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This is a big match in the Red Stars block as both of these women were at the top of the standing there. Kagetsu had another quality performance here mostly because she actually managed to play an effective heel. None of her shtick felt shoehorned in like it usually does. Jungle was Jungle here, a lot of fire, some nice power moves, and very good selling. They would have had something great if they had some better transitions during the finish but even still this was a really good match well worth watching. ***3/4

This is for Mayu's and Saki's Goddesses of Stardom tag titles as they take on their STARS teammates Tam and Kid. The match was pretty entertaining as they cut a quick pace while maintaining a nice flow throughout the match. There's no big flashy double teams but they do make their moves count and sell everything fairly well. A nicely worked tag match that you shouldn't skip even though it's in the middle of the 5* GP. ***3/4

This is the biggest challenge of Utami's short career as she takes on World of Stardom champion Kagetsu. Once again, this match is inexplicably great given Utami's inexperience. Kagetsu is fantastic here, quite possibly the best performance of her career. She more of a straight forward bitchy veteran heel who tries to goad Utami into losing her cool. Utami stays under control and actually manages to fire back using a sleeper and working over Kagetsu's back. A truly amazing match worked in the traditional veteran/rookie dynamic. ****1/4

Kelly Klein has been a bit of a surprise in this tournament. She was painfully dull in her first Stardom run late last year, but she's at least watchable so far. This match was the first time that I feel that she genuinely held up her end of a pretty good match. Momo put in another strong performance here as she's been the most consistent performer in the tournament so far. ***3/4

Xia Li/Karen Q was really fun. I enjoyed how they mixed in the martial arts stuff. Kaitlyn/Kavita Devi was okay. Kaitlyn had some solid if unspectacular power offense. Devi didn't look nearly as good as she did last year as she didn't have someone who could pinball for her offense and her selling looked goofy too. Toni Storm/Jinny was good for a match that was built to showcase Jinny. She looked good here especially here strikes. Mia Yim/Allysin Kay was a mixed bag. While the match had some nice moments, as a whole it came off as a jumbled mess.

Standings for the 5*GP going into the final show on 9/24, via Stardom's English twitter: While Rossy Ogawa is a popular dunking target for online joshi fans, I think he's done a pretty damn good job booking this tournament so far. Both blocks have multiple women still in contention. In fact, depending on what they will do for tie-breakers and match order on the show itself, potentially 7 of the remaining 8 tournament matches will have a bearing on who makes it to the final. I made up a list of possible scenarios for everyone that I think are still in contention. Assuming that the tie-breaker is the head-to-head match result, and if that is a draw, then either some kind of second tie-breaker or a rematch before the final that night. Of course, if Stardom has some other way to solve tie-breakers then you can chuck all of this but it was fun to figure out anyway. Blue Stars: Kelly Klein is drive's seat here. If she wins her match against Shimmer champion Nicole Savoy, she goes directly to the final because she has a win over Mayu Iwatani. If she ends up with a draw then she is in trouble as she will then need Mayu, Momo Watanabe, and Hazuki to not win (draw/lose.) Kelly lost both of her matches to Momo and Hazuki. If Mayu wins her match versus Momo, she then needs Kelly to not win and she will go directly to the final. If she goes to a draw with Momo she then needs Kelly to lose. Hazuki is not a threat if Mayu doesn't lose (win/draw) because Mayu won their match. Momo must win her match against Mayu plus needs both Kelly and Hazuki to not win if she's to get to the final. Momo has a win over Kelly but if Hazuki wins then they would need a another tie-breaker because the Momo/Hazuki match was a draw. Hazuki is the long shot here because because even if she does win her match against Oedo Tai teammate Sumire Natsu she still needs Kelly to not win and for there to be a tie-breaker with Momo. Red Stars: Kagetsu has the easiest route as all she has to do is beat Tam Nakano and she in the finals because she has a win over Rachael Ellering. If she gets a draw, she needs Rachel and Jungle Kyona to not win. If Jungle does win they would need a second tie-breaker because Kagetsu/Jungle went to a draw. Utami Hayashishita is not a threat if Kagetsu gets a win/draw because Kagetsu won their match. If Rachael Ellering wins her match versus Kimber Lee, who beat Rachael in last year's Mae Young Classic, and Kagetsu doesn't win then she goes directly to the final. If she gets a draw, then she needs Kagetsu to lose and Utami to not win. If Utami wins then they will need another tie-breaker because Rachael/Utami went to a draw. Jungle is not a threat if Rachael gets a win/draw because Rachael won their match. Jungle must win her match against her J.A.N. teammate Natsuko Tora while also having Rachael and Kagetsu lose, plus have Utami not win for her to go directly to the final. If either Kagetsu draws or Utami wins then that would require another tie-breaker because Jungle went to a draw with both of them. If Jungle gets a draw she is eliminated because she lost to Rachael Utami must win her match against Konami while Kagetsu and Rachael lose while Jungle doesn't win in order for her to go directly to the final. If Kagetsu draws or Jungle wins then that would need another tie-breaker becasue Utami went to a draw with both of them. If Kagestu gets a draw, Rachael loses, while both Jungle and Utami win, that would create a three way tie at 10 points. It would require more than a simple tie-breaker because no one out of Kagetsu/Jungle/Utami has a win over the anyone else.

