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Stardom streaming service


donsem43

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Thought I would start a thread for Stardom since they are starting their own streaming service via YouTube. It just started today and for now they are having a free 2-week trial with a monthly subscription of $4.99 U.S.

 

Welcome to Stardom World, our new Youtube paid channel!

★ For $4.99 USA each month, you will be able to see all of our shows from this point forward! This means, all of our Tokyo shows at Shinkiba 1stRING and Korakuen Hall, as well as shows in Nagoya, Osaka, Fukuoka...EVERY Stardom show! (Countries other than the United States are similarly priced.)

★ We will upload matches throughout the week in the days after each show. Friday is "Main Event Friday." For instance, if our Tokyo show is Sunday, Monday we will upload the opening match, Tuesday the next match, and so forth throughout the rest of the week, so it is possible that some days will have more than one match uploaded. Main events will always be on Main Event Friday. Shows that are outside of Tokyo may begin uploads on Tuesday, due to travel.

★ We will also offer extra content throughout each week, such as the month of March's "Tea Time" with Chelsea and Santana. Each month we will offer new programming, all in English. At various times we will upload older shows, or special matches. For instance, you may see Mayu Iwatani Week, or Io Shirai Week, or The Best of 2015.

★ For the opening of Stardom World, we have our complete show from Nagoya on February 12, 2016 which has never aired anywhere until now! This show features the Goddesses of Stardom Tag Team Title match between champions Thunder Rock and Oedo Tai's Viper and Kaitlin Diemond! You'll also find our first Tea Time segment, the first of many to come.

★ The first week of March will feature our February 28 show in Osaka with the Main Event for the Artist of Stardom 6 man titles, pitting Team Hyper Destroyers, Hiroyo Matsumoto, Kellie Skater and Evie vs Io Shirai, Mayu Iwatani and Kairi Hojo!

 

The only possible downside is they probably won't be using broadcast footage of their bigger shows. Their own footage, up to this point, has just been one cameraman at ringside. While that works well when the action is in the ring, it gets a bit troublesome when the action goes outside at some of the smaller buildings. I'll be happy if they can add a hard camera like they had for the U.S. tour they did last fall. That is a minor complaint, it's awesome to see this especially with a Japanese promotion that's doing pretty well in-ring right now.

 

Match results for past shows and line-ups for upcoming shows can be found here.

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They uploaded the 11/23/15 show today. The main is Io Shirai vs. Santana Garrett with Io's Wonder of Stardom title vs. Santana's NWA Women's title with Iwatani vs. Yoneyama for the High Speed title as the semi-main. This only aired as clips on Samurai TV news shows.

 

If anyone has questions on storylines or who's who feel free to ask. If your hesitant because it's joshi, I personally think current Stardom is the most accessible kind of joshi that I've see. Fairly rare that you get any Manami Toyota vs. Kyoko Inoue type stuff.

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A reminder that they just finished uploading this past weekend's show with the main event for the Artist of Stardom (Six-Woman) titles. Plus they have added the 9/4/15 and 9/5/15 shows. No "Big" shows yet but still 5 full shows in less than a week after launch is pretty good.

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So far there's two shows (2/12/16, 2/28/16) from this year, and looking at the schedule they are running about a show a week for the next couple of months. Neither of the two Korakuen Hall shows from this year are up though (1/17/16 with Io Shirai vs. Kairi Hojo, or 2/21/16 with Mayu Iwatani vs. Evie.)

 

I'll put a link the Stardom section of the tumblr that I use for results/news.

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If you've watched some of their matches/shows before, enjoyed them and want to try to follow the promotion on a regular basis? Then yes it's worth it.

 

If you haven't watch them before and want to try it as a sample then I would hold off for now. They have yet posted any of their more hyped stuff from the last year or so it's better to wait till those match are available.

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  • 2 weeks later...

So they finished up posting the last Korakuen Hall show. Unfortunately, they only used the one ringside camera for the show. This hurt the main event tag match as when the action was split up the camera only focused on one side of it completely missing the other. Hopefully they can workout something to add at least another camera or share footage with Samurai TV.

 

The post match promos were the best part of the show. In about ten minutes they summed up the individual storylines for the three big stars, announced three main event matches (Io vs. Alpha Female, Thunder Rock vs. Hiroyo/Kagetsu, and Hojo vs. Hiroyo,) and promoted the next show at Korakuen. Something the WWE struggles to do with all of the hours of TV that they have in a week.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I'd recommend the first show, the 2/12/16 Nagoya. It does a good job of introducing everyone on the roster and the main event is really good.

 

Once they added subtitles and a second camera the presentation improves a lot. The interview segments are fun too.

 

Hope you enjoy it!

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  • 1 month later...

I signed up for the 2 week trial and have been enjoying it so far. There's often a huge disparity in quality between the opening matches and the main / semi-main of each show, but the stuff at the top of the card is really great. Io is probably the best active women's wrestler in the world.

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WAVE can have some shows that are pretty loaded with talent. Their main problem is that the booking is aimless. There is no real storylines, and their titles don't mean anything. They usually book short matches that are worked in a fairly spotty style.

 

I'm taking a wait a see approach with this because the first new show they put up has clipped matches, which is bullshit for a streaming service. I can understand older shows being clipped due to not saving the footage but taping a show knowing your going to be starting a service like this up and still clipping matches is just dumb.

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I've really been enjoying Stardom World so far. It's nice being able to watch every show, and it gives you a better appreciation for some of the workers in the promotion. They do a good job of pacing their content uploads, so by the end of the week I'm really anticipating the main event. The non-wrestling content is generally pretty good, although some of it (like stuff featuring the wrestlers in pajamas) gets a bit too close to "creepy Joshi fan" territory for my tastes. Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo both have pretty good English, and Kairi comes off as one of the most likable people on the planet after watching interviews with her.

 

As far as booking goes, my biggest complaint would be that they don't have a real midcard. Gaijin and freelancers fill that role when needed, but it's not permanent. It looks like they're getting ready to push Jungle Kyona and Hiromi Mimura up the card a bit, and if Yoko Bito's return is more than a fleeting moment they might be able to fill in a good local midcard.

 

It's amazing to think that Stardom has done so well after the Yasukawa / Yoshiko shoot incident, the departure of Karuga and Nanae, Act's later retirement, and the abeyance of most of their titles. Hopefully Stardom World doesn't drop dramatically in quality after the switch to a non-YouTube provider, although it makes sense that they would want to be able to avoid YouTube's geopolitical restrictions and capture a wider fanbase.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just out of interest, what is Act Yasukawa's current status? I know she retired last year and moved into managing Oedo Tai, but I've not seen her on the shows I've recently watched. For example, I'd have though she'd be on the 16/6 Oedo Tai v Thunder Rock card, but she wasn't. Oedo Tai still wear her t-shirt in the pre-match promos, so I guess she's still about, but it seemed odd to me.

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I believe she got some stage acting work or something like that. They announced that she was leaving for a while at the May Korakuen show but didn't say when she would be back.

 

Stardom announce the lineup for their 5*GP tournament. Here's the poster for the finals with everyone on it:

 

CmiYJzAWYAAYRKK.jpg

 

Looks like they are going back to the Stardom vs. World theme that they used earlier in the year.

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