Kadaveri

Marvelous 8/7/23 Review So now I'll review something that just happened. Ai Houzan vs. Aoi An alright opener. Not much to say other than I didn't like the finish. It was supposed to be Aoi dodging Houzan's missile dropkick to put her in her A-wing submission, except Aoi moved way too early so Housan blatantly wasn't trying to hit her with the dropkick. *1/4 Ikuto Hidaka & Itsuki Aoki vs. Leo Isaka & Tomoko Watanabe I've always been a bit put off by mixed gender matches so I'm probably not the best at rating them. This felt like a load of structureness nonsense in the first half but then turned into a decent match. Haven't seen Ikuto Hidaka in a long time but he looked pretty good. *3/4 Sakura Hirota vs. Unagi Sayaka Another match I can't really rate for very different reasons. I was amused by it, though 'it' wasn't really wrestling. They were going for dumb absurdity and they delivered exactly what they intended. If you enjoy Sakura Hirota you will probably like this a lot. Unagi going into a Kenta Kobashi style super comeback while throwing an inflatable swimming ring around only for Hirota to kiss her sums this up. Maria, Riko Kawahata & Sandra Moone vs. Azusa Inaba, Mika Iwata & Tomoka Inaba Chigusa is super enthusiastic about Team Magenta's NEW COSTUMES‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️‼️ Sandra Moone won a tryout at West Coast Pro-Wrestling to join Marvelous and this was her introduction. Which was a bit odd because she was pretty much irrelevant in this match. There wasn't much to this as everyone was tagging out too quickly to really give you something to sink into but everyone looked pretty good here. Maria and Azusa seemed to have some good chemistry, but again hard to say when they were only in the ring together for 2 minutes at most. **3/4 Chikayo Nagashima & Takumi Iroha vs. Nightshade & Yuu I know Nightshade as a regular in Pro Wrestling EVE. She actually wrestled on the same EVE show that Takumi was flown in for in 2022 and I wonder if that's where Takumi spotted her, coz I remember Nightshade having one of the best performances of that weekend even though she wasn't even in the tournament it was just a random match in a cool down spot. The commentator compares her to Eagle Sawai of all people. The rolling sausage spots early on felt a bit out of place but after that this turned into a good match. I particularly liked one moment where Chikayo (who is having a really good year btw I'll have to get round to reviewing more stuff) tried to save Takumi from a pin with a double footstomp, only to hit Takumi with it. You'll have seen that spot before but they did it really well-timed here. ***1/4 Mayumi Ozaki vs. Mio Momono (AAAW Singles Title) If you've seen this you're probably aware by now that the Joshi internet niche is raging about the booking decision. I'm not gonna talk about that. I'm just gonna say that this match drew me in emotionally about as well as any match has done this year. This would have been better if Mayumi was in her prime of course, or at least a bit mobile, but considering all the pluses this had I'm just not gonna be that bothered. But more importantly Mio Momono put on a tremendous individual performance here. It's one of those performances that gets me instinctively facing forward on the sofa so my eyes are as close to the TV screen as possible without getting up coz I'm taking in everything that she's doing here. The match is a total injustice. Ozaki just jumps Mio before the match even starts by whacking her in the face with the title belt when they're doing the photo ceremony thing. It feels like a bit of a narrative message that Mio lost already here. Not because she wasn't the better wrestler. That she managed to keep fighting after getting the big handicap at the start proves that. She lost because she was too inexperienced to understand what kind of fight she'd got into today. Ozaki wasn't here for some title match, she said herself that she didn't even care about the AAAW belt. She was here because Mio dared to fuck with her and she's gonna teach her and everyone what happens when you fuck with Mayumi Ozaki and think you're gonna get away with it. Bloodied up Mio fighting her heart out to not let Ozaki take the belt from her made me feel so upset and I was gutted at the end. But I was made happy again when the crowd threw streamers at Mio after she lost, I don't think I've ever seen that before, and Chigusa losing her shit at Ozaki's post-match antics was the icing on the cake. This was a great pro-wrestling spectacle. ****1/4

