Conventional wisdom dictates that we all eventually morph into our parents. It doesn’t matter how different a road you might walk down, nature or nurture will lead you back to the door you were born behind. That certainly seems true for Mei Suruga. The deeper into her career Mei gets, the more Emi Sakura creeps into her game. We’ve seen it with her bullying of youngsters in Ichigaya, and now we get the joy of watching her go in as the dominant champion against a wrestler she trained. Miya Yotsuba was Mei’s first student to debut, and while she perhaps doesn’t feel like she’s walking in Mei’s footsteps (more on that in a second), she was desperate to prove herself the equal of her teacher.
And Miya went big to do so. A gear change is always something of an event, but it’s even more of one when it is as drastic as it was here. Miya switching to black wasn’t quite Saori Anou wearing white to face Mayumi Ozaki, but it was a signal of intent – a move away from her bright green rookie gear into something a touch more serious. It also felt in keeping with how Miya found herself in this match. When she first made her challenge, she spoke about worrying she wasn’t good enough. It wasn’t until HARASHIMA and Soy spurred her on (a beautifully human moment that I adored) that she seemed to find the confidence to push herself forward. The gear change feels like a natural next step. Not to hit another cliche, but you dress for the job you want, and this was Miya’s attempt to convince the world, and perhaps herself, she was ready to be champ.
Impressively, despite her nerves, she followed it up in the ring. As I mentioned above, Miya doesn’t feel like a Mei disciple. If anything, and I have talked about this in the past, she feels like an alternate universe version of what Darejyo may have become if Mitsuru Konno had fallen in love with wrestling and stuck around. Those who have been around long enough will remember Mitsuru and Mei’s ideological battle over their approach to wrestling. For Mei, this has always been fun. She wrestles to win, but she also wrestles because she loves it. For Mitsuru, and I think for Miya, this is a fight. There is joy that comes out of that, but it has always been a secondary thing.
That played into their approach to this match. In the early going, Miya was the one cutting off her trainer’s antics, stopping her signature spots before they could develop. In return, she brought the big hits, barrelling through Mei as she dished out heavy forearms and shoulder blocks. Like her partner Soy (more on her in my matches of the month), Miya brings a real physicality to her wrestling, embracing a simple yet effective approach. As the Soy-like spear towards the end showed, she’s at her best when she’s launching her body at her opponents.
Despite all that, it’s not perfect yet. Yotsuba still fell into a few pitfalls, adding a meaningless backwards roll to a move or getting a bit too into a daisy-chain of counters in the final minutes. I also, and I hate to say it, think it’s probably time for her to ditch the Miya Hammer. It was a fun move for a rookie, but in a match like this, it lacks the oomph needed to be an effective fall. Do the same thing to Suruga’s face, or even the back of her head, and it might get there, but it’s hard to ever imagine her winning a title with an awkward club to the back.
None of that takes away from how impressive this was, though. Of course, Suruga also played her part. She responded to Miya by doubling down, becoming more Mei-like with every passing moment. You could argue she slipped out with the win at the end, but it’s equally true that she did it in the most Suruga way possible, by being a step, and a touch of genius, ahead of her opponent. Perhaps that, at this point in their careers, is the difference between them. Suruga knows who she is, while Miya is still figuring it out. When Yotsuba gets there, though? