donsem43

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.

This is a terrific stars with junior partners match. Shindo and Manami start out with some fun rookie stuff then, later in the match, take their beatings from their senior opponents. The high point of match though is the Sareee/Satomura interactions, which show flashes of Jumbo/Misawa. A super fun match here. ****

This is Hoshiki's first defense of the Wonder of Stardom title since she ended Momo Watanabe's nearly year long run the previous Korakuen Hall show. This match has gotten a far bit of hype and it's justified for the most part. This was the best performance of Tam Nakano's career, granted I've never really been a fan of hers, with some good leg work early on and some terrific work during the finish. In fact, this was the best finishing stretch that I've seen this year. The last 8 or so minutes are must watch. The only knocks I have against it was that they did overreach a times leading to some messy execution and Hoshiki did brush off Tam's early legwork. As a whole though, this was a great match well worth checking out. ****

This is Sareee's first defense of the Sedai Girls title since winning it last month. This was surprisingly the most violent match on this card. Not just from the strike but a lot of the moves, especially the double stomps, looked particularly nasty. The only big mark against this match was Sareee's lack of selling for DASH's big moves, (this has been a consistent problem for Sareee all year.) Still, this match was fantastic and probably the best singles match of DASH's career. ****

To be honest, I've been down on this two, especially Yoshiko, for awhile now but this was a match that provided much needed strong performance from each. Mainly from Yoshiko as she finally rediscovers that she should be working like a bully which just makes everything she does more effective. Chihiro show a lot more energy and personality than she has in the last year. This is something that is well worth checking out. ****

This has been a dream match for a while and it ended up being exactly what you would want a match between these two to be. Mizunami bringing power moves, Satomura bringing technical stuff while both women bringing heavy strikes. Everything meshes together seamlessly, even Mizunami's comedy spots. Just a tremendous match. ****1/4

It's something to see Suruga, Gatoh Move's super spunky 20 year old rookie, come bouncing out to Satomura's entrance theme. That dynamic between them plays out during the match as Suruga uses her speed and energy to throw off her opponents while Satomura was all about physical striking and grappling. Suruga has a bit of success in the match but ends up getting worked over a fair bit but manages to survive via her instincts. Sareee and Yuu work well together as a team while both are able to go toe to toe with Satomura individually. This is yet another high quality random team tag match that Sendai Girls has had this year. ****1/4

The issue with Sareee is that her home promotion, Diana, doesn't have TV nor does it post much stuff online so there isn't as much footage of her matches as you would think. You have to rely on her showing up in other promotions. She has been on pretty much every Sendai Girls show from this year. Here is a few matches of her matches that are online from the last few year: vs. Leon - 5/13/18 (Diana) vs. Takumi Iroha - 5/27/18 (Diana) w/ Nanae Takahashi vs. Arisa Nakajima & Tsukasa Fujimoto - 7/14/17 (SEAdLINNNG)

According to Tokyo Sports, Triple H met with Sareee while he was in Japan.

I thought this match had a bit too much fighting spirit at times that led to some bad selling. The finishing run was pretty great though. I especially like how Sareee mixed in rollups to try and catch Chihiro off guard. Chihiro also got protected by kicking out of a few uranages, a move that had one-shot everyone else the last few months, until Sareee had to use a pumphandle version to get the win. Not great like their January match but still pretty good and it's great to see Sareee get a big push since it is LONG overdue for her. ***3/4

Sendai Girls has been absolutely fantastic all year. Every one of their shows that have made it online have been at least entertaining. The 2/10 Beauty Bear vs. DASH/Hiroyo tag and the 5/27 Meiko Satomura vs. Yuu matches have been the highest points.

Watched the Stardom doc this morning and while I think that it asks a lot of interesting questions, it does a weak job on following up on them. The strongest part was the wrestler profiles. Jungle Kyona comes off as someone who is too sane for wrestling, while Mayu Iwatani is exactly the type of nut you would expect to meet. You could probably do a whole doc on Kris Wolf herself but it would have been nice to see an example of the cultural distance/isolated feelings that she had. The Rossy interview is the biggest fumble to me. Why show that Stardom's audience is almost all older men then not ask the owner/promoter why he doesn't market his product to women/children? Does he think he can only make money from the male demo he currently targets? Are the boundaries set by an overly traditional Japanese society too much to overcome? Speaking of Japanese society, the doc mentions how wrestling is an escape from traditional roles of women in Japanese society and they decide to illustrate that by... going to an concert put on by an all-women rock band. Um, what?!? Why not keep it tied to the subject matter? If you can't get good answers out of anyone in Stardom why not try to interview someone like Bull Nakano or Kaori Yoneyama, who have tonnes of experience and likely a different perspective. In the end, I can see this being informative to people who have never heard of joshi before but for a wrestling fan with just a passing knowledge of it, I don't see the doc shedding any new light on it.

It makes the office people in charge of stuff like this look incompetent?

There is probably a decent chance of this happening. I believe Shida is full time and moving to the U.S. so depending on whatever Aja's deal is effect the likelihood of what AEW will do with her. Although, I'm sure that they want to use Aja to establish the credibility of the women on the roster. I read that Riho is on kind of a tryout of a handful of matches but it's more her trying out AEW and living in the U.S. rather than the opposite. I imagine Emi Sakura is here just to have someone Riho is comfortable to work with and to help her decide if she should sign full time. Never read anything on Yuka Sakazaki's deal or if this is a one-off for Ryo Mizunami.

I wonder what kind of TV deal they are going to get in Canada. TSN aired the Kenny Omega doc but who knows how they would feel about airing wrestling regularly again after giving Raw the boot all those years ago. Granted, WWE is hooked up with Sportsnet and thing are pretty competitive between the two sports networks in this country so that might open the door. AEW could also sign a deal with TSN parent company Bell and have a regular time on another channel like MuchMusic then have an re-airing on TSN later in the week.

If Aja Kong works AEW TV in the fall, it will be 24 years since her last appearance on a U.S. promotions prime time TV. I don't think there is anyone else close to a stretch that long even if you include shows like the 6:05 show on TBS and Prime Time Wrestling.