Marvelous 8/8/22 Review I was gonna watch the Aoki vs. Iroha match anyway so figured I might as well review the whole thing. This show was a bit of a mess as Chigusa Nagayo, Rin Kadokura and Ai Houzan all tested positive for covid shortly before so they had to change a bunch of matches (Chigusa was supposed to wrestle on this one). Ayame Sasamura, Kyusei Ninja Ranmaru & Mio Momono vs. Hibiscus Mii, Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu (Elimination Rules) This was a weird match to rate as it was a pretty stupid comedy match at the start, but it got a lot better as the bad wrestlers were eliminated and the match increasingly focused on Mio Momono (funny huh). This was a really good performance from her and the final stretch with her against Tomoko was actually really good. ** I didn't watch the men's match. Maria vs. Riko Kawahata This was supposed to be Maria & Yumiko Hotta vs. Riko Kawahata & Chigusa Nagayo. This will be an annoying review but the honest truth is by the time this match was finished I realised that I remembered Riko's entrance (she's a good dancer) more than anything in the match itself. Maria did try to heel for a bit but the crowd just cheers her no matter what she does. I remember her commenting that she'd never really been booed before until she wrestled in the UK. I hope she enjoyed that at least. *3/4 Itsuki Aoki vs. Takumi Iroha (AAAW Singles Title) This is a match that had a lot of great stuff in it but had flaws which made it less than the sum of its parts. The best parts are the couple of moments where Takumi gets all fired up from Aoki’s hard hits and just beats her up. It’s like she counters Aoki’s stiff strikes with STIFFER STRIKES and it’s a simple as that coz as tough as Aoki is, Takumi’s just better at it. Aoki does try to even the playing field by going after Takumi’s leg, but again this is one of the flaws of the match I mentioned because she’s a bit erratic about whether this is her gameplan or not. Like she’ll forget about it for several minutes and then suddenly go for a figure four. Takumi sells it all well, it just would have been a better match if this aspect had been a bit more focused. ***3/4 We had this match after: Chikayo Nagashima, DASH Chisako, KAORU & Megumi Yabushita vs. Leo Isaka, Maria, Mio Momono, Takumi Iroha & Tomoko Watanabe, but I'm not gonna review it as it was just KAORU having one last goof off with her mates than a real match.

It's a move that looks good when you're in the crowd but not so much when you're watching on TV with the cameras zooming in.

Just a little more patience.

