As mentioned elsewhere, I moved to Japan this month! So, hopefully you’ll understand that while I have been going to more live shows, getting time to write about them hasn’t been my main priority. I’ve still managed to have a ramble about a bunch of matches I enjoyed, but there were quite a few that I would have liked to talk about, and simply didn’t have the time. Fingers crossed things will be a bit less frantic next month!
If you follow me on some form of social media, you might be aware that I moved to Japan this month. If you don’t, well, I did. It would be a weird thing to lie about.
It’s relevant here because it means a lot of my wrestling viewing is going to change. I’m living in Tokyo, so now when an event like Grand Princess rolls around, I’m probably going to be in the building. That’s obviously a lovely thing for me, but it does mean having to rethink how I approach writing about this stuff. Being there live doesn’t really lend itself to a match-by-match review. Maybe, once I’m settled in, I will figure out a way to do it, but not having easy access to a pause button and enjoying a lemon sour or four makes picking apart the action in intimate detail difficult. I could, of course, rewatch when I’m home, and I may do that with shows down the line, but I’m quite busy at the moment, and this was a long one.
So, instead of going over individual matches, I’ve picked out a few big talking points to dive into. Let me know if you love, like or hate this format because I’ll inevitably be tweaking it as we go.
There is a lot to be said for wrestling lifers. They are the glue that holds the whole shebang together. The people who start promotions, who train the next generation and pass on their wisdom to those who, hopefully, will one day take their place. However, I also think there is beauty in those who don’t commit. In those who come in, do everything they need to do, and get out. It’s always sad. I still dream of all the Lulu Pencil matches we never got, including with the person I’m talking about today, but not everything needs to last. Apologies for pulling on a quote scrawled by a thousand teenagers, but maybe it is better to burn out than fade away.
The super rookie meets a new challenge. Credit: Here
If you keep an eye on the dates for this month’s matches, it will be fairly obvious at what point I got very busy. Thankfully, it’s all for good reasons, which I’ll probably discuss next month when it’s been sorted out. In the here and now, I still managed to get into a fair few matches before life got hectic, touching on a bit of New Japan, CMLL and even American indie wrestling. Of course, there’s also my usual favourites to go alongside them, so don’t assume I’ve sold out quite yet.
You’ve got a wee koala hanging off you. Credit: TJPW
The Max Heart final is always an unusual Korakuen. Positioned before Grand Princess, the gears tend to be turning for bigger matches elsewhere, so we end up with a lot of filler or build-up stuff. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it does mean the show has struggled in the past. Let’s see how they did this year.
It might be a new year, but some things remain the same, as I commit to rambling about whatever wrestling I’ve been watching each month. You can tell it’s January because I always enter a new twelve months motivated to keep up with as much different stuff as possible. Will these lists be slowly whittled down to mainly covering Marvelous, TJPW and ChocoPro by the time April rolls around? Probably, but it’s nice to convince myself 2026 could be the year I stay on top of everything. You never know!
A card that turned out to be subject to change. Credit: Ice Ribbon
Confession time. I was determined going into 2025 to watch more Ice Ribbon, but, as is often the case, I failed. Time, money and all those other boring things got in the way. However, with Ribbonmania closing out the year, I decided to pop back in, see what was going down and have a ramble about it. With that in mind, I apologise if I’m missing any context here. I’m sure there’s someone else out there who can fill in the gaps.
I make the same joke every year that it’s time for the most important show to happen on Ittenyon, so why would I stop now? Sure, Tanahashi has sold out the Dome, but is that as important as Pom and Raku teaming with Max the Impaler? I think not.
It’s an incredibly short ramble for December, as I’ve been busy preparing my matches of the year and, well, Christmas. You know, at some point you do have to put wrestling aside and actually talk to people, loath as I am to admit it. However, I am willing to go on a limb and say that no one else has ever focused on these three things in the same feature before, so it has that going for it. Enjoy!
For a long time, I didn’t have an obvious choice for my match of the year. There was loads of stuff I’d loved, but nothing that instantly cemented itself at the top of the pack. On top of that, I didn’t make a trip to Japan, and the only shows I saw live were AEW and EVE, neither of which I care about enough to place in that strata, even with the elusive in-the-room magic. However, when I sat down to start rewatching my favourites, I quickly realised that the answer had been staring me in the face the whole time. There was a match I loved above the rest, and it was the one that, in a lovely rarity, took place between my two wrestlers of the year.
Ramblings About Wrestling 