This was one of my most anticipated matches from this year's 5* Grand Prix and it didn't disappoint. The story of the match is setup early as Jungle drills the post on the outside trying to chop Konami. The rest of the match is build around Jungle's tremendous selling of the arm as she tries to work through it while avoiding Konami's submissions. She succeed in doing that by effectively plowing over Konami hard enough to get the win. Terrific storytelling here. ****1/4

This is the Wonder of Stardom champ versus the Shimmer champ on the opening night of the 5* Grand Prix. These two ended up working together really well due to the similar styles. The match has a lot of nice back and forth switching in between strike, suplexes, and submissions. It was nice to finally see a match like this in joshi that didn't ended up with the politically mandated draw. Very entertain stuff. ***3/4

This was the main event to the opening night of the Stardom 5* Grand Prix. Konami put in a tremendous performance here as she takes this to the mat early and forces Kagetsu to remember that she was a Meiko Satomura trainee. Konami seems to have an answer for everything that Kagetsu throws at her in this match. If Kagetsu tries to go to mat, Konami outworks her there. If Kagetsu tries to outstrike her, Konami hits harder than her. Even when Kagetsu tries to out duel her with big moves, Konami beats her there to. Just a fantastic match to start the tournament. ****1/4

Watched the match between Konami and Rachel Ellering where Rachel gets in Konami's face post-match. Honestly, both of them were in the wrong. Konami shouldn't have kept trying to kick Ellering in the head after she start protecting her head like she had gotten dinged there. At the same time though, Ellering didn't handle it at all like a professional. She should have waited to get to the back even if she was really upset and not yell at Konami immediately after the finish in front of the fans. The whole thing was a huge sour note on what had been a pretty good match up to that point.

Kacy Catanzaro vs. Reina Gonzalez was a super fun match. It's impressive just how smooth Kacy is for a flyer with such little experience, while Reina played a solid big with a nice power offense. Mercedes Martinez vs. Ashley Rayne was fine. It was a bit jarring to see them work even when Martinez had much nastier looking offense and even sold Rayne's lesser looking offense better. Deonna Purrazzo vs. Priscilla Kelly felt like the obligatory women's match on a super indie show. Deonna looked fine but Kelly didn't get to show off any of her character work, although a lot of her shtick might be a bit much for a WWE show. Zeuxis vs. Aerial Monroe was just ugly as they weren't on the same page at all. Easily the worst match of the tournament so far.