Marvelous 5/3/16 - Walk This Way! Review Let's skip ahead a bit to a show that's starting to resemble the Marvelous I like and I promise there's definitely a match worth seeking out. Firstly, it had not occurred to me that the name of this show came from the Aerosmith song until the show opened with all the wrestlers on this show being introduced one at a time while Steven Tyler raps away. It's pretty funny. They even have this shaky 'Walk This Way' graphic on the screen. Ayako Hamada vs. Rin Kadokura This is Rin Kadokura's debut I believe (Wikipedia says she debuted on May 18th 2016 which is obviously wrong lol) Wow is getting a pretty big reaction in her blue rookie swimsuit. The match starts with Ayako just bodyslamming Rin over and over again...... Until Rin avoids one and then bodyslams Ayako back to a big pop! Other than that nice moment, just a rookie squash. * Kyoko Kimura vs. Mio Momono Again it's a veteran squashing a rookie match but this was a bit better than the previous one due to Mio giving a really spirited performance despite having no chance at winning this match. The finish was a bit flat though. Fans of Mio would want to check this out though. *1/2 Aki Shizuku vs. Konami Neither of these wrestlers are on the Marvelous roster. Konami's outfit looks terrible. Right side of her body is a blue pencil skirt and left side is some shorts that look like 19th Century underwear. What. Anyway, this opens with a bunch of matwork that isn't very interesting. There's a nice moment where Aki counters an ankle lock into a German suplex which Konami sells hard, rolls out of the ring like she's been rocked and doesn't come back in for 50 seconds. She gets back in and it's on! Well, for a little bit. Then they just lose the thread and do boring holds again and none of it went anyway. *1/2 Cassandra Miyagi vs. KAORU A lot of weird comedy. KAORU ambushes Cassandra just as the streamers are thrown and then (of course) moonsaults her but the referee won't count it due to the dirty tactics. They do a load of stuff with that damn KAORU board where they keep missing and then KAORU does 2 Excaliburs and a corkscrew moonsault and then wins. This was rubbish. 3/4* Kaoru Ito vs. Tomoko Watanabe Kaoru Ito is certainly the better Kaoru. This is a rematch from AJW Dream Rush 1992 one of the best shows ever! So I can't help but be a little bit excited. To be honest this is nothing but lariats and forearms at the start but they're hitting hard and selling and not bumping much (the latter being a good thing wrestlers this big shouldn't bump easily), and considering their athletic limitations at this age I get that they're gonna wrestle like this. I'm less generous though at this very long heat segment from Ito where she just lies in leglock for ages and it's not engaging at all. This is probably more because of Ito than Watanabe, but this problem with this match being singles is they need to have these very long slow periods between any cool stuff they do and you can't hide it like if you're just in a tag match and rest on the apron for a while. Like Watanabe does a nice big judo toss at one point, but then we're back to camel clutches and half crabs for ages. Crazy moment where Ito hits the double footstomp off the 2nd rope. That has got to hurt! Then she goes for another but Watanabe stops it, hits a German suplex off the 2nd rope (!) and follows up with a brutal looking hellsmasher as because of Ito's size she can't quite get her up in the normal way but this actually made the move look more unco-operative and nasty looking without looking outright dangerous. Then the time limit expires. Draw. Sad! The finishing stretch of this was actually really good. It just took a very long time to get there. ** Meiko Satomura vs. Takumi Iroha. Takumi’s entrance is awesome, she comes across as such a star. Meiko’s is even better though as they have clips from some historical war movie or something with loads of medieval siege weapons causing explosions and at least a hundred people getting killed by flaming horse archers. This is a really great Meiko performance. Takumi is very impressive as well considering she’s only 3 years into her career here but Meiko looks like one of the best wrestlers in the world here. The opening technical stuff is all pretty basic fundamentals but it’s all done very well. Really crisp exchanges of holds with Meiko not quite dominating but coming across as just a bit too good for Takumi to do anything but be on the defensive or just react to whatever Meiko’s doing to her. Some really great kicks as well, not just the kicks themselves but how they try to dodge or block them. Another great moment is when Takumi goes for a powerbomb and manages to hit it but Meiko was resisting and she isn’t able to land it quite right. Takumi then has this “Ahhh well that wasn’t great but it’ll have to do” look on her face that told the story well. This is a great match and a very deserving sequel to Takumi’s debut match against Meiko in 2013. ****

Marvelous 2/8/15 Review Firstly, I hope I have proven myself highly dedicated to this task in reviewing a Marvelous show from before Takumi Iroha joined the company coz on paper this doesn't look good at all. Ahhh but I turn it on and see they've compensated for the dull looking card by having a live band! Alex Lee vs. DASH Chisako Complete minimum effort match. Nothing to say, there wasn't anything really egregiously wrong with it, other than it was just very boring. The highlight was referee Tommy going into business for herself and entertaining the crowd by magically blending into the background like a chameleon. *1/2 Aki Shizuku vs. Yuiga Two nothing indie workers. Shizuku has a good lariat but that's it really. This was similar to the previous match except they did pick things up a bit better for the finishing stretch. *3/4 Dump Matsumoto & Yumiko Hotta vs. Mima Shimoda & Tomoko Watanabe Chigusa Nagayo joins the live band and sings Dump to the ring. This was better than I was expecting. There's a few moments where Dump keeps trying to start a fight with Chigusa even though she's just standing around at ringside watching the match. There's a bit of an outside brawl with Dump hitting people with her shinai and she just hits Chigusa as well which was pretty funny. Then at another point Chigusa gets a bit too close to the ring so Dump pulls her in by the hair to beat her up, but Chigusa manages to fight back and put Dump in the sharpshooter. This was more entertaining than the match the actual competitors were having but I think that was the point tbh. The match itself gets better after this though as Shimoda & Watanabe start getting a lot more violent fighting back. Shimoda absolutely blasts Hotta over the head with a chairshot like jeez Hott was working fairly soft and then Shimoda just goes and nails her like we're in 1997. Dump and Watanabe are both bleeding now. Tomoko Watanabe is the best in this match from a work perspective. She takes a bunch of big bumps from Dump to put over her offense, including a really big one for a Dump lariat at the finish. This was alright and fun. **1/4 Megumi Yabushita vs. Ray Ray looked like the better wrestler in this match, though she was only doing her standard spots. There are a hundred better Ray matches but one thing this alright match did show is she's pretty good at just being entertaining doing her stuff even the match isn't much. **1/4 KAORU & Kyoko Kimura vs. Meiko Satomura & Takako Inoue Gah. What can I say this is a match which every now and then teased that it might turn into something good but it just didn't. Meiko can seemingly have a good match just by deciding to have one, but she did not decide to have one this day. If anything it was Kyoko Kimura who seemed most into this. I can't really fault KAORU for physically effort, she did do a corkscrew moonsault of course, but she doesn't really add anything coz she's just completely mindless. ** Yeah thankfully I said from the start this wouldn't be chronological as I'm not gonna be watching another 2015 Marvelous show any time soon.

