April into May is my busiest time of the year, so please excuse this list being a touch less fleshed out than usual. I had to leave a bunch of matches I would have liked to write about on the cutting room floor, and the to-watch list is pretty hefty coming into May (I still haven’t even seen the Satomura retirement show). Still, hopefully, there’s something here you haven’t seen or at least an interesting opinion on something you have. Enjoy!
Mei Suruga vs Chie Koishikawa, Warring Era (31/3/25), ChocoPro
Mei Suruga and Chie Koishikawa’s wrestling relationship has never been one of equals. Not only did Mei start before Chie, but, well, she’s Mei. Everything seemed to come effortlessly to her as she danced ahead of the competition. Poor Chie has always been sprinting to catch up, working ten times harder for half the rewards. She may have boundless energy, but no matter how fast she runs, Mei is a speck in the distance, a target rather than a peer.
Or at least that was the case.
This match felt like a shifting of the tides. Not fully, Chie still lost, but there was enough there for it to feel seismic. Mei is used to having the run of things against her ChocoPro juniors, as she relishes bullying them on the mat in Ichigaya. It was an attitude she brought into this match, dismissively refusing to shake Chie’s hand as that Suruga cockiness came to the fore. Chie, though, was having none of it. She stomped across the ring to force her into paying the smallest of courtesies and, in the process, set the tone for how this would go.
Because while Chie didn’t win this match, she did force Mei to take it seriously. Early on, she had an answer to all of Suruga’s signature spots, countering her bullying into attacks on the leg as she worked it over with that ever-reliable stretch muffler. Every time Mei got a little ahead of herself, Chie was there to yank her back, and the longer that went on, the more Big Match Mei slipped out. She started fighting limb work with limb work, leaping from the top rope to stomp down on Koishikawa’s arm. Suruga is never going to completely ditch her playful attitude (it’s part of what makes her such an incredible wrestler), but she was forced to focus to keep this match under control. Whenever she let her mind wander for a second, Chie was there to punish her for it, working her way back towards that leg.
It’s not something many people can do to Mei Suruga. I don’t want to suggest she’s a selfish worker (I’d typically argue the opposite), but Mei is a show stealer. The person you can drop into a throwaway midcard spot and trust to charm everyone. It’s rare that she doesn’t end up being the centre of attention, but Chie wrested it from her, refusing to play Mei’s games and loudly asserting that this was her stage. Sure, it wasn’t enough to get the title or even proclaim herself as Mei’s equal, but it cut that distance down, forcing Suruga to sneak out with the victory rather than confidently claim it.
Chie is on Mei’s heels, and with how much energy that lass has, I wouldn’t be resting easy if I were the champ. She’s going to catch up with her eventually.
Aja Kong & Mizuki vs Hyper Misao & Pom Harajuku, Spring Tour in Fukuoka (6/4/25), TJPW
Two aspects of this match stood out to me. The first was the pure glee that Mizuki took from watching Aja Kong bully Pom and Misao. I’m not surprised. She is a devil child, and Aja is one of the great bullies, so it makes sense that she’d enjoy having a front-row seat. It was still funny, though. I’m not sure she looked that happy when she won the title.
However, the real gem in this match’s crown was a little moment near the start when the action tumbled to the outside. In the middle of Aja dishing out a beating to her two brilliant, if somewhat hapless, opponents, she took a second to find Mahiro and hurl Pom in her direction. We hardly need proof that Aja Kong gets TJPW (we’ve been seeing it for years), but that was the wrestling equivalent of raising the TJPW flag while singing ‘Upper Kick’. Not only does Kong seem to delight in popping by to mess around with Raku and co, but she’s so ingrained in the culture that she knows the deal. If something unfortunate is going to happen to someone, make sure it’s Mahiro.
Outside of those moments, this was a fun wee match where you got to see Pom and Misao try and nonsense their way around one of the greatest wrestlers of all time. If that doesn’t sound like a joyous thing, you’re almost certainly in the wrong place.
Emi Sakura vs Hiyori Yawata, ChocoPro #440 (6/4/25), ChocoPro
Is there a better introduction than Hiyori chanting herself into Ichigaya, interrupting Emi Sakura’s singing in the process, and then declaring that she has promoted herself from the leader of Team Hiyori to the owner of ChocoPro? I think not.
Even away from Hiyori’s nonsense (which was brilliant), this is the kind of match that makes me appreciate Emi Sakura. She’s outstanding at the big stuff. Twenty-nine years into her career, there aren’t many people I trust more to deliver in an important main event, but the Sakura I fell in love with is the one that exists in Ichigaya’s midcard. She’ll chop the shit out of you, but before getting there, she’ll have at least a moment or two when she finds herself being tormented by one of the rookies she helped bring into the world. Sakura wants to be a bully, the kind who bulldozes through a Hiyori without looking back, but it never quite works out. She’s cursed herself with a life of dealing with these overconfident brats who won’t do what she wants them to. If Yawata would just stand still, it would be over in seconds, but instead, she’s cranking Emi’s famously weak back over the window sill, and that’s not fun for anyone. Well, apart from us and Hiyori.
