Marvelous

[Kadaveri]

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

[Kadaveri]

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.

[Ma Stump Puller]

This alongside the Evito reviews has informed me that clipping is the greatest threat to wrestling bar none and should be almost always treated with disgust (unless it's a late 90's Baba six-man) 

Great thread idea btw, be watching this closely

 

[Kadaveri]

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.

[Ma Stump Puller]

Quote

I'm not gonna be watching another 2015 Marvelous show any time soon

What!? There's so much worth watching from that year, like, uh, erm.... *checks notes* 15+ Dump squashes on every card! Definitely not....that bad? 

 

 

 

[Kadaveri]

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.

****

[Kadaveri]

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.

[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

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 10/21/17 Review

I only have two matches for this show.

KAZUKI vs. Leon

This is basically a PURE-J showcase happening on a Marvelous show for some reason. Not much to say about it other than it's two good veterans who've wrestled each other loads of times giving a house show level effort with a lot of crowd engagement. It was fine.

**1/4

La Rosa Negra & Mio Momono vs. Rin Kadokura & Takumi Iroha

Rin & Takumi are the tag team NEW-TRA. They've been a tag team in Marvelous since May 2017 but I haven't seen anything earlier than this. Looks like those shows are only available by buying the physical DVDs in Japan. Maybe one day... Anyway this was good. The start is a lot of fun as Rosa does her dance entrance with the splits and then Takumi feels the need to demonstrate that she can do the splits to. Takumi also gets annoyed that Rosa's won the crowd over already and they're cheering for her. Mio Momono encouraging them probably helps. It does feel a bit like a light-hearted fun match but it turns into something a lot more hard-hitting over time especially once Rin starts throwing some shots heating stuff up. Everyone gave a good performance here.

***1/4

We then have a great show-closing segment where Mio is translating Rosa's comments or trying to. Rosa acts all deferential towards Chigusa, only to be informed that actually "she's the boss" and Chigusa points at Mio heh. They close the show with Rosa going around doing a money collection and I don't know why.

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 11/12/17 Review

We're now confirmed to have entered the era of the classic DIY Marvelous production. If that means nothing to you, well this show begins with a training montage of the roster to a very lively saxophone-driven backing music. One of the exercises was sitting on Miki Tanaka in a halfway squatting position on the ring apron. Why would you do this.

And then we get an inspirational speech from Chigusa on how your hard work and fighting with your hearts will inspire everyone in their lives, and I know this because it had English subtitles. I don't know who for. This is all followed by a retro video game style intro of the participants and card for the show (if I'm any good at identifying the Marvelous crew's graphic design traits I'm guessing Rin Kadokura made this), all with the "Alpha Video" watermark still visible as they were only using the trial version. God I love this cheapass company.

Big Bang Nicole, Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata vs. Chikayo Nagashima, DASH Chisako & Megumi Yabushita (W-Fix)

This is just a bunch of mundane unimaginative walking around hitting each other not very hard with weapons and KAORU on the outside interfering so much she might as well have been in the match anyway. I wouldn't normally go too hard on an opener but it's a bit weird that this goes 15 minute and ends in a time limit draw just when it looked like they were starting to wrestle something a bit more structured. It wasn't terrible but it was odd.

*1/2

Rin Kadokura vs. Ryo Mizunami

One-sided but a squash style match. Rin looked pretty good here (well so did Ryo but that's more expected for a 12 year vet) with her selling. The camera was VERY CLOSE to the action, which was good for when you could see how tightly their holds were being clinched in, but not so good when you're just watching Rin's foot for about 10 seconds for some reason.

**3/4

Ayako Hamada & KAORU vs. La Rosa Negra & Mio Momono

Mio & Rosa come out to the "Hey Mickie" song, which is a bit funny in a promotion where there's actually a roster member called Miki but nevermind hah. This time KAORU is in the match but we have the W-Fix crew from the opener running interference from outside. Not this again... Oh well it stopped after the first minute so I'll let that go, coz actually this turns into a good match. One advantage of seeing most of the match via the hardcam is you can see how Mio is constantly WORKING on the apron. She's constantly ready to be tagged in if needed, comes out a bit when there's a pin attempt to stop the heels breaking it up, she shouts at the referee pointing whenever the heels are doing something illegal. She's such a joy to watch. I was also pretty entertained by KAORU hitting Negra with a 2nd wooden board after Referee Tommy was too busy removing her first one from the ring. Mio was screaming about that one.

(example of Mio's apron work)

Misaki Ohata vs. Takumi Iroha

These two have an even better match in WAVE the following year but this is still really good hard-hitting stuff and I noticed some cool twists on the usual spots. It all happens in 2 seconds so it's easy to miss but there's a great moment where Takumi frantically side-steps a dropkick and almost loses her balance but recovers and kicks Ohata on the floor. Didn't come across as planned in advance and might not even have been. This also goes to a 15 minute draw, which is fine as it did feel like they were more figuring the other out in this match and the rematch will settle things. Makes the opener also going to a time limit draw kinda bizarre though.

***1/2

The main event was a comedy battle royale and I can't be bothered with that.

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 11/19/17 Review

This is an odd show as it's not even on Cagematch, it's just a single hardcam and appears to be taking place at some sort of outdoor dog show. You can hear dog noises all through the thing and they wrestlers take dogs to the ring as part of their entrances. I'm not going to be expecting much effort at this kind of show but I'm gonna watch it.