Marvelous 3/22/14 - Marvelous Night VI Review I don't know why this show is called "Night VI" when there don't appear to have been any previous nights. This is more of a Chigusa Nagayo Produce show really, it features her return to the ring for the first time since 2008, but also KAORU is back for the first time since 2011. These two were the most important wrestlers in setting up GAEA Japan in 1995 so them returning together for the same show I think indicated that this was a proper return rather than a one-off. This is also the joint highest attended Joshi show of 2014 tied with Shinobu Kandori's 50th Birthday show. That's going off the claimed attendances which I always assume are inflated, but the #3 show was nowhere near so I'll still go with it. Chigusa Nagayo, Kagetsu & Takumi Iroha vs. Dump Matsumoto, KAORU & Yoshiko (full match) We only get to see Dump and Chigusa's entrances but they're both really cool with a live band playing them out, though I could do without the swastikas around Dump. Bull Nakano of course still looks like the coolest person ever when all she does it just accompany Dump to the ring and occasionally swing her nunchakus around. Chigusa walks to the ring with a bunch of strapped together lighttubes over her shoulder! Her and Dump still have the flair for the dramatic doing a big pose in front of the spotlight pointing their respective weapons at each other before Chigusa gets in the ring. The match starts with KAORU taking out Chigusa on the outside and throwing her into the audience where she gets buried under chairs. It is kinda funny that in kayfabe Chigusa has gracefully welcomed KAORU out of retirement at her own Produce show, and KAORU has returned the favour by teaming with Dump Matsumoto and jumping her lol. Referee Tommy has also been taken out by the baddies, so unfortunately Shiro Abe has no choice but to take on the referee duties himself but forgets how quickly a 3 count is supposed to be and almost counts a pinfall for Dump on Takumi Iroha in about 0.5 seconds. The downside of this match is Dump is still doing the fork stabbing but she's obviously being really careful about it not to seriously hurt anyone which kinda kills the aura heh. Bull makes an effort to divert people's attention by making evil faces at the camera while Dump is going to work on Takumi's head. Chigusa spends almost the entire match selling, which she can do well so no issues there. When she finally gets her comeback together her, Takumi and Kagetsu do a Shield Bomb! So at least she's up to date with current day WWE. This is part where the match gets a bit mindless. KAORU is soon up, gets a ladder out and does a moonsault off it. It's not a KAORU match without her doing a moonsault and it's not a big KAORU match without her doing a moonsault off something big. That's about as much psychology as you can expect from her and you're just going to have to accept it. I haven't mentioned her yet, but this match is actually at its best whenever Yoshiko is in the ring. She's a good bruiser heel, can move around pretty fast when she wants to and is working hard here. Dump is fun in short controlled bursts only. There's a cool spot where Dump is going wild with the trash can but Chigusa punches it straight out of her hand! But then she follows up with a really weak looking uppercut... KAORU tries to save Dump by hitting Chigusa on the head with the trash can, but Chigusa ducks and KAORU takes out Dump with it accidentally. Chigusa then nails dump across the head with the lighttubes she brought out in her entrance and gets the 3 count on her for the win. It's partly the nostalgia boosting it, and this has all the flaws you'd expect going in, but if you're going to run Chigusa Nagayo vs. Dump Matsumoto in 2014 this is about as good a way to do it. Certainly a lot more entertaining than all those Dump singles matches in 00s AJW, she really should have been protected by being in trios matches the whole time. *** Aiger vs. Sakura Hirota (about 6 minutes of 12:03 shown) A load of comedy nonsense and not one the funnier ones. We got a Team Eccentric reunion out of it at least. 1/2* Hiroyo Matsumoto, Rina Yamashita & Sawako Shimono vs. Mio Shirai, Misaki Ohata & Tsukasa Fujimoto (2:10 of 9:58 shown) No rating due to clipping. Kyoko Inoue & Sareee vs. Mima Shimoda & Yumiko Hotta (3:22 of 14:19 shown) Well it was fun to see a little glimpse of a very young Sareee, but still no rating due to clipping. DASH Chisako & Sendai Sachiko vs. Io Shirai & Natsuki Taiyo (4:10 of 19:03 shown) Now this looks like it could have been really good. A top Sendai Girls team vs. a top Stardom team. But again it's clipped to death. In between these matches with get Chigusa Nagayo singing the Crush Gals song 'Honoo No Bible' with the live band. A guess YMMV but if you enjoy Crush Gals music you'll love this. Ayako Hamada, KAORU & Takako Inoue vs. Meiko Satomura, Shinobu Kandori & Toshie Uematsu (13:51 of 20:59 shown) And finally we're back to a match that's actually possible to review. You'd think KAORU was one of the biggest stars in wrestling from how much cinematic effort went into producing her entrance. The live band is back playing the wrestlers into the ring. The match itself feels like a bit of rib on KAORU at first coz she's just getting her ass kicked out there by everyone. Toshie Uematsu is the best in this, for whatever reason she's really making an effort more than anyone else appears to be. Meiko's not that bothered lol. KAORU stands on the top turnbuckle and makes a big deal about whether she can do a moonsault anymore or not, which doesn't really make sense as we already saw her do one off a ladder in the opener. But anyway she gets the win with it. This had some fun moments but felt a lot more aimless than the opening trios match. ** After the main event, Chigusa brings out some singer (someone will shout at me that they're someone famous but I don't know anything about Japanese pop music) who sings a song called "I'm Proud" to KAORU as she just stands there in the ring looking all emotional.