It’s also exactly what Hiyori needs right now. She is in the process of figuring out how to channel her brash, overconfident and lovable nature into something great, and having an Emi Sakura across from her is perfect. Not only for the talents listed above, although they help, but because she can keep everything ticking along. There were a couple of missteps from Hiyori littered through this match, the kind that remind you that despite her confidence, she’s still not even a year into her career, but Sakura was always there to correct them. To keep everything on course and prevent anyone from being ejected through the wind shield. Meanwhile, Hiyori was free to focus on the important things like giving her ChocoBar sign an upgrade to the main sponsor board.
When I say that matches like this are why I fell in love with Emi Sakura, it can also be read as why I fell in love with Gatoh Move and, subsequently, ChocoPro. They’re light and silly, bouncing along at a decent pace and finishing up in under ten minutes, making them the perfect easy-watching wrestling. Anything they lack in complexity, they more than compensate for in character. With Hiyori growing ever more comfortable in her role as the roster’s resident nonsense merchant, I suspect she might be about to enter a golden age of churning out fun, breezy matches on a weekly basis. I can’t wait.
Minoru Suzuki vs Yoshihiko, DDT Goes Las Vegas (18/4/25), DDT
It’s hardly a new observation, but no one takes Minoru Suzuki’s career less seriously than Minoru Suzuki.
What makes this match, is that it settles closer to what Suzuki is great at than 99% of his American dates. Every American indie wrestler who gets paired up with the big man wants to prove their toughness by going blow-for-blow with him. However, we’ve seen that so many times that it doesn’t mean anything. Everyone can trade blows with Suzuki. Unless you’re Karrion Kross and make a total shit show of it, you’re not going to stand out much. Besides, what MiSu’s always excelled at is being a bastard. Up against Yoshihiko, he was free to be exactly that, beating the shit out of the poor defenceless babyface with a gruesome attack that had him coming up battered and bloodied. The surly old prick was in his element as he hammered Yoshihiko against the post again and again.
It also served as that rare occasion when I have no choice but to praise American wrestling fans. The secret to DDT is that it doesn’t work without its fanbase. They commit to the bit, and if you put those same shows in front of people sniggering and yelling ironic quips, it would crumble away into nothingness. On this occasion, the WrestleMania weekend crowd got it. They went with the nonsense, buying into not only Suzuki’s beating but Yoshihiko’s comebacks. Sure, there was a bit of the brain-dead irony of the Western wrestling fan, but it was kept to a minimum, never getting in the way of the wrestlers. On the whole, they added to this match with their reactions rather than detracting from it, and that’s not something you can say about British or American fans too often.
Mostly, though, like all Yoshihiko matches, this was a masterclass for Suzuki. He got to show off, masterfully chaining together some work on the mat in between dishing out a horrific beating. I wouldn’t put him up with the best Yoshihiko opponents (Shoko Nakajima and Kazuki Hirata), but he brought a delightfully devilish vibe to the whole thing, which was exactly what I wanted from him. Give me this over MiSu vs generic American indie guy #672 every day of the week.
Joey Janela vs Sabu, Joey Janela’s Spring Break 9 (18/4/25), GCW
For the past couple of years, I’ve spent WrestleMania weekend with a group of friends, eating unhealthily, drinking too much beer, and inevitably falling asleep sometime during the show we’re all supposed to care about. (That last bit might just be me.) In that environment, what I look for from the overwhelming selection of shows going on inevitably shifts. When laughing with mates and being distracted by nonsense observations, you’re not really bothered about your work rate classics. Everyone is wrestling literate, so it’s not like we’re oblivious to it, but spectacle tends to take the place of excellently executed grappling.
And this was a spectacle.
From the start, there was a sense that things weren’t quite going to plan. Sabu was unhappy about something, and you got the impression everyone just wanted to get this match started before he decided he’d had enough. As fun as that was, though, it was nothing compared to what went down when the bell rung. It was a disaster in the best possible way, as a combination of structurally unsound barbed wire and wrestlers willing to launch themselves into it made for the best kind of dangerous cocktail. Everyone will have seen Sabu tumbling backwards out of the ring by now, but it’s one of those bumps that doesn’t really get old. It shares more DNA with some of the wilder backyard stuff than it does its more professional cousin, as it’s so out of control there’s no way it could ever be planned by anyone who has thought about it for more than 5 seconds. It also kicked off GCW going full bells and whistles, hitting the emergency button on sending some of their lads (I never remember who is who) to the ring, but also the Sandman in perhaps the most ineffectual save of all time. If it takes you ten minutes to get down there, you’re not helping anyone. If anything, you might be a hindrance.
Truthfully, I’ll never watch this again. It’s not going to go down as one of my matches of the year, or even something I think about that often (apart from when that Sabu bump pops up on Twitter). However, as an in-the-moment thing, it was perfect. A wild shitshow of a match that ended in blood and chaos, with no one seemingly entirely sure what was supposed to happen. It comes back to something I’ve mentioned before, but in a world where wrestling is increasingly performed by people who have perfected the art, there is something thrilling about seeing those who have done nothing of the sort. There will always be room for chaos, and for his whole career, that’s what Sabu has brought. It’s fitting that he ended with it, too. (Who are we kidding? There is no way this was his last match).
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