Rin Kadokura vs. Tomoko Watanabe

The first half of this was a load of nonsense but it was pretty entertaining. Early on Mio Momono on the outside grabs Tomoko's ankles on a rope run and trips her up. Tomoko gets mad and chases her all around the venue trying to hit her with a fan (for cooling yourself down I mean!), at one point she misses and accidentally hits someone in the audience with it haha. We have a bunch of comedy spots revolving around this fan including the ref hitting both Tomoko and Rin with it and Rin getting her hands on it and getting revenge on Tomoko. Then they start having a normal match and it's not very good. Rin's stomps in particular just looked really weak.

*3/4

KAORU vs. Takumi Iroha

This is surprisingly good for the first few minutes, they treat it like a serious match at least. That doesn't last long though until it turns into KAORU doing her outside brawling stuff with a bit of goofing off. I did like the spot where KAORU does her usual dropping her board onto Takumi's prone on the mat, only for Takumi to catch it and KAORU is stunned that her evil plan backfired!

**1/2

La Rosa Negra vs. Miki Tanaka

Dumb comedy. Not funny.

1/2*

Mio Momono vs. ???Act Suzuki??? Aki Shizuku

I have no idea who Mio's opponent is here, I just tried to make out the name by ear.* Anyway she's a big stiff who does a decent chokeslam at least but this was mainly Mio just running circles around her working hard and selling well. Maybe trying a bit too hard though. Decent enough.

**

 

*Nevermind I later worked out it's Aki Shizuku.

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 11/25/17 Review

The gimmick of this show is it's a High Spurt 600, i.e. all matches have a 10 minute (or 600 second) time limit.

KAORU vs. Megumi Yabushita

Stupid match. The match ends in 30 seconds when KAORU knocks Yabushita down with her board and goes for a moonsault but misses and Yabushita puts her in an armbar and taps her out. Well I wasn't really looking forward to this one so got my hopes up that was it, but Chigusa intervenes and restarts the match for some reason. They brawl a bit on the outside then come back in and KAORU throws Yabushita back in the ring, actually hits the moonsault this time, only for Yabushita to kick out at 2, roll her up in La Magistral and get the win, and then KAORU laughs. Well that was confusing and terrible. I will give it a quarter star for KAORU's moonsaults being pretty but that's it.

1/4*

Tomoko Watanabe vs. Yuu Yamagata

Silly no-effort comedy match. Nothing redeeming this one.

DUD

Miki Tanaka vs. Sakura Hirota

This wasn't really the place in the show where you want to see another comedy match like this one obviously will be. But at least this one was kinda funny. I did laugh at Sakura tricking Miki into falling over some trip wire she'd sneaking tied up.

*1/4

We then have a nice segment where Chigusa brings La Rosa Negra out to thank her for her Marvelous run and tells the crowd Rosa has a special person in Puerto Rico. She then says they have a Christmas present for Rosa, and it's an invitation for her and her daughter to come have a holiday in Japan. Rosa looks genuinely delighted and cries. Aww.

Aki Shizuku vs. La Rosa Negra

Rosa is alright in this but Aki is such a lumbering nothing. Again she does a good chokeslam but that's it. It's odd because she bumps just fine, it's just other than that she moves around like she's The Great Khali. If it's a deliberate attempt to come across as imposing it fails badly and she has no presence.

*3/4

Rin Kadokura vs. Takumi Iroha

For the first time Rin's out of the swimsuit and in her proper gear!  The match starts with Takumi missing a dropkick, which I thought was an interesting choice as usually that's a rookie kind of mistake but I guess it's more them working the 10 minute time limit gimmick. They do work the match really fast, but that probably hurts it overall as it's really just them taking turns to do a bunch of stuff before Takumi inevitably wins.

**

Maruko Nagasaki vs. Mio Momono

Well the main event is a pleasant surprise after such a bad show. It's so impressive how good Mio is this early on, she's already has her own stylistic quirks pretty figured out. Late on in the match there's a nice set of rollup reversals that people would later associate with Marvelous' house style in later years but Mio's the only one working like that at this point. Everything looked decent-good without many noticeable hesitations and the fast pace actually worked a lot better in this match as there were a lot less impact moves and more struggling for holds, so there wasn't much no-selling happening. I could have done without the forearm Chuckle Brothers exchange but it was a short one. This is worth checking out.

***1/4

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 12/16/17 Review

This will be a short one. I had a bad feeling when I saw how tiny the crowd was and that they were doing some kind of Christmas themed show, and was certainly vindicated.

Aki Shizuku vs. Kenichiro Arai

Aki's back to her "beating male wrestlers" gimmick, which I'm not into.

*

Megumi Yabushita vs. Yuu Yamagata (No DQ)

Not sure what really the point of making it No DQ is when Megumi's W-Fix buddies interfere all the time anyway. The highlight of this match was Megumi starting a chop exchange, or trying to, but Yuu lifted up her shirt and chopped her on the belly to Megumi's horror. She'd lift up her shirt and give her belly a rub a couple of times later on. Yuu does a lot of bad obvious thigh-slapping and the interference from the W-Fix crew felt pretty lethargic.

*3/4

Pandita vs. Tomoko Watanabe (Current Blast Tinsel Ropes Death Match)

I also don't really know how to review this other than it was very bizarre. They wrestled it like it was a No Ropes Exploding Barbed Wire Death Match except it was just tinsel... Tomoko took some harder bumps than I was expecting and pulled out a bazooka to shoot Pandita (who is a Panda) in the face with some kind of rocket propelled tinsel munition.

Bizarre

Chikayo Nagashima & KAORU vs. La Rosa Negra & Mio Momono

I enjoyed this though nothing I haven't seen before. Lots of good Mio selling for the first 5 minutes before tagging Rosa in. There was an interesting moment where Rosa had Mio stick her foot out to ram KAORU's head into it while she had her in the DVD position, only for Mio to fall off the apron (I'm not sure if that was deliberate or not) but she was soon back up and running over the ring to block Chikayo from breaking up a pin attempt, and then got kicked out of the ring at the other side where Megumi Yabushita was standing around, so Mio started fighting her as well! Nice bit of work.

There were a bunch of neat breakups in the finish stretch in an otherwise very cookie cooker but fine match.

**3/4

Kyusei Ninja Ranmaru, Miki Tanaka & Sakura Hirota vs. Natsu Sumire, Rin Kadokura & Takumi Iroha

Urgh what a dreadful main event. Well NEW-TRA's entrance was quite fun as they looked very disapproving of Natsu getting into their routine. But the match was just dumb comedy for 26 minutes, the kind of stuff you expect to only last about 2 minutes before they go back to having a proper match, but they did it the whole match and it was really long! I would have been so disappointed if I bought at ticket to this show.

DUD

[Kadaveri]

Davienne & Kyoko Kimura vs. Mio Momono & Renee Michelle - Marvelous USA 2/13/16

Just a little bonus since it's on YouTube and this is actually Mio Momono's debut. Strange that her first match was on New York of all places, but it's one hell of a debut. Does nothing but sell and work for a hot tag for the first half of the match. Kyoko Kimura is really mean grabbing her by the hair and viciously chucking her all over the place. It's good enough work that the local crowd actually get into it. Renee Michelle tags in and totally messes up a 619 by just whacking herself into ropes, but partially makes up for it by hitting a nice moonsault instead. This match is all about Kyoko vs. Mio though the other two mainly contributed by battling over the pinfall breakups. There's a lot of sloppiness and awkward stuff in here but just watch it as the impressive debut of a future great.

**

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 12/10/23 Review

Ai Houzan vs. Chihiro Hashimoto

A pretty well-worked competitive squash. Not a whole lot happens in the first few minutes but it gets a lot more lively after Houzan lands a headbutt, Hashimoto fights back and goes for her rolling senton (which she throws herself into with great explosiveness) but misses. Houzan fires up more and even gets a nearfall with La Magistral, but this only gets Hashimoto to decide to get serious and end this, and she pretty quickly locks Houzan into a really cool looking straightjacket choke like submission for the win. It feels like Houzan has plateued in her development lately so this was nice to see.

*3/4

Gigi Rey, Manami & Yurika Oka vs. Makoto, Promise Braxton & Unagi Sayak

Mainly felt like a showcase of the American women.I thought Gigi Rey had some pretty cool offense although she didn't show much more than that. Unagi looked a bit awkward at the start, like she attempted this double baseball slide move to knock both opposing tag partners off the apron but did it way too slow, but she seemed to get more into things later on.

**

IssI, Leo Isaka & Vinnie Massaro vs. Alpha Zo, Bryan Ishizaka & Viento

Before the match we're introduced to a new Marvelous trainee, didn't catch her name. Match was fun for what it was. Alpha Zo hits a super mean lariat in the closing stretch where he and Isaka got to work a more protracted section with everyone else outside, this was the best part of the match

**

Mio Momono vs. Tomoko Watanabe (AAAW Singles Title #1 Contender)

The amount of camera cuts in these entrances is very obnoxious. Please knock it off.

Similar start to her match with Ozaki in that Mio gets jumped at the start by the veteran and doesn't seem prepared for it. The opening minutes of this aren't very interesting with Tomoko just repeatedly hitting Mio with lariats, but it picks up after that when Mio does a well-executed Fujiwara-armbar counter to one of them on the outside. She also does a dive off the stairs balcony to the next row down but seems to miss Tomoko as she's up immediately afterwards, but bad camerawork meant it wasn't clear what happened. Something later I liked was Mio's little nerd-bait leg-selling when moving around after having been in a figure four earlier in the match.

The body of the match was quite good, Tomoko being a power wrestler meant she just had to hit the odd big bomb onto a constantly running around Mio to get something enjoyable out of it. One part that I didn't like those is this almost obligatory German suplex no-sell, but it was only one spot out of an otherwise good match. So Tomoko will be Ozaki's next challenger, but Mio appeared to have her shoulder up for an out.

***

Chikayo Nagashima & Takumi Iroha vs. Maria & Riko Kawahata (AAAW Tag Team Titles)

Riko screwed up the introductions by walking to the middle about to do her pose only for the ring announcer to shout MAAAAAAAARIA! Haha. I like how this opens. First it's Maria vs. Takumi. Maria tries for some of her amateur wrestling stuff (she should do this more really, would make her stand out more as she's better at it than most) and is able to put up a respectable showing against Takumi but eventually succumbs to the superior wrestler. They both tag out so we get Riko vs. Chikayo, but here the gap is more apparent as Chikayo immediately dominates. Maria runs in to bail Riko out of a hold, which succeeds, but they fail to double team Chikayo and Takumi runs in to take out Maria and we're back to Chikayo vs. Riko again. There's your dynamic set up.

This one-sided pattern continues for the next few minutes. The moment where Team Magenta manages to turn things around a bit is cool, as Maria manages to hit some offense finally by first countering Chikayo charging her in the corner by booting her in the face. After landing a couple of moves, she quickly tags Riko in to continue the assault. Their comeback comes by effective teamwork isolating the one opponent. Takumi sees Chikayo has lost control, and for the first time does something slightly unsporting by coming out of her tag corner and kicking Riko in the back as she's running the ropes, but in a cool moment, Riko looks pissed off at that and kicks Takumi back! You just felt her Level Up a bit in that moment, especially how Takumi sold it like it never occured to her that Riko would have the audacity to hit back like that.

Riko continues the offense, she literally has Chikayo against the ropes, but that serves to be her undoing as Chikayo drags her down with her and uses her smarts to wrap her up in a hold across the ropes and take back control. Riko should have tagged Maria back in really. Now Chikayo's back on offense and there's a mean streak to things now like stamping on Riko's hands and later sitting on her squashing her face into the mat and blatantly using the ropes for leverage until the referee admonishes her. Feels like she's dishing out punishment for the previous embarrassment. Maria thinks about running in to bail Riko out of a hold again, but again similar to the opening Takumi is right in there to stop any of that and then patrols the mat like a guard dog, and thus the champion team have re-established their winning dynamic from the opening few minutes.

Takumi gets in the ring now, and starts kicking the hell out of Riko to get revenge for the apron kick earlier. She tries to turn things into a kicking contest and goads Riko into it mocking how ineffective her kicks are with that patronising swagger, but Riko gets pissed and just slaps Takumi in the face! Bold move again. It didn't look like the most effective offense, but it's more that Takumi was taken aback at Riko's daring to not play by her rules.

And then OMFG GOD TAKUMI IS SHOOTING SHE'S FUCKING LOST IT SHE'S GONNA KILL THIS LITTLE BITCH HOLY SHIT DO YOU KNOW WHO I FUCKING AM! Man I wish Takumi would fire up like that a bit more often, maybe it's not her natural demeanour but she can kick some serious ass when something fires her up.

Takumi getting all angry might have worked against her a bit later though as she seems to get wrapped up in hitting Riko with some big moves that Riko counters with a superkick as Takumi charges at her (similar to Maria's transition earlier) to take her down, then hits a quick asai moonsault and goes for a pin, Chikayo tries to break it up with a double footstomp but Riko dodges and Takumi gets stomped instead. Unfortunately that sequence was mistimed, looked like Riko was a bit too late to move so everyone stopped awkwardly for half a second, though it wasn't match-destroying or anything just a bit immersion breaking. They get back on track, this was the first time the Champion team had someone run in to bail out the other, and not only does it backfire, but Maria runs in as well and they both hit their tag team offense to take it to the champions while they're on the backfoot, who can have no complaints as Chikayo ran in first.

Our next pairing in Maria vs. Takumi. It's entirely about Maria working Takumi's arm with a couple of cool transitions into armbars and she shows great spirit keeping them locked in despite Takumi's attempts to fight out. At one point Chikayo manages to fight off Riko tries to block her and boots Maria in the head, but Maria just rolls through and does not let go of that armbar. Takumi sells the arm and after escaping tags Chikayo in. We get another section of Chikayo establishing control so long as Riko is unable to interfere, she tries at one point only for Takumi to rudely grab her by the head and contemptuously throw her out of the ring like garbage. She does manage to get back in though and it's at this moment where, with a little help, Maria is able to fight Chikayo back and hits her with an Excalibur/Michinoku Driver. It looks like she flubs it the first attempt not being able to lift Chikayo up properly, and then gets her up the second time, but actually her struggling to hit the move fit the psychology of the match so it was almost a plus. Maria and Chikayo struggle over a bunch of rollups while Riko & Takumi scramble around on the ground in the corner, until Riko manages to escape Takumi's grip and hits Chikayo with a quick running kick, which is enough for Maria to get a proper rollup on her for a two-count.
Up to this point, every time Magenta manage to 'take the lead', it's either a counter to an opponent charging at them, or it's because they successfully managed to double team. This reverses on them here though, when Riko tags in a foolishly charges right into this Takumi powerbomb.

Takumi later goes for a swanton bomb without having hit that much damage on Riko, her moves out of the way. Furthering the narrative that Takumi underestimates Riko to her detriment. I won't go into so much detail for the finishing stretch (I rarely do this it's just this match had so much stuff that furthered the various narrative threads I felt like I had to mention so much), but it largely revolves around Takumi getting increasingly frustrated that Riko won't just die, and being unable to hit enough sustained offense to finish her off as Maria keeps getting in the way at critical moments. This all leads to the finish, oh it's so great. Takumi gets Riko into position for the Running Three and is about to hit it, but again she's underestimated her as she hasn't been damaged enough to hit that move successfully and she's able to wriggle out of it, then right afterwards Maria flies in to kick Takumi in the head, and Riko rolls up Takumi FOR THE THREE COUNT.

