August saw me attend some wrestling live as I put myself through the nightmare that was an MJF vs Will Ospreay match to see AEW at Wembley, alongside a wee jaunt to RevPro and EVE. More on that later. It was also another relatively busy month for me, so I haven’t quite hit everything I would have liked to see, but that’s just how it goes. There’s still plenty of good wrestling to enjoy!
Toga vs Rika Tatsumi, Princess Cup (3/8/24), TJPW
There is a particular moment in this match that has stuck with me. For most of the action, Toga found herself at the mercy of the violent whims of Rika Tatsumi. However, towards the end, with one glorious counter, she managed to hoist Tatsumi up and bring her crashing down with the Rock Bottom she has made her finisher. It could have been the moment that changed everything. The fans in attendance certainly thought so, the noise levels rising as they willed her on to make a cover. Unfortunately, she was too exhausted. She fell back, taking a second or two longer to crawl over to Rika’s prone body and giving the White Dragon the time she needed to recover. When she did, Rika made no mistakes.
It was one of those wrestling moments that captures the beauty of real sport. It’s the ball dropping to a non-league striker in the FA Cup third round against Man City in the six-yard box, the net gaping. For one glorious second, you can believe that it could happen. Despite the gap of billions of pounds of infrastructure and playing talent, the world has aligned to let your hero break through and do the impossible. Sadly, as most sports’ fans know, the real world usually comes crashing in. 99 times out of 100, the keeper is out to gobble up the ball, or Rika Tatsumi reminds you who she is. Sport is pain.
What makes sport special, though, is the dream. The dream that this time it will pay off, the ball will hit the back of the net and for one glorious second, everything in the world will be perfect. Toga and Rika captured that magic here, and while, sadly, Toga didn’t get her moment, she kept the hope alive that it could come. Whether it’s her or someone else, the dream will never die.
Magenta (Riko Kawahata & Maria) vs Team 200kg (Chihiro Hashimoto & Yuu), 8th Anniversary (8/8/24), Marvelous
In the aftermath of this show, I stumbled upon someone whining about the result of this match on Twitter. Sadly, I’d been subjected to that person’s opinion before, so I know they’re actually pretty unpleasant (and not just for their wrestling taste), but them pissing their pants about Magenta losing the belts is yet another example of someone who has seen the result while paying no attention to what actually happened. Yes, Maria and Riko lost, which was a bit of a shame, but they did it in a way that was so clearly part one. Having won the belts and held off several veteran pairings as champions, they came up against a roadblock that wasn’t willing to budge. Team 200kg are just too big and too powerful, so now they have to go away and learn, figuring out a way to comeback and regain the belts they lost. Fucking hell, it’s not even a particularly complicated story!
I’ve been trying to get less frustrated about bollocks like this recently, but it all plays into an ever-growing feeling that most fans don’t actually like wrestling that much. They’re into the stuff around it. They enjoy fantasy booking and comparing attendance numbers, but when it gets down to what happens in the ring, 99% of it washes over them. When they occasionally do let themselves get excited about the thought of a match, they rarely go the actual mile and consider the execution. So when they’re presented with Maria and Riko coming up against a challenge that is too big for them, stumbling under the power of 200kg despite their fantastic teamwork, all they see is two young wrestlers losing. And as anyone who has followed joshi for a while will know, there is nothing these people hate more than young wrestlers losing. It’s their obsession. Does Big Hash and Yuu being in their early 30s undermine it? It should, but they presumably put reading in the same bag as watching something. It just takes up too much time, doesn’t it?
It’s all the more frustrating because this was Magenta’s match. Yuu and Hash did Yuu and Hash things, but it was their desperate attempt to overcome the pair of brick walls they’d been presented with that drove the action. There was a period in the second act where they looked to have found the way, isolating Hashimoto and chipping away at her, building to a fantastic two-count off Maria’s Excalibur. However, when that failed, the ending felt inevitable, When 200kg came back into the action, they did so with a vengeance, smashing through Magenta’s resistance and ultimately taking the win with relative ease. Maria and Kawahata found themselves in the ring with something they didn’t have an answer to, and rather than coming out the other side feeling like they’d been screwed, I was excited to see them go off and find the answer. That’s the story of this match, not some nonsense concocted by someone who doesn’t actually like wrestling.
Mei Suruga vs Trans AM Hiroshi, ChocoPro #387 (9/8/24), Gatoh Move
As Mei Suruga built to her battle with Emi Sakura at Korakuen Hall, the focus had been on the more serious side of the Apple Girl’s wrestling. We’ve seen her thrust into a variety of difficult singles matches as she tries to concoct a plan to take down her mentor. However, as great as that’s all been, I do sometimes crave a bit of silly Mei. Therefore, it was a delight to see her and Trans AM Hiroshi take eight minutes to dabble in some nonsense. There wasn’t much depth to this match, and my enjoyment of it was partly influenced by being in a sad moment when I watched it, but I can’t deny the chuckles it induced. Hiroshi always brings a healthy dose of levity when he turns up in ChocoPro (usually via yoga or singing), and Suruga relished going with it. They seemed to be having a lovely time.
