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).
Stardom:
Language wise: The best practice if you wanna be able to comprehend what occurs (outside of matches) is to:
A) Watch shows after they get uploaded to Stardom World. They will usually have subs by then (i.e. a few days after the events/shows happen) and they will upload the post-show interviews with subs typically.
B) Youtube. As you mentioned, can be all over the place so YMMV.
C) Some social media accounts, like Merawrestling (sadly solely on Twitter) will pop up lots of translations.
Do not expect English commentary on most shows, you’ll get it if it’s a big show, provided by the NJPW commentators usually.
Language translations may suffer as they also got rid of their transphobic fella who was working for them who also did translations.
Faction wise, a briefer:
STARS - Led by Mayu Iwatani (the John Cena of Stardom, per se). Mayu may be leaving the company in a few months time, we’ll see, to go to Marigold. They are the generic good guy faction.
Cosmic Angels - Led by Tam Nakano, they’re the most idol-y of the Stardom wrestlers. Tam/Poi dance and can sing, they all practice being cute.
God’s Eye - Led by Syuri, most of the group is your ‘I know martial arts and can legit beat the fuck out of you’ group (Syuri herself being a kickboxer and former MMA fighter in UFC). They ‘recently’ picked up Lady C and Hina after the demise of Queen’s Quest, and have been doing well.
Empress Nexus Venus (or EXV) - Led by Maika and Mina Shirakawa, the group formed after the demise of Donna Del Monda (when Giulia, who led it, left the company) led Maika to ally with Mina (who formerly led Club Venus, a breakaway faction from Cosmic Angels [hence why Mina dances a lot]) and picked up some ally’s.
Neo Genesis - The newest faction led by SLK (I think? Not sure if they ever confirmed leadership). They’re all young and in the same generation and have great talent.
H.A.T.E. - Led by Natsuko Tora, formerly Oedo Tai until a recent rebranding, they are your heel group that cheats at every opportunity.
Belts:
World of Stardom - The ‘Red Belt’, main title.
Wonder of Stardom - The ‘White Belt’, midcard title, but treated as a 1B to the World titles 1A, instead of an A and B situation.
Goddesses of Stardom - Tag belts
Artists of Stardom - Trios
High Speed - Special title for fast, multiple fall matches.
Future of Stardom title - For junior members of the roster until 20yo or 3 years in their career iirc.
NJPW Strong Women’s Title & IWGP Women’s Title - NJPW belts for their Japanese and English shows, controlled by NJ booking but on Stardom wrestlers as its their sister promotion.
Tournaments:
5 Star Grand Prix - Their G1 Climax.
Cinderella Tournament (coming soon) - Yearly single elim tournament for, usually, a shot at the White Belt.
Tag and Trios tournaments of whose name I forget.
And probably more!
Marigold:
Marigold has only been around for almost 1y now, starting in last April/May. Don’t rely on their website for anything other than checking show schedules, Rossy/Sonny do not update it otherwise 🤦♂️
Quality wise - The high’s can be Stardom high, the lows can be below Stardom lows. The roster is made up of a handful of people who jumped ship from Stardom when Rossy left, and a bunch from AWG who aren’t as great as wrestlers but are getting better. Plus this 1 foreign girl who did a Michinoku Driver so poorly that Taka had to take to Twitter to give her shit about it lol.
English-wise: Same general rules apply for Marigold iirc, except with their own Youtube and WrestleUniverse instead of Stardom World.
Faction wise Marigold only has 1 at the moment, which I think formed maybe 2 weeks ago so I haven’t had much time to look into it myself.
Belts:
Marigold World Championship - Duh
Marigold United National Championship - Midcard belt
Marigold Twin Star Championship - Tags
Marigold Super Fly Championship - For fast, highflying wrestlers 55kg or less
GHC Women’s Championship - Like the IWGP Women’s Title, this is a title from Pro Wrestling NOAH but similar to how NJPW has no women’s roster and uses Stardom, NOAH is using Marigold at the moment to host their title.