Oh my God, Takumi got pinned by Riko Kawahata. New tag champs

This was an excellently laid out match. I feel like I can play it back in my head because of how organically each segment lead into the other. There are a lot of flaws, mainly on the execution side of things that I there's no need to spend time listing so that does hold it back a bit. I'll also note that the pairing where Maria worked Takumi's arm didn't lead to anything later, but imo it was so brief it doesn't really matter, maybe a lost opportunity at worst. When you have a match with so much narrative to dig your teeth into and so clearly succeeded in its aims of elevating the junior team into a viable main event act, I'm going to lean towards the forgiving side for the occasional execution flub.

****

I'll just note at the end that there have been a lot of complaints online about Mio losing her match, but considering the main event was a big elevation of two juniors vs. a veteran team, it seems a bit misplaced to be upset that they didn't do the same kind of thing in literally the preceding match and undercut the impact of their main event. Mio is fine.

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 12/25/17 Review

This is another one of those Christmas themed shows. They play 'The Nutcracker' as part of the intro to the show.

Miki Tanaka & Sakura Hirota vs. Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata

A strange comedy match that went 12 minutes but would have been good if they kept it to half the length, as some of it was funny. Sakura starts the match dressed up as a Christmas tree. Tomoko gifts her some nappies for Christmas, but it turns out to be a trick and both Sakura and Miki end up with nappies stuck over their heads. Later Tomoko and Miki have a sumo style match for some reason, which Tomoko repeatedly comes out on top in. Eventually Miki manages to trip Tomoko and goes for a cover, but Sakura runs in to break it up despite Miki being on her team! Miki is pissed off and baffled, even Yuu Yamagata comes into the ring to ask Sakura what that was all about but it was just a trick so Miki could sneak up on Yuu and kancho her. Sakura then kisses Tomoko and they all fall down and Miki gets on top of all of them and gets a 3 count to end a ridiculous match. The part described was fun but unfortunately there was a load of boring stuff as well.

*

Rin Kadokura vs. Natsu Sumire

This is very strange because the first 8 minutes of this is just a total one-sided beatdown of Natsu by Rin... Natsu gets literally zero offense. I dunno if this was Rin getting revenge for the shenanigans on the last show but it doesn't really work because her offense isn't strong enough to put on such a prolonged beatdown and it just feels odd hierarchy wise. Natsu does eventually get a bit of comeback when Rin's kicking her ass on the outside when she swings a chair at Rin's head, but it only lasts a minute before Rin's beating her up again. They then drop this and we get what would have been a pretty good 5 minute 50/50 matchup except that feels weird because Natsu's apparently leveled up out of nowhere and... it ends in a 15 minute draw. Ok now I know what Rin's "shine" segment was ridiculously long.

*1/2

Kyuri & Maruko Nagasaki vs. La Rosa Negra & Mio Momono

Maruko is back and has brought another Ice Ribbon wrestler with her, who is not as good in a distinctively Ice Ribbon way. This was an enjoyable energetic juniors style tag. I liked how there were a few miscommunication spots from Rosa and Mio. I'm not sure if calling them 'spots' is even accurate as sometimes it just seemed Rosa was genuinely not understanding the instructions Mio was shouting at her in Japanese forcing Mio to improvise on Rosa not being where she should be, but in a way that worked. So whether it was planned or not it was still fun. This also ended in a 15 minute draw. At the end of the match they all made human swastika poses but Rosa refused.

**3/4

Chihiro Hashimoto vs. Takumi Iroha

A bit of a frustrating watch because these two clearly had a better match in them but they weren't going to do it on this show for whatever reason, which kinda makes me wonder why book it in the first place. It was very enjoyable even if it was a bit 'going through the motions' as they're both very good at what they do. Even the chopfest early was entertained me as at least they hit each other with some force and sold it, and didn't do it too long. Chihiro's amateur stuff is always fun to watch and Takumi brought it with the strikes to counter. Wasn't much psychology to any of it though. Then it just ends. Another 15 minute draw.

***1/4

I don't understand why you would book three 15 minute draws on the same show, puts a downer on what otherwise was a fine show.

 

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 1/6/18 Review

Tae Honma vs. Yuu Yamagata

Not much to say about this one. I enjoyed watching Tae get chopped several times across the chest and one on the belly for good measure, but I knew I was getting that. Then Yuu just won quickly. Fine for what it was.

*1/2

Miki Tanaka & Mochi Miyagi vs. Rin Kadokura & Takumi Iroha

I realised soon enough that I'd seen a clip of this match before but not the whole thing. This might be Miki Tanaka's magnum opus. She starts by being outraged that New-Tra's WAVE Tag Titles are not on the line in this match and demands it be turned into a title match. At least that's what I think was happening I don't understand Japanese. She ends up arguing with Chigusa at the production desk, I think Chigusa was trying to explain to her that these belts belong to another company she can't just sanction a title match on a whim but Miki wasn't having it. After several minutes of her screaming at people it's made an official title match. They do a posing ceremony, with Takumi pulling faces at the camera making a mockery of the whole thing. The match starts with Miki spinning out of the corner and charging at her opponents who double superkick her and pin her to get the win in about 5 seconds. After all that fuss lol. Miki's not gonna give up though and demands the match is restarted. After a bit more arguing we re-run the entire thing again including the posing ceremony with Takumi this time putting two fingers up when getting her photo taken, I guess to make clear this is the 2nd time she's had to do this. We restart the match and the exact same thing happens again but Mochi breaks up the pin on Miki just in time, the first time she's really done anything.