In the process, Suruga and Hiroshi even found a way to play it into that serious match at the end of the month, as Referee Emi Sakura responded to being hit one too many times by Suruga’s apple pillow by ripping it to shreds. It left poor Mei distraught, as she collapsed on the mat surrounded by the former insides of her favourite apple. To make matters worse, it appears to have left the recently established Ringo Village in trouble. (I’m not quite sure why the pillow was vital to the running of this place, as Mei hasn’t yet explained the governmental or financial systems in place. As far as I can gather, it may have been holding a prominent position.) You can’t experience that kind of heartbreak without wanting to do something about it.
It was classic Gatoh Move, as they took a slice of silliness and used it to add one more gripe between Suruga and Sakura, all while making me happy in the process. That’s efficiency for you!
Rika Tatsumi vs Ryo Mizunami, Princess Cup (10/8/24), TJPW
I feel like there are a lot of similarities between Rika Tatsumi and Ryo Mizunami, although they’re perhaps not instantly obvious. They’re very different people who don’t wrestle similar styles, but their broader roles are where I see the connecting tissue. Tatsumi and Aniki are reliable. Now, that’s a descriptor you could interpret as damning with faint praise. Reliability very rarely translates to greatness. However, that’s not what I mean here. Rika and Aniki’s reliability comes from their versatility. There is a reason Aniki works for nearly every company while Rika is entrusted with everything from messing around with rookies to title matches. If you ask Tatsumi or Mizunami to do something, the odds are they’ll do it better than nearly anyone else.
And that’s what made this such an exciting match for TJPW to throw out on a relatively small show. It’s not that long ago Aniki vs Rika wasn’t on our radar, with only a stroke of luck leading to Mizunami taking up this semi-regular position in TJPW. I didn’t have a framework for what this match would look like because it’s not one I’d ever considered. Despite that, I wasn’t surprised to see these two click. While the opening leaned into their playful sides, with Rika sneaking out of the ring before attacking Mizunami from behind, it was also key to giving Tatsumi the upper hand. It meant that for perhaps the first time, Aniki was on the defensive in a TJPW setting. She’s been positioned throughout her run as an upper card gatekeeper, dominating matches and putting people through their paces, but this was a chance to see her show a bit of fight. She started hitting harder, turning this into a battle as she fought back from being dragged behind early on.
When that happened, we saw a touch of the Rika Tatsumi who has tended to emerge against Miyu Yamashita in the past. Someone who knows they are at a disadvantage but is unwilling to back down from the challenge. She not only tried to fight back against Aniki but offered herself up to the chops, baring her chest to take a beating. The White Dragon still went for the throat and those ever-reliable leg attacks, but there was a sense that she wanted to match Aniki at her own game. We know how stubborn and driven she is, even if it’s often hidden behind a devilish smile, and Aniki pushed those buttons. You felt that it wouldn’t have been enough for Tatsumi to win. She also had to prove that she was just as good as her foe.
Those ideas are all still on the table, even after Mizunami won. With Yamashita spending more and more time abroad, we haven’t seen Tatsumi get the chance to throw herself at an impossible challenge, and while the ideal is obviously to have her eventually overcome Miyu, Aniki feels like a perfect stand-in. Who knows if there are more plans for this match, but there should be. They deserve more time and a bigger stage to dig down into what they can do.
Emi Sakura vs Sayaka, ChocoPro #388 (12/8/24), Gatoh Move and Mei Suruga vs Sayaka, ChocoPro #389 (18/8/24), Gatoh Move
The perception of Gatoh Move and the reality often seem several miles apart. People see the unusual venue and bright atmosphere and assume it’s wacky and off-kilter. Don’t get me wrong, they do have a lot of comedy and delight in occasionally poking fun at wrestling, but the reality is often the exact opposite. Gatoh Move’s philosophy revolves around somewhat old-school, simple and logical booking. Think back to the depths of the pandemic, when ChocoPro was arguably at the height of its powers, and they were essentially doing studio wrestling, just with the action confined to Ichigaya rather than a traditional American setup.
These matches provide a more recent example, with the two sides of the then-upcoming Korakuen main event facing Sayaka on back-to-back shows. The wrinkle in the story? For Sakura’s match, Mei was the referee and for Mei’s, well, you can probably figure out where I’m going with this. It was a beautifully simple setup that allowed for all kinds of shenanigans, particularly from the heel-leaning Emi Sakura. A big part of this feud is that Mei might be technically good enough to beat her mentor, but Emi has all those years of experience to back her up. Where Mei is carefree and joyous, Sakura is focused and driven, willing to bend the rules to keep the next generation in line. Here, Emi used that to her full advantage, not only taking advantage of any opportunity to get a dig in at Mei but also using the fact that Suruga was much more inclined to feel sorry for dragging Sayaka into this whole sorry mess.
And Sayaka was their secret weapon. I’ve said it before, but if she were ever inclined to quit a couple of the countless other jobs she has to focus on wrestling, she’d be a monster. At the moment, her in-ring work is a bit rough around the edges, suffering in the ways you’d expect from someone who doesn’t give this stuff her full attention. However, the other things, the intangibles, are all there. Sayaka knows how to project herself and brilliantly got over her building frustration at the nonsense happening around her. Perhaps even more importantly, she always comes across as a threat. In the grand scheme of things, she doesn’t win that many big matches, but she has such confidence in her abilities that it doesn’t matter. When Emi and Mei piss her off, there’s still a sense that smiling violence is about to be unleashed on their arses.
It’s also all so neat. Suruga vs Sakura doesn’t need a whole lot of build because their story is built into the last five years of Gatoh Move, but something like this adds that little extra sprinkle of tension, pepping things up as the days ticked down to Korakuen. Plus, Sayaka is rightfully aggrieved, making it easy to position her as the challenger for either wrestler coming out of that show. It was some intelligent, well-thought-out, long-term booking that gave everyone something to build on in the future. There’s nothing ‘wacky’ about that.
Arisa Nakajima & Sareee vs Nanae Takahashi & Chika Goto, Summer Gold Shine (19/8/24), Marigold
So much of this match is brilliant in the way you’d expect it to be. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that throwing Arisa Nakajima and Nanae Takahashi at each other for one last spite-fuelled battle is a good idea. They jammed it full of hard slaps and vicious throws, each one of which would be enough to take me out of commission for a week or two. When you add Sareee to the mix, it’s such an easy win for everyone involved that I don’t have much to say about it. Everyone reading this knows what they’ll get from this recipe.
However, we did have one wildcard in there: Chika Goto. I don’t want to suggest GoChika has never been hit before because she has, but it’s safe to say she’s not the natural fourth in this match. Arisa, Sareee and Nanae are part of the same legacy, all dedicated to bringing violence to this world. That’s not quite where the former AWG performer comes from. As Nakajima threw her around by her hair and hammered at her with thumping forearms, there must have been at least a part of her that was wondering how the hell she ended up here.
And yet, she did it. She walked into the ring with these monsters and gave her fucking all. I’m not going to claim GoChika was on their level, she wasn’t, and she’ll probably never be, but damn, do I respect her attempts to be so. When she first walked into an AWG ring, she was, to put it bluntly, a bit shit. Back then, this match would have been a murder. However, she’s caught the bug and worked her arse off to get to the point she is at. The fact that I’m using one of Arisa Nakajima’s last-ever matches to focus on her says it all. She’s reached a level I don’t think anyone could have predicted, and fair play to her for it.
So yes, watch this and enjoy all the bits you’d expect to enjoy, especially as we’re not getting any more new Arisa Nakajima matches (more on that here). However, remember to pay a bit of attention to the odd one out. She’s earned it.
HIMAWARI vs Mahiro Kiryu, EVExTJPW (24/8/24), EVE
Watching Japanese wrestlers wander out into a little building somewhere in London and discover that people aren’t only glad they’re there but know everything about them is a joy. Don’t get me wrong – I find the Britwres chanting culture as annoying as the next guy. People love to claim it’s inspired by football, but what wrestling fans have never seemed to figure out is that football fans react to the game, picking their chants based on what’s happening. In contrast, Britwres tends to barrel over the top of the match, yelling whatever ‘funny’ idea has popped into their head regardless of what’s going down. Thankfully, that wasn’t the case here, and whether it was people shouting HIMAWARI’s name to get a response pre-match or the demands for Mahiro to apologise, everyone made sure these two felt at home.
Truthfully, the action wasn’t anything special. It was the kind of undercard match you could see a couple of times a month in Tokyo, and if I hadn’t been there live, there is little to no chance it would have made this list. However, I was there live, and that makes all the difference. Because when you’re in the room, and you can hear the thump of HIMAWARI’s forearms or get to see Mahiro enjoying revelling in the boos when she went after the hair, it makes all the difference. Things that seem every day on a screen come alive, and the joy of something like the Mahiro apology is amplified by being in the room. Her delight that this group of people on the other side of the world knew the gimmick was enough to make this special by itself.
It means this is a match of the month that I’m not entirely sure counts as a recommendation. I’m not saying you shouldn’t watch it, if you’re a TJPW fan you’ll have a nice enough time if you do, but I can’t imagine it will blow you away. This one came from being there, enjoying some of my favourite wrestlers and hanging out with some of my favourite people. Unless you can replicate that, it’s probably not going to have the same effect, but you can give it a go!
Bryan Danielson vs Swerve Strickland, All In (25/8/24), AEW
I’m writing about this one before I go back to rewatch it (which I am planning on doing). Not because I’m worried it won’t hold up, I’m certain it will, but because I think zoning in on the details will alter my feelings. I was in the cheapest of the cheap seats at Wembley, high up in the gods where we could see the ring, but everything else was a bit unclear. Moments like Danielson’s declarations of love to his family or Birdie’s reactions weren’t visible from where we were sat, and even when they appeared on the video screen, they were easily missed when alternating your sight between that and the ring. When you’re that far from the action, a lot of the intricacies slip through your fingers.
And yet, this was still incredible. I’m not a Danielson guy. That’s not to say I don’t think he’s one of the greats (I do), but I haven’t followed his whole career and built up those years of connection. My admiration and respect for him came later, with the WWE run and the matches I’ve dived into from his past. However, watching this match, I realised that he perhaps means more to me than I realised. Sure, the copious number of beers I consumed before and during the show probably helped, but for the 26 minutes these two fought, the American Dragon meant everything to me. I was crying when he made his entrance, so Christ knows what would have happened if he’d lost, but I was clinging to every second of this match, willing him to push through.
Not to repeat what I was said about HIMAWARI vs Mahiro, but wrestling becomes such a different experience when perched up in the gods of a stadium. When I watch at home, I’m unpicking it, trying to fit it all together and figure out what works and what doesn’t. That’s how my brain works. Ten pints deep, such thoughts are gone. Not only was I too far away, but I was too emotionally invested to consider it. I complained that wrestling fans have less in common with football fans than they think before, but my reaction here was closer to the handful of times I’ve watched Aberdeen in a cup final. There was no analysis, just pure emotion.
Something that Swerve and Dragon deserve all the credit for drawing out of me and countless other people in that stadium. Sure, I’ll eventually rewatch it and start figuring out what worked and what didn’t, but that’s small-picture nonsense. With the big picture, they created a masterpiece. It was a thrill ride, with moments like Swerve no-selling the Busaiku Knee having me groaning in despair, sure that it was the beginning of the end for my hero. And isn’t that the whole point of this stuff? I love being a nerd about it (I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t), but there’s magic in the air when a match makes you forget all that. Instead, you’re living and dying on what happens in that ring. You don’t get many of them, but when they come, you have to hold them tight because who knows when the next will come around.
Mei Suruga & Uta Takami vs Mizuki & Haru Kazashiro, Princess Cup Final (25/8/24), TJPW
I wonder if TJPW knew what they were doing when they paired Uta and Mei up? Suruga has spent a lot of her career inhabiting the little sister role, be that affectionately (Baliyan Akki or Aoi Kizuki) or as a wee pest (Chris Brookes), but having now brought some of her trainees through, she’s morphing into a big sister. It shouldn’t be a shock that she’s damn good at it. Uta and her have been in two matches together, but they already feel like two halves. Takami is the scrappy youngster willing to follow her sister into the depths of hell, while Mei is more than happy to be that terrible influence while also providing a touch of protection. It’s a delightful dynamic that I’m hoping makes its way to ChocoPro. If nothing else, I think getting a chance to wrestle in Ichigaya would greatly benefit Uta’s development.
The other joy of this match is that when Mei and Mizuki are in the ring together, it brings the Sakura out of the rabbit. Seeing Suruga bond with one of her rookies, Mizyupon got a bit petty about the whole thing, dragging poor Haru into a similar charade. It wasn’t quite the easy chemistry of Uta and Mei, as (the always slightly awkward) Kazahiro got forced into prancing around the ring with Mizuki. Then again, I appreciate her attempts to bond. I’m sure this means the next time she finds herself facing Haru, she’ll pull back on the devilish bullying…
Most of all, Mei in TJPW brings a sense of freedom that is a joy to revel in. She’s comfortable there, which lets her off the leash from trying to impress and allows her to have fun. When Suruga’s having fun, the wrestling tends to be great, and it wasn’t just Uta who benefitted from it, as she had some exciting interactions with Haru, too. She’s been an infrequent guest there, but I would be more than happy to see her take on the semi-regular spot that people like Aniki have been entrusted with, and this relationship with Uta might be our gateway to that. How could you split them apart? They’re adorable!
Ramblings About Wrestling 
“football fans react to the game, picking their chants based on what’s happening”
Whilst I don’t disagree that wrestling fans could pick their chants better, the above isn’t my experience of football, particularly when the match is rubbish/not going your way and all the old classics come out and/or some little scrote in the home end is playing up and we spend five minutes abusing him etcetc…
I think that’s still a reaction to the game, though. It’s just a reaction to it being shit. I find wrestling fans do similar even when it’s good.