Marvelous is one of the smaller traditional women’s wrestling companies in Japan that I personally started following in 2017. I quickly became a big fan of the then rookie Mio Momono and company Ace Takumi Iroha, formerly of Stardom. I think it started to get a bit of a wider following in Western online fandom in 2019-21 when a very exciting group of rookies made their debuts and the inter-promotional feud with Sendai Girls won a lot of acclaim. Unfortunately as of 2023 it’s been in a bit of a rut since then, though I still check it out and think there’s potential for a resurgence. This thread is gonna be me watching as many Marvelous shows as I can get my hands on and reviewing them, as it’s a struggle to find anything of the promotion documented online except the most very well-known stuff, and I know there’s a lot of good matches on here (especially from the earlier years) that have gotten virtually zero attention. I’m unlikely to review the shows in chronological order as I know the earlier stuff isn’t as good and I don’t connect to it so much as none of their own trainees have debuted yet, which robs the promotion of a distinct character. So how this is probably going to work is I’ll work on the older shows in order, but I’ll occasionally skip ahead into the era where I was the biggest fan so it doesn’t start to feel like homework. I will use this opening post as an index and edit in links to each show review in chronological order to makes things easier for people searching through later. I will give every match a star rating provided it's not too heavily clipped that it's not possible to meaningfully assess it. I'm not going to write a proper review for every match, sometimes they're just boring and I'd rather put my spare time in writing about good matches heh. Feel free to leave comments if you want. INDEX 2014 3/22/14 2015 2/8/15 2016 2/13/16 5/3/16 2017 10/21/17 11/12/17 11/19/17 11/25/17 12/16/17 12/25/17 2018 1/6/18 1/27/18 2022 8/8/22 2023 8/7/23 8/18/23 9/3/23 9/12/23 12/10/23

La Galactica is Pantera Surena not Lola Gonzalez.

This was brilliant. Chikayo's title reign was probably never meant to happen but she has really ran with the opportunity that fell into her lap this year and has topped it off with one of the best singles matches of her career. I am so glad she just reneged on that retirement announcement a couple of years ago as she clearly had more to give. But Mio Momono is one of my favourite wrestlers of the last 5 years. I hope nobody ever tells her that wrestling isn't real. There's a great narrative throughout of the match of Mio trying to get the win with the Cheeky Bomb but Chikayo knows every trick in the book to avoid it. ****1/4

Well the news that Naomi/Trinity has signed with Impact means her asking price surely wasn't all that high.