After that absurd but pretty funny comedy segment they then go on to have a pretty good match! Well there's still some comedic elements like Miki constantly trying to fight everyone, at one point Mochi just kicks her out of the ring because she's doing more harm than good. This is worth watching if you wanna see some very boisterous comedy, and since I thought it was funny it ups my rating a bit.

**3/4

Natsumi Maki vs. Tomoko Watanabe

I thought this was an interesting matchup. I soon confirm that this is the period where Natsumi's not quite figured out how to incorporate her very nice looking cartwheels into pro-wrestling, but for the most part this is really well-worked match/better than expected. There's a neat moment where Natsumi messes up a 'walk up your opponent' kind of move, and just as she starts trying to repeat the spot she doesn't get a chance to because Tomoko just nukes her with a lariat. Nice Nabe. Natsumi does some good bumping as well.

***

Chikayo Nagashima, KAORU, Megumi Yabushita & Pandita vs. Kyuri, La Rosa Negra, Maruko Nagasaki & Mio Momono

This is a ridiculous, joyous, chaotic mess of a match and I enjoyed every minute of it. The running joke is that it's a bunch of 20 year olds (plus Rosa) wrestling a bunch of middle-aged women and their main strategy is to tire the old women out by just running all over the place!!! Outrageous behaviour. But it gives us great sequences like this.

Mio and Maruko were the best. Kyuri was kinda irrelevant for 90% of the match although it's possible the camerawork missed her sometimes as there was a lot going on. The Panda didn't do much until towards the end when he tried to do a walk the ropes spot but he's not good enough to walk the top rope so just did the 2nd rope instead but then Kyuri shook the ropes and he still fell off. He later tried to do a frog splash but missed because he couldn't jump far enough. This panda is useless and cost the old women the match. Very fun main event.

***1/4

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 8/18/23 Review

Ai Houzan vs. Sandra Moone

Sandra is not very convincing with her strikes. She seems too hesitant and it's a bit weird when Ai is playing the physical underdog role here yet her strikes look more impactful. Sandra's powerbomb moves were good though, the sideways one she does looks unique at least. These two didn't seem to gel well.

*1/4

Chikayo Nagashima & Takumi Iroha vs. Itsuki Aoki & Unagi Sayaka

The photo on Itsuki's entrance video needs updating it must be 3 years old and she looks totally different now. This is another kinda weird match as it feels like they're not entirely sure whether to take this one seriously or not. It's actually Unagi who seems to want to go hard but then the others do some comedy spots and Unagi isn't good enough to elevate things in-ring. Chikayo attacking Unagi's nose was pretty good/funny though, especially when Itsuki got revenge by grabbing Chikayo's nose.

**1/4

Maria, Nightshade & Yuu vs. Mio Momono, Riko Kawahata & Tomoko Watanabe

Chigusa is going wild on the entrances announcing Mio as THE JAPANESE CHUCKY lol. Not sure how helpful that is. There was a lot of good stuff in this match, but it never really came together as a cohesive match. The best part was the brief Mio vs. Nightshade segment. Nightshade is pretty good, sometimes she's goes a little overboard with her evil monster mannerisms, but I did enjoy stuff like her menacing Riko not letting her escape to tag out.

**3/4

Bit of a nothing show.

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 9/3/23 Review

Hikari Shimizu & Riko Kawahata vs. Itsuki Aoki & Rina Amikura

Hikari and Rina are both former Actwres girl'Z wrestlers who're now part of the Colors offshoot unit. We get the obligatory comedy but they get it out of the way early. For some reason Rina seems to only do two moves for the first half of this match, bodyslams and that screaming splash move. There's a pretty entertaining chop exchange where Riko bares her chest and demands Rina hit her after demeaning her a bit. Decent enough.

**

Ai Houzan & Maria vs. Nightshade (Handicap Match)

Marvelous have screwed up uploading the match it's been put up at 1.5 speed. What a silly company. Shame coz this is surprisingly good. Right from the start Nightshade terrifies Ai by just screaming at her when she goes to shake hands. Ai doesn't want to fight Nightshade anymore and begs Maria to start the match. The rest of this is Ai & Maria treating Nightshade like a puzzle, trying to figure out ways to bring this monster down. They show some great camaraderie and I thought Ai looked particularly good here, at one point she defends herself by poking Nightshade in the eye but she'd been such a good babyface in the buildup that it didn't feel like she did anything bad. I liked the moment where Maria has the idea of airplane spinning Ai to use her as a weapon to whack Nightshade in the head with. Plus another good Nightshade showing.

***

Chikayo Nagashima, Takumi Iroha & Unagi Sayaka vs. Mio Momono, Sandra Moone & Tomoko Watanabe

Mio is disappointed that he attempt to spin into her streamers didn't work. We get some birthday girl bullying at first with Team Mio grabbing Unagi and bullying her in the ropes while shouting 'Happy Birthday', but eventually Mio starts overdoing it so Chikayo & Takumi feel the need to step in. This is a really well laid out trios match. Everyone gets in the match for about the right amount of time. The best part is the Mio vs. Takumi exchange. They make sure Sandra vs. Unagi never happens heh, Sandra's main contribution was a good suicide dive while a ringside brawl was happening. Tomoko & Chikayo are both solid. There was a nice moment where Takumi was going for her leg-lariat off the ropes, but annoying Unagi trying to be helpful misunderstood the assignment and grabbed Sandra Moone to hold her against the ropes, inadvertently saving her from the leg-lariat. Takumi looked pissed. I don't remember seeing this spot before done exactly like that, and it was pleasingly character specific.

I also liked a very simple exchange between Mio and Chikayo where it's just a couple of knees, but it's really good how Chikayo follows through on the push-off to deliver the knee, and then Mio sells it with perfect timing to get up in time to take the 2nd one but without ever looking like she's waiting for it. Good work.

This whole thing was a real good main event without anything especially good about it.

***1/4

[kas]

15 hours ago, Kadaveri said:

I don't remember seeing this spot before done exactly like that

This spot happened between Takumi and Mayu (of course it was Mayu) in a match against Hazuki and Momo https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/rr8en0/stardom_dream_queendom_mayu_iwatani_had_a_couple/

 

Love the reviews btw

 

[Kadaveri]

4 hours ago, kas said:

This spot happened between Takumi and Mayu (of course it was Mayu) in a match against Hazuki and Momo https://www.reddit.com/r/SquaredCircle/comments/rr8en0/stardom_dream_queendom_mayu_iwatani_had_a_couple/

 

Love the reviews btw

 

Heh well remembered.

 

Marvelous 9/12/23 Review

Hibiscus Mii & Maya Yukihi vs. Maria & Riko Kawahata

Firstly it's a bit weird how Maya went from main eventing a Stardom PPV to working the opener of Marvelous shows in about 6 months, and that's been her trajectory all across the scene. What happened there? There's a funny moment at the start where Mii & Maya make their entrance but Chigusa has a word with them, dunno what was said but it resulted in them going to the back and doing their entrance all over again but doing sexy dances to the ring this time (I saw sexy because Chigusa was shouting "YEAAHHHH SEXXXYYYYY" all the way through this so that was clearly the intention). Well it looked like they were all having fun The match itself wasn't much, although there was a nice energy to it. The most memorable moment was Maria messing up a springboard strike move but just about saving herself from landing badly.

*3/4

Bryan Ishizaka vs. Leo Isaka

Thought I'd give this a chance. Eh. Probably shouldn't have bothered. This match was in two halves. The first was a ringside brawl which absolutely sucked. They worked at about 0.25 speed with zero energy. The total opposite of a "wild" brawl. The 2nd half they got in the ring and had a decent basic match, but previous few minutes left a bad taste in my mouth.

*

Azusa Inaba & Tomoko Inaba vs. Itsuki Aoki & Yuu

A battle of the little kickers vs. the power wrestlers. This went a bit too long and got repetitive at parts but it was a good match and they were throwing their strikes well. I thought Aoki looked better than Yuu when it was time to exchange some clobbering as she was working with the Karate Sisters and reacting to them rather than just doing her usual spots regardless of what they were doing.

***

Ai Houzan & Unagi Sayaka vs. Ayame Sasamura & Sandra Moore

We start off with the long awaiting Sandra vs. Unagi showdown. It goes down with Unagi saying she wants to teach Sandra some Japanese and whispers something into her ear, but then attacks her as Sandra tries to teach what she learned. They then both miss some moves and tag out. Heh ok. The best part of this match was Unagi getting clobbered by Ayame. Ayame hits hard. It looks like we're going to get a strike exchange but after taking some hits Unagi just goes for a codebreaker rather than hit back, which I thought was a good twist.

**1/2

Chikayo Nagashima & Takumi Iroha vs. Mio Momono & Tomoko Watanabe (AAAW Tag Team Titles)

Packed main event for a small show here. The energy in the room really changes as soon as this starts, right from the entrances the crowd seems to have got a lot more hyped and serious all of a sudden. There's a bit of a scary moment early on where Takumi backs Tomoko into the ropes for an Irish whip, but something goes wrong and Tomoko's neck gets caught under the top rope. Takumi puts her in a headlock on the ground and Mio quickly runs in to stomp on Takumi, fights Chikayo in the corner and forces Takumi to come over and throw her out of the ring. I guess this was really just buying Tomoko a bit of time to recover from the ropes mishap but it was an organic way to do it, as by the time that's all over it's clear Tomoko is fine and they get back to fighting.

I'm steering away from going into play-by-play mode so I'll just say everyone has their working boots on here and things are laid out logical to produce a great match. One spot I'll highlight is this little bit where Tomoko has Chikayo up on her shoulders to take a crossbody from Mio but it gets countered into a pin. Very Chikayo counter. It's also notable how, even though she's still the underdog, Mio takes a lot more of the match than she would have done a year ago. There's a good few minutes where she's just kicking Takumi ass and I'm not sure I remember her ever straight out be in control of Takumi for so long before this.

There's a big turning point where Tomoko catches one of a Takumi's kicks to turn it into a dragonscrew and then follows up with a Figure 4. Mio tries to hold Chikayo back from breaking it up for a while but eventually she gets through, how hard she was fighting to break up that figure 4 sells how much trouble Takumi's in. It gets worse for her when she takes another Tomoko dragonscrew in the ropes, followed by a Mio dropkick to the knee on the apron and then another dragonscrew. The story of that match now is that Takumi's knee is hurt and she needs Chikayo to take the lead for the rest of the match. That's where we get Mio's big control segment on Takumi about 11 minutes in working the leg, with Takumi having to be saved by Chikayo running in to break things up.