Tournaments:
Marigold Dream Star Grand Prix - Their 5STAR Grand Prix/G1 Climax.
And if you got any specific questions, feel free to ask!
Edit: Formatting
As someone who regularly tries and fails to keep up with Stardom this was a great primer on what’s what atm, thanks!
Welcome!
Amazing, thank you so much! I watch random matches here and there, and watched last nights event. Mayu is one of my favorites right now, which is why I’m wanting to get into it more. I know a handful of the more popular girls already. Not sure about the H.A.T.E. Clown lmao
Just watched it this morning lol.
Mayu is always fantastic and any match she is in (singles, at least) is guaranteed to be a banger. I’ll hate to see her go, if she does (which she almost certainly is), but she’ll be a huge get for Marigold.
As for the clown (Fukigen Death), for an explanation at least: She was this death metal rocker kinda character with a painted face (Death yama-san iirc) as a part of Hana Kimura’s Tokyo Cyber Squad back pre-pandemic. When the faction disbanded (after Hana’s death) she ended up in STARS as Gogiken Death, this colourful happy-go-lucky clown to fit with the other happy members of STARS.
Then she ended up being forced to join Oedo Tai as the result of a match and she became corrupted via chain smoking cigs and gambling on horse races (the paper she carries is the sports section with the betting results lmao).
The woman under the facepaint, Kaori Yoneyama, is a long term freelance legend who has worked everywhere for 26 years now and is the true workhorse of the wrestling world. A lot of Stardom wrestlers, as the biggest company, will hit 100 matches a year (if not a lil over) cause of how tours work. Kaori regularly hits 150+, almost 200 a few years in a row (2002-2004-) with only a few months off for an injury she had late last year!
I love/hate it. Really fucking funny. I subscribed to Stardom-World and found a spreadsheet of match recommendations, so I’m ready for this journey. Thank you for always being so awesome and taking time out of your day to answer my questions
No problem! Not sure how far into the past you’re going but I’ll give you the same advice I gave someone here a week or two ago: The current booker took over around April when Rossy was fired and his storylines kicked in approx. a month or so after so if you wanna get caught up on he current era (since you’re less than a year into it) that’ll be a good approx. area to start (though some stories and whatnot did extend 6 months or so prior to that with the dissolution of DDM, Queen’s Quest, etc.
I started Birth of Nova last night lol. I’m going all the way back. When I get a special interest I’m all or nothing
I can respect going for the long haul! lmao
I’m making good progress through the recommended matches. This shit is good. Haruka (the 9 year old) could fucking work. I wonder how good she would be now if she had decided to stick with it. Natsuki Taiyo and Nanae Takahashi are really good, but I believe they are vets. Taiyo and Yoshiko are absolutely brutal. My girl Mayu has eaten so many pins. Let her win!
I found out Mayu had a movie made about her. Runaway Wrestler. It was m and of hard to find, but I’ve got a YouTube link with timestamp if anyone is interested. Stardom played it at the end of a 5+ hour stream
Yep! If you ever saw/heard Cornette whining about Kenny Omega wrestling a 9 year old girl years ago, Haruka is who he was talking about. She sadly didn’t have a long career, only 20 matches in 2011 and that was it for her. I believe on Reddit years ago they mentioned hearing she was being bullied in school and likely dropped out of the business as a result (tho it could be a million reasons, she was 9 lol). Would have been nice to see her go for a longer career given how many joshi who start at that age ended up being phenomenal (like AZM)
Not sure about Taiyo (my early years are sparse in knowledge lol) but Nanae is for sure. She worked for All Japan Women’s Pro-Wrestling back in the day and is one of the 3 co-founders of Stardom with Rossy and Fuka (and of course later Marigold). Was also All Japan’s final WWWA World Single Champion (their main belt).
Does it have subtitles cause if so yes please link lol. Been waiting for the guys on Avistaz to upload subs with the copy of the film and they have yet to honour my request (damned dishonourable pirates lol)