After they battled to a time-limit draw on January 4th, Marvelous announced that this rematch between Ai Houzan and Senka Akatzuki would be under AJW shoot-pin rules. If you watch any old AJW rookie match (and a few involving more experienced heads), you’ll see the wrestlers properly grappling to get each other’s shoulders down for the three, and my understanding (although I’m far from the expert on this) is that’s because they were. They’re still wrestling (Ai started this match with a dropkick attempt), but there’s a touch of real competition in there.
And, to my surprise, I despised it. I was looking forward to this match, as that January 4th showdown suggested this pairing has something to it, but this took on a different vibe. Ai was the one with something to lose here. She’s nearly four years into her career and was up against a rookie with a handful of matches under her belt. It would be one thing being told to lose to her – that’s how it goes – but the shoot element changed that. You could feel Ai’s desperation to not be pushed aside by this new face. However, Senka is bigger and stronger than her. I don’t know if she has a legit wrestling background, but she was able to smother Houzan for the bulk of this match, holding her down as she did everything she could to escape. It felt like bullying. And not in a fun wrestling way, but actual bullying, to the extent that Ai’s screams of frustration and attempt to go after Senka post-bell all felt a bit too real.
Maybe I’m being soft. There’s also the possibility that I’m being worked and that this was all agreed upon, with Marvelous only presenting it as a shoot. You might well be reading this and laughing at me. Maybe, in the long run, seeing Ai struggle will win people over to her side, and this will be the start of something for her. But I can’t talk to any of that now. All I know was that it made me feel awful. I love Ai. She’s my wee feral wrestling child, who I’ve watched battle for years to make a dent. Has she been successful? No, but I don’t care about that. I care that whenever she’s in that ring, I am rooting for her 100%. Watching her be humiliated and seeing how devastated she was afterwards hurt, and while I am all for wrestling’s ability to draw out every kind of emotion, I don’t think it was in a good way.
Rightly or wrongly, I have faith in Marvelous. I trust the days of fuelling backstage tension between wrestlers and dropkicking rookies in the face are behind us. There’s no doubt that it’s tough (you only need to watch a pro-test to see that), but you can be tough in kinder ways, and everything I’ve seen from the Marvelous Dojo suggests it’s more good than bad. However, this felt like a touch of the bad. I hope I am being worked. That I am being soft, and that Ai actually put on a hell of a performance. However, it made me uncomfortable in a way that wrestling rarely does and that I’m not sure it should ever be aiming to do.
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I am inclined to agree, although not knowing what Chigusa said post match probably makes my opinion fairly uniformed. In the moment it just felt like a legit bad moment for Houzan that I hope can morph into something positive in the storytelling going forward.