Hello SquaredCircle! Welcome to our Weekly Discussion Thread!
What have you watched lately? Seen any great matches? Have suggestions for things to watch? Anything not getting covered in other threads that ya wanna fill people in about? Questions about promotions, wrestlers, ‘the business’ or more?
Feel free to post below!
(Reminder, this thread can and will contain spoilers for possibly any show. Spoiler tags are not required in here, but if the show just happened try and keep spoiler talk it to its respective discussion thread for the first day).
I’d say that’s understandable. I’ve been watching for about 3y so my own experience won’t match a new watchers. When new wrestlers come along I get the benefit of just need to learn 1-3 new names at a time, you’re stuck with most of a full roster’s worth of learning atm lol.
The Stardom website’s roster page was one thing I had to cross reference like crazy trying to memorize peoples names (even if the name is in kanji, the page url is in English so you can see their names there easily) and learning who goes where faction wise, if you have not visited yet.
(Mind you unlike NJPW who lists everyone who ever blinks inside a NJPW venue regardless of company affiliation, freelancers aren’t listed on Stardoms page so people like Tomoka and Azusa Inaba aren’t listed despite being on almost every show for a year now, as they work for JTO).
I’ll get around to checking out official pages and stuff, for now though I’m just trying to avoid spoilers. I’ve already spoiled one future feud between members of the same faction (at least I hope it’s still in the future and not even further back because I am for damn sure looking forward to it now) while trying to look for translated promos on the Stardom YouTube page (and failing).
So for now, I’m still doing this mostly blind and probably reading into feuds and dynamics a little bit and making up my own head canon based on what I can piece together. But once I’ve caught up or am close to it, I do intend to do some more thorough research and bookmarking of good resources.
If you don’t mind me asking YET ANOTHER question. I think you mentioned that when management changed, 6 wrestlers walked. Am I past that point yet or is it still coming? And if it is still coming, do you mind telling me who it is that walks so that I don’t get too attached or anything?
Never worry about asking!
Rossy was fired February 5th (and his planned booking continued for a month or two). The wrestlers who left to join him in Marigold left on or around *googles* the third week of March so you probably already missed them cause I think you said you were starting a month or so after that, but it was:
(Everyone else in Marigold came largely from AWG, Ice Ribbon, or other rando indies like the gaijin ladies).
Ah so it’s definitely already happened from where I started. All Star Queendom was April 24 I think. Glad to know because a little bit of worry has been creeping in while I’m starting to figure out who my favourites are. Like, I would be devastated if I lost Yuna Mizumori now after just finding her. She gives the impression that she’s having the absolute time of her life every time she’s out there. Her and Jody Threat from TNA would be a bonkers tag team.
I definitely recognise a lot of those names, so they do seem like fairly high profile losses though. But I might catch them soon elsewhere. Not gonna do too much more exploring until I can name the Stardom wrestlers without jumping between web pages. But while Stardom and TJPW are the main two on this website, I have also spotted Sendai and Marigold floating around. So I’ll probably at least check it all out eventually.
Yuna is fantastic! She came in from (iirc) Chocopro (which is another one, free on youtube, fantastic, but nontraditional, you’ll get it, it’s where Emi Sakura of AEW usually is as she owns it) and had to earn her way into Cosmic Angels as Tam was quite harsh on her, but she’s now basically in the position of the main one who recommends new members to the group. When they do trios they frequently have split up with Yuna leading the ‘junior members’ team (to Tam leading the seniors).
Sendai my only interactions with really are when they come to Stardom/New Blood shows or vice versa, but DASH Chisako, Mika Iwata, Chihiro Hashimoto and Manami are all great. Manami you’ll see of in the 5STARGP as she participated iirc, Mika Iwata you’ll see later in the year as she has a program with Saori Anou of Cosmic Angels that goes back and forth.