I'd guess it's mainly because women's wrestling was banned in Mexico City until 1986, which massively depleted its development and the amount of footage we have.

Jaguar might be the best 18 year old wrestler ever in 1980 but she's still far from the finished product. I wouldn't say she's a BITW contender until 1982.

What Bryan really should do is work the opener of Wrestle Kingdom and then get a flight straight back to Seattle to be on Dynamite. It's only a 9 hour flight and it's across the International Date Line so he'd actually arrive in local time "before" he left.

WAVE is a frustrating promotion because it books so many talented wrestlers but frankly most of the time they’ll just half-ass it because it’s only WAVE. But it does mean that occasionally said talented wrestlers will wake up feeling motivated one day and you’ll get something great. This was one of these days. Getting to see Sareee & Mio Momono square off was special, but Hibiki upped her game more than anyone else here. Her opening salvo with the repeated attempted flash pins was fantastic and gave a frantic feel to everything else going forward. Yumi Ohka is past her prime, being a big grumpy tall woman just kicking everyone in the head is the best she’s looked all year. ****1/4

We thought Sareee was gone for WWE, but the covid pandemic meant she couldn’t go to the US as planned so now she’s back for her “WWE Countdown” Japan run. The first half of the match meanders a bit, but turns into one of the best title matches of the year once Sareee loses it and starts viciously kicking the hell out of Yoshiko when she’s down on the mat. The unexpected 2020 Sareee & Yoshiko saga continues. ****

This is a #1 Contender's match to challenge Miyuki Takase for the AWG Singles Title. This is by far the best Misa Matsui has ever looked to date, putting in a wonderful underdog performance against Mr Actwres Kakeru Sekiguchi (I don’t know if the nickname is deliberately gender swapped or not). Misa slips on the ropes really early on but they recover very well. The hard strike exchange in the corner is a big highlight. ***3/4

This felt like a chance for Fujimoto to showcase her more technical/shooty side. The match is held back a bit by the exhibition-like feel, but it’s very good for what it is. Syuri is perfectly cast in this role as the travelling real shooter. ***3/4

Of course I've seen this match before but never in 720p. Thanks GAEAISM YouTube Channel. Right at the start of the match Satomura manages to take Aja down with a low armdrag into an armbar kind of thing, it doesn't quite work but it looked technically impressive, and Aja was able to counter not with technique so much as brute power and then she just lies on Meiko using her larger weight to her advantage. Reminds me of how Brock Lesnar would generally fight in MMA, just pin guys to the ground with your bigger body weight and then smack them up where they can't get away. That little opening quickly establishes that Meiko is a skilled wrestler but the superior size of Aja is gonna be very difficult for her to overcome. Almost the entire first half of the match is Aja just systemically demolishing Meiko, whose 'shine' sequence was basically one move. Aja is very compelling and entertaining working on top. Meiko does get little comeback sequences/hope spots, but in this period they just don't go anywhere. Aja either counters them or just brushes her aside in a demoralising 'been there, done that' fashion. I liked how Meiko does a kip up and immediately goes for a kick before Aja has time to protect herself, it shows the point of the kip up is to hit a flash attack, but just showing off. One criticism I have of the match structure is after Meiko gets a slight comeback going but Aja smacks it down and throws Meiko out of the ring, Aja then does a tope. It's a very good tope, but it didn't fit the moment for me. I feel like she should be pulling out a high risk rare move like that at the moment she's feeling genuinely threatened by Meiko, but at this point it felt a bit wasted. We're still at the point of the match where the crowd doesn't seem to buy that Meiko has even 1% chance of winning this match. They're really pretty quiet and don't really get behind her. The biggest reactions are for Aja's offense, she gets a lot of "woah!"s for her stuff. It feels like the crowd are going "wow, must suck to be fighting Aja" rather than properly supporting Meiko. The first time Meiko gets a proper reaction is soon afterwards though where she avoids an uraken and hits her Pele kick and earns a KO count of 8 on Aja. Big cheer for Meiko. It took so long for her to really get any serious offense in but it feels like she's growing and upgrading herself just within the match itself. It's a great strength to this match how really gradual Meiko increasingly resembles a real threat, there's no abrupt momentum swing. The next development of this is Aja putting Meiko on the top rope, presumably to hit her waterwheel drop, but Meiko avoids it by jumping over her, turning round and hitting a big german suplex off the top rope. Now, I think this wasn't what was planned. It looked like Meiko was trying to counter with a sunset bomb, but messed it up, but she very quickly just turned around and did a german and Aja never sold a move that wasn't actually hit so it was fine. But even so, this might be one of those things where a screw-up actually improved the match, because that german did look pretty devastating and unexpected so you can buy Aja being seriously rocked by it. Especially as right afterwards Meiko hits a dazed Aja with another Pele kick and then a Death Valley Driver for a huge nearfall. The crowd was super loud for it, like they seriously thought Meiko had just pulled off a major upset! The masterclass in match structure has worked and now the crowd is treating the match as a 50/50 affair. Aja's selling is not just physical, but in her body language you feel her confidence has been rocked, and she's acting with increasing freneticism/desperation. In a neat juxtaposition to the match's opening, it ends up not being just Aja's superior size that bails her out, but rather a moment of great skill/quick reactions. But you know she had to come through in the clutch to make it out of this one with the win. ****1/2