This whole layout has thrown expectations out the window. Takumi's the Ace of the company but circumstances have pushed her down to the bottom of the totem poll. There's a moment where it looks like she's about to get a comeback in, hoists Mio on the top turnbuckle to do something but her leg gives out climbing up the ropes and it all falls apart, Chikayo has to run in again to take out Mio to keep Takumi in the game.

The finishing stretch is fantastic. Mio looks like the best babyface in the world in those last 5 minutes or so. I read the main narrative of this match is Mio really wants to show she can hang with Takumi as an individual rivalry, and she certainly achieves that. However, this was a tag match, and her constantly gunning for Takumi meant Chikayo could constantly wreck things for her and her and Tomoko weren't working as a team as well as Mio and Tomoko weren't. You can interpret this as Mio leveling up, but also showing she has some immaturities holding her back. It's great stuff and a great match.

****1/4

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 1/28/18 Review

Back to watching stuff from the beginning again. I know most of this stuff isn't going to be good but I still get some enjoyment out of seeing the core roster develop and knowing where they'll end up.

Kakeru Sekiguchi vs. Megumi Yabushita

This match feels like it's only here to get Megumi and the W-Fix crew a bit of heat. The match is predictably very one-sided as Kakeru is from Actwres girl'Z and less than a year into her career here. Unfortunately Megumi isn't interesting on offense enough to make this entertaining, her beatdown segment goes on way too long and just kinda buries Kakeru more than anything else. We do get a finishing stretch which was ok but too little too late to salvage this.

*

Miki Tanaka & Sakura Hirota vs. Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata

Dumb low-effort comedy match where the comedy was mostly unfunny. I will concede there was one funny moment where Sakura tried to have Miki catapult her as offense only to be bounced back into taking and inadvertent backbreaker from her own partner, mainly coz of the absurdity of it. But apart from that this was a waste of time.

1/2*

We next have a segment where Chigusa introduces the American wrestler Aja Perera, who'll be wrestling for Marvelous under the name Momoe-chan. She is now working for WWE as the referee Daphanie LaShaunn if anyone recognises that name, I never pay attention to WWE's referees. Chigusa also shouts at ASUKA/VENY who is in the crowd for some reason.

Chikayo Nagashima & KAORU vs. Mio Momono & Yumi Ohka

First time seeing BOSS To Mammy! More used to seeing them in Pro-Wrestling WAVE. At the start of the match W-Fix hand out masks to everyone, not wrestling masks I mean the "don't spread infectious diseases" masks and Mio gets upset about it. I don't know what's going on exactly but am finding this funnier than the actual comedy match. This was pretty fun I guess but it had some awkward moments where the action just kinda stops. Surprised that Yumi got the win in this one I assumed Mio would be taking the pin.

**

Natsumi Maki & Tae Honma vs. Rin Kadokura & Takumi Iroha (NEW-TRA)

Natsumi and Tae are both from Actwres girl'Z and debuted in 2015. I'll just note that NEW-TRA's entrance is delightfully dorky. They come out in light-up LED clothes holding glowsticks and dance to their electric mix of Dvorak's New World Symphony, but the lighting is really low so you can barely see them apart from the lights so we just have to use our imagination that they're doing really cool dance moves heh. This was mostly a good match, I thought Natsumi looked pretty good with her selling here and she took a huge bump on the neck off one of Takumi's Germans. The issue with the match though is none of it really seemed to flow together even if everyone played their roles fine.

**3/4

In the post match they did an angle where it looked like Natsumi joined up with Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata's LEVEL 5 group. We'll see if that goes anywhere. Another nothing show though.

[Kadaveri]

Marvelous 2/18/18 Review

Not a good show so let's just get this over and done with.

Megumi Yabushita vs. Miki Tanaka

The most entertaining part of this match was the start where Miki was upset that Megumi wouldn't shake her hand so pushes her in the back very petulantly. The match itself was largely just sitting around in bodyscissors and half crabs. Bizarrely there was a moment where Miki was out of breath from being in a submission so long that she needed to stop for a moment and Megumi even passed her a bottle of water and let her catch her breath in the ropes for about 30 seconds before restarting. I don't know if that was meant to be funny or what but it ended up just making Miki look useless.

1/4*

Chikayo Nagashima & KAORU vs. Momoe-chan & Rin Kadokura

This was a pretty good showing considering who is involved, especially when the match was actually dragged down a bit by Tommy doing her annoying "Nooooooooooooo!" schtick way too much making herself the centre of attention. I thought Rin looked good on her hot tag and she even got a believable nearfall on Chikayo which got a big reaction from the audience and it felt like she was getting over a bit.

**1/4

Sakura Hirota vs. Pandita

This was just stupid.

DUD

Kyuri, Maruko Nagasaki & Mio Momono vs. Natsumi Maki, Tomoko Watanabe & Yuu Yamagata

Natsumi has now joined Level 5 following the events of the last show and is fighting Mio Momono's army of hyper-active dungaree-clad little pests. I couldn't help but notice Kyuri was all over the place with her timing multiple times in this match and constantly slowed everything to a halt whenever she got involved. She's probably always been the least of these 3 who regularly tag together but I've never seen it be this obvious. The best segments here were when Mio and Natsumi faced off and we got lots of cool battles over rollups, and Tomoko coming into to lariat everyone was fun. I actually don't remember Yuu doing anything heh. This was mostly good except when Kyuri was making a mess of things.

**3/4