Marigold aside from who I mentioned have some good people on the roster (Chiaki, Chika Goto, Amarei Kouki, Miku Aino, Natsumi Showzuki several of which have won and traded around titled by now). The other half of the roster does vary. One of the non-Japanese women on the roster tried to do a Michinoku Driver that was so horrid 2 weeks ago that even Taka come on social media and told her to not fucking do it cause it looked like shit lmao
Edit: Oh and Marigolds website is flame broiled arse. Aside from the schedule page its not updated since last may lol
Tam Nakano is another one that has been intriguing me a lot, probably because she was the first one I saw that was involved in an obvious non-title storyline. The ‘kawaii’ thing really doesn’t do it for me but watching her go from the end of some sort of odd couple relationship with Aja Kong to picking up a stray Starlight Kid, she seems much more interesting than the ‘kawaii’ lets on. She also comes across to me like she may possibly be missing a marble or two lol. And while I’m at it, Natsupoi also comes across as much more of a wild child than first impressions would give. It’s actually hard to pin anything down to a subculture and have certain expectations as far as Japan goes lol. Because you’ll have someone in a white frilly outfit with a ‘kawaii’ gimmick coming out to symphonic metal entrance music and acting generally unhinged. One of my favourite Natsupoi moments so far was watching her have a good munch on someone’s arm at ringside, then looking at the camera with crazy eyes and wiping her mouth lol.
Also one of my immediate favourites before I even knew much about her. Love her style, entrance music and general attitude. She gives me video game character vibes lol. Like she would fit well as a Tekken character.
I also just want to also mention, because where else am I going to get this all off my chest. But the potential feud that I saw and am now very much looking forward to involves Syuri & Ami Sohrei. Both also immediately caught me from the first show. Honestly if I could ever get to see Syuri vs Ami Sohrei vs Lady C vs HANAKO, I think I would be in heaven. But Syuri vs Ami Sohrei will be more than enough to sate me for now (please don’t say I’ve already missed this).
Honestly though, at this point there’s rarely a match where I’m not rooting for at least one person in each corner. Unless it’s Oedo Tai. I love them but they beat up (and often steamroll) all my favourites so I also hate them lol.
I have heard about this promotion before and from what I understand, it’s one of the more wild and wacky promotions as far as storylines go. Probably right up my alley and I definitely need to check it out too.
Cosmic Angels (and out of all of them, Tam/Poi the most) lean hard into the Japanese Idol shtick. It’s part of the reason Mina Shirakawa dances, she used to be in CA way back when. Tam herself mentally is fantastic. This woman writes pages of lore on her social media for her big feuds (and is possibly influential in the booking). Her matches will always excel.
Also don’t be fooled with Saori, she has perfect resting bitch face but shes apparently a big dork according to the rest of CA lol.
I’ll break your heart off the bat, don’t expect Syuri/Sohrei lol. Ami is Syuri’s right hand woman basically, most tenured in the group along with Syuri so they don’t have m, and i’ll spoil it for you now but Ami gets injured a couple months ahead of where you are right now and is out until…like this week or next week lol. That being said, I love them both and both are fantastic.
Very wacky. Most of their shows (the ones that arent huge ones) take place at Ichigaya Chocolate Square, which is basically a small room with a mat, and fans sitting right up to the edge of it. No ropes, no turnbuckles, and a lot of creativity lol
Ok this is embarrassing but I checked the promo I saw and I confused Ami Sohrei with someone else… To be fair to me though, not only was it a shocking scene but I tried to unsee it as soon as I saw it, in anticipation.
It was actually a wrestler called Himeka. And it was a press conference scene where at first Syuri and Himeka seemed really aggressive towards each other, only for Himeka to fucking kiss Syuri?! And it also sounded like she made a pun afterwards about Syuri sounding like yuri lmao. NOT what I was expecting to see in a Japanese promotion.
I feel pretty shitty now that I thought it was Ami Sohrei (and a little disappointed if I’m being honest). I’ve only seen her in multi women matches so far and I’m probably a bit overloaded with new wrestlers to keep track of right now. Plus I only watched the promo once and my eyes fell out of their sockets and I immediately started jumping to conclusions lol.
Honestly not all that surprised to hear that she’s a creative mastermind. I definitely got the impression right off the bat that interesting non-title match storylines are kinda her domain.
lmao! no worries, it happens. As for Himeka…yeah that was def Himeka! LMAO. She was fantastic, the ‘Jumbo Princess’, was Maika’s tag partner back in those days in DDM. Unfortunately that promo was from (if I’m seeing the date right) April 2022. Himeka went on to retire in April of 2023 (in good health and spirits!) and hasn’t really been seen since (aside from being spotted in the crowds, and 1 appearance as a ref(ish) for a match at Nao Kakuta’s self-produced show last July, which was a good match lol).