Personally, I have been fairly underwhelmed by Miyu. Her performance in her last Korakuen title defense was particularly drab so it was nice to her best performance since the match with Meiko Satomura almost a year ago. While she is good technically from an execution standpoint, Yuu is weak at putting her moves together to make an interesting match but here Miyu was able to tie everything together superbly. She also brought some fire to counter Yuu's oatmeal personality. Very strong main event to a big show. ****

This is Utami Hayashishita debut match. Utami has a bit of fame in Japan because her dad is a reality TV star in Japan on a show that focuses on him and his large family. This is really, really, good for a debut match with Utami showing some tremendous ring presence. The match was laid out in such a way that she looked reasonably competitive with one of the top stars in the company. Jungle does a nice job on her end making Utami look strong although she doesn't really push Utami to the point of being in any danger of losing. Well worth checking out for the debut performance. ***3/4

I went into this match with no real expectations, more curious because Riho rarely makes tape in a singles match against a relative peer, but came away thinking that this was easily match of the night. Riho looked amazing here. She's not a flashy worker at all but she's so good at laying out a smart match and making everything matter. I've never been a Shoko fan but she put in the best performance that I've seen from her here. She was calm and under control which did wonders for her here as she didn't have her usual sloppy performance. Definitely a match worth taking the time to check out as it is a match that could get lost with the more talked about stuff on this card ****1/4

This is for Mayu and Saki's Goddesses of Stardom tag titles as they take on the new ass-kicking duo of Momo and Konami. Wow, do those two beat the ever-living crap out of Saki in the early going. Ever since she became a contracted wrestler with Stardom, Konami has just become a much more vicious wrestler and it's so fun to watch. Mayu had one of her best performances in a while as she got a good working over to from the challengers as well and put it over with strong selling even while she was on offense. The quick rollup finish here worked because during the finishing run Saki kept getting good counters on Momo which setup her getting the pin. Still, this seemed like a tease to the inevitable Momo/Konami tag title run which should be awesome. ****

Viper continues her strong run in Stardom this year. She brought a great mix of high impact offense with some quality bumping and selling. Kagetsu gave yet another predictably performance but it ended up working well enough here. Worth checking out for possibly Viper's best performance in Stardom. ***1/2

According to an interview she did with Yahoo Japan, she exchanged e-mails with WWE back in 2011 after the earthquake about coming in. She also said she would be interested in working with WWE more in the future, specifically stating a desire to work with Rhonda. I wouldn't be surprised if they try to bring her in for Evolution but Sendai Girls usually run a couple of big shows around that time of the year.

This was a solid first episode. The first two matches were fine. Rhea Ripley did a lot of good things but it seemed like she was trying too hard to play to the hard cam. Meiko/Kelly was very good. A great way to introduce Satomura to a sizable number of the audience that had never seen her before as she ran through all of her signature stuff. Killer Kelly looked strong in just being able to hang in there and trade. Lane/Kraven was fun. Lacey Lane looked rough but she did a bunch of different looking stuff and Vanessa Kraven did a nice job working as a base, bumping for here stuff while still coming off as a monster. Personally thought the commentary was bad. Between Cole's hard selling of Tegan Nox and Lacey Lane, Beth and Renee's constant shoehorning of "Did you know" type facts and weird talking points, they were interrupting each other so many times per match that I just tuned them out.

Mizuki really made this match with her performance. Nothing that she does is flashy, Mizuki is just very solid at everything technical but is easily the best woman in this promotion at drawing you in to her matches. Sakazaki wasn't bad here but her offense looked rough and that kept this from being something great. ***3/4

The storytelling here was really good. Not only did they get over that Kairi wasn't afraid of Shayna but she also had inventive ways to get out Shayna's submission, all of which played into the finish. I don't think the work was quite as good as their other two matches as the strikes weren't that crisp with Kairi in particular flailing around a bit. Still, this was a nice, compact title match that didn't over stay it's welcome. ***3/4

Big moment in joshi this weekend as ASUKA won the Regina di WAVE title becoming the first transgender to hold a title.

I kinda, sorta want Carmella to win just to see how long they are willing to go with this inexplicably long, Honky Tonk Man-style run.

Kairi's title reign is going to be interesting. The only heels for her to feud with are Bianca Belair and Lacey Evans while on the other end you have a similar type babyface with Candace LaRae and Dakota Kai. They could do a rematch with Shayna at Evolution but that would be tricky if she debuts as Rhonda's friend on the main roster. I guess start with a multi-woman match then try and build up someone who has some momentum coming out of the MYC.