I kinda lean towards Cactus' 2020 incarnation in that the RINGS style doesn't fully click with me; so even though I really did enjoy this match and consider it 12 minutes very well spent, I doubt I'll ever consider one of the greatest matches of all time or anything. Tamura kipping up was an awesome moment, and probably the least shoot style thing in the match heh. I also really liked Volk Han's very understated selling. There's a great little moment where one of Tamura's kicks lands on his leg, and Han flinches and pulls his leg back just slightly awkwardly enough for the audience to tell that that hurt him though he's trying not to show it, but of course we saw that, so Tamura should too, and indeed Tamura wildly goes on the attack at the leg immediately afterwards and now we know Han is in trouble. The ending is tragic. Most of the match it really felt like this could go either way, and it's just one brief lapse in concentration or something that allows Han to quickly lock him in the calf slicer in the middle of the ring, and Tamura couldn't come back from that. Pity.

Ogawa still feels very below the other 3 guys in the match (like the gap between him and Akiyama is still probably bigger than the gap between Akiyama and Kobashi/Misawa) so having him look good on offense for the first few minutes was a neat move. It's kinda like a 'shine' sequence although it's not establishing who is the babyface, it's establishing that Ogawa can hang with the rest of them. Lovely moment in near the beginning where Misawa goes for his signature spot where he flips over the ropes to do a flying move to the outside, but just as he's about to do it Akiyama runs in from behind and jumping knees him in the back! Kaboom. Unfortunately the match kinda loses the spark of the first 5 minutes and becomes more pedestrian, although it's still entertaining wrestling, before turning into a bombfest. Ridiculous moment where Misawa hits Kobashi with a Tiger Driver and the crowd loudly goes ONE, TWO, THR-AHHHHHH!!! for the nearfall. Come on. You cannot seriously believe Misawa was gonna pin Kobashi with 1 Tiger Driver in 1999. Fortunately for Kobashi, he has the biggest move up his sleeve so wins the bombfest. ***1/2

Rob Van Dam defends the WWF Hardcore Title. Paul Heyman tells us that people said Rob Van Dam was "too extreme" for the WWF, which maybe you could say that in 1997 but by this point feels a bit ridiculous. The opening is kinda bizarre with RVD just jumping around and Tajiri doing a forward roll around each other. There is one interesting moment where Tajiri does his baseball slide kick into the corner with chairs in the way and he goes for a cover, and the referee does the count while standing on the outside. I don't remember any WWF referee doing that before, reminded me of Tommy Young. The match is pretty short but fun. **1/2

That isn't what happened though is it. Cabana hadn't been on TV for 8 months before Punk showed up, and that was in a 8 man tag. Was anyone at the time really thinking something sinister was behind Cabana not being on TV? No. He just wasn't a prominent act at all, there were loads of guys of the periphery of AEW in 2019-20 who just gradually disappeared onto Dark by 2021 in a similar pattern. The actual unusual thing that happened with Cabana after Punk debuted is he actually reappeared on TV for a while and had 3 matches on Dynamite in September-November 2021, which really doesn't fit the false narrative that Punk arrived and Cabana suddenly vanished.

AOI & Tomoka Inaba vs. Maika & MIRAI from the Just Tap Out show yesterday was incredible. If you said it was the best match any of those four have ever been in I'd be fine with that.

This doesn't seem to be clear either: