4

Yoshiko Tamura I was going to nominate her for the last list but there were a few YouTube channels that had quite a few matches of her were all deleted and that nuked my motivation. There's a bit more of her out there now but not a lot so hopefully more stuff pops up over the next few years, especially early '00 NEO. Early in her career, she felt like a square peg trying to fit into a round hole while in AJW as she was a more methodical, mat-based wrestler than the typical worker in that company. Things picked up for her in the rebooted NEO, where she was someone who was influenced by the AJ Classics that were airing at the time as she took the 70's NWA style that was used in AJPW but modernized the moveset and picked up the pace. She also faced pretty much everyone who was any sort of name in the 00's which should be enough for anyone to make up his/her mind about her. vs. Toshie Uematsu - 7/19/97 vs. Azumi Hyuga - 12/24/06 vs. Ayumi Kurihara - 12/31/10

Takase's title matches with Kakeru Sekiguchi on 10/18 and Andras Miyagi on 11/1 of last year are well worth the time.

I forget how to embed things on here so here's the link.

vs. Kana - 8/18/13 & 12/15/13 vs. Kyoko Kimura - 4/20/14 & 10/9/16 vs. Hikaru Shida - 7/11/15 w/ Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Misaki Ohata & Ryo Mizunami - 12/31/15 w/ Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Nanae Takahashi & Yoshiko - 7/24/16 vs. Yoshiko - 10/16/16 vs. Nanae Takahashi - 1/26/17 w/ Tsukasa Fujimoto vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto & Misaki Ohata - 2/9/18 vs. Misaki Ohata - 2/12/18 vs. Mei Hoshizuki - 5/12/19 vs. Ayame Sasamura - 10/6/19

More people need to check out Actwres girl'Z. It has turned into a pretty good little promotion that has a surprisingly deep roster by joshi standards. Both Miyuki Takase and Tae Honma are both top tier workers in joshi right now. Hikari Shimizu is a hidden gem of a worker in an era where that shouldn't exist because I didn't read anything about her until I started watching full cards where she stood out immediately. The rest of the roster is either very solid all around workers or rough ones who still show some upside potential. While she's far from the most spectacular worker, SAKI does a good job playing the vet. If you want to give them a shot, I recommend the 2/11 and 4/4 shows. The main to the 2/11 show is the finals of the tournament to crown their first tag champs and also might be my joshi MOTY at this point. The top 3 matches on the 4/4 show are all hovering around great but I thought the whole show was more enjoyable than the Stardom Yokohama show the same day.

This is the semi-final for a tournament that started out as a way to determine the #1 contender but ended up being for the vacant Actwres girl'Z title. These two truly go for broke here as they full on lay into each other with their strikes. After Honma figures out that she can't keep up with Takase on strikes, she decides to go after Takase's arm in an attempt to try to neutralize her. This works to a limited degree as even though Takase still manages to drill Honma a few times, each one doesn't hurt Honma as much as it should and Takase needs to take a few seconds to recover thus can't effectively follow up. Takase though smartly makes an adjustment herself and ends up catching Honma with a head-scissors style triangle hold to get the win. This was absolutely tremendous match that was worked as an all out war. ****1/2

Fyi, if you have Amazon Prime you can use that to sign up for Twitch Prime. Doing that gives you a free subscription to use on any channel, so if you use it on AAA you get the shows ad-free plus have access to their archives for 30 days. You have to manually renew it after that time.

There is a fear of raiding of the roster of other companies, especially after the incident where Giulia (one of Ice Ribbon's heavily pushed young stars) tried to jump to Stardom by quitting via text then showing up to Stardom's show on Monday. Personally, I don't see them going after companies with older rosters like OZ Academy, WAVE, DIANA, and obviously SEAdLINNNG. Gatoh Move and Marvelous are at risk with the young talent that they have but I don't know how much those companies want to grow. The ones that really have to worry are Ice Ribbon, Tokyo Joshi, and Actwres girl'Z. Those companies have a fair number of young talents and seemingly have a desire to grow. Honestly though, WWE is a bigger risk to raiding rosters. Especially now with the Observer apparently reporting that not only is Meiko Satomura a WWE employee but that she has been one for months. With the level of connections and respect that Satomura has it's going to be hard for an established talent to turn away WWE if they pursue her. Also, if Riho continues her early success I'm sure AEW will be looking for more joshi talent as well. There always seems to be rumours of Kenny Omega and Michael Nakazawa hanging out at various joshi shows.

First impression is that this is Bushiroad's way of getting into the J-Pop Idol business.

This is a pretty well done southern-style tag worked by a bunch of joshi wrestlers. It helps that NEO Biishiki-Gun, despite looking like anime villains, are not interested in being cutesy and meme-friendly but rather just want to beat and humiliate their opponents. The match isn't the smoothest, mostly because Misao is still working out her moveset as a heel, but the story stays consistent and the intensity level stays strong throughout. A high quality tag out of Tokyo Joshi to break up what has been a very flat year in-ring. ****

This to have had some good matches in the past but nothing that made you think that they really clicked together until this match. The match was filled with a lot of attitude flexing from both women via hair pulling, slapping, and kicking. Momo eventually gains control and seems on her way to victory until Hazuki steals it from right under her. Great stuff with the bonus of a bitchy pull apart in the post-match. ****

These two are always electric in the ring together and this match is no different. This more of an "In your face" physical style of match than their previous singles matchups. The difference in this match is Utami dropping Jungle on the apron with her spinning powerbomb. While Jungle makes a spirited attempt to comeback, Utami ends up putting her away with a torture rack submission. Pretty great, short, high impact match. ****

This match has Hoshiki defending her Wonder of Stardom title against Jungle Kyona, who has some momentum herself having just won the tag titles with Konami a few weeks earlier. The story of this match is Hoshiki's quick technical striking verses the power of Jungle. Jungle's tries to neutralize Hoshiki's striking by working over her leg but Hoshiki is able counter back with some opportunistic quick bursts and works a sleeper to slow Jungle down. Jungle tries to put her away during the finishing run but Hoshiki keeps sneaking out trouble and Arisa is able to line up a series of strikes to pull off the win. Tremendous match, especially with Jungle's performance but Hoshiki is starting to build up a case for being in the discussion as being one of the best workers in the company. ****1/4

Great babyface performance from Candice here, especially during the early part of the match where she takes a lot of nutty bumps. A strong start for heel Io as it allows her to work more aggressive and gives her a needed breath of fresh air. ***3/4

This is for Hoshiki's Wonder of Stardom title. These two have had a bit of a rivalry that has been going on for the last few months, with them even going as far as teasing a hair match between the two. The biggest strength of this match was it's ability to switch things up while still being coherent as a whole. They do a little bit of everything in this match. There's the obvious striking but they also managed to mix in brawling, working holds and the usual exchange of big moves down the stretch but the match never feels disjointed. This results in the match having a different feel from your typical Japanese title match that we've seen the last few years. A freaking fantastic match that is an absolute must watch. ****1/2

Tegan Nox had her first match since her injury at the Mae Young Classic last year tonight at the NXT house show in Orlando.

Couple of big news items from Stardom this week. First, at their 7/24 show they announced that Riho has signed with them and will debut with them on their 8/10 show. Not sure how this effects her involvement with AEW since I believe she was there on a tryout basis, whether she is just with Stardom or she has a deal similar to Bea Priestley. Stardom also announced the lineup for this year's 5*GP. The blocks are similar to last year with almost all of the returning entrants ending up in the same blocks. Blue Stars : Kagetsu Konami Arisa Hoshiki Andras Miyagi Utami Hayashishita Jungle Kyona Tora Natsuko Bea Priestley Jamie Hayter Red Stars : Mayu Iwatani Momo Watanabe Hana Kimura Hazuki Tam Nakano Saki Kashima Natsu Sumire Kasey Owens Avary Overall, the whole tournament should be pretty good. A wide open field plus Stardom might be having it's strongest in-ring year in terms of consistent quality is a good recipe to have.