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).
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).
That sounds so familiar to me. I think she might have been at Historic X-over 1. I’ve watched so much of this in the last few days that I’m slipping here. There’s definitely a few that I’ve seen or at least heard of before though. But it would’ve been once offs and cameos in US promotions so I can’t really pinpoint when and where.
Just have to say, I’ve had her entrance music stuck in my head on a loop since I woke up yesterday morning. I’ve definitely seen her before, maybe even in TNA. And she’s a wrestler I’m for sure keeping an eye on right now.
You got it!: Queen’s Quest (AZM, Lady C and Saya Kamitani) defeated Donna Del Mondo (Himeka, Mai Sakurai and Thekla) by pinfall.
Never worked for TNA, but she did have 1 match for ROH at Supercard of Honor 2024!
Weird, I’ve definitely not watched that ROH PPV but I’ve definitely seen Maika somewhere before. But that actually goes for a few of these women, and I’m probably mixing things I’ve seen lurking on Reddit with things I’ve actually watched.
You’ll have to forgive me because I’ve now got decades of wrestling in the faulty hard drive in my brain and the filesystem is probably a little corrupted by now lol, so a lot of dates and metadata is missing.
I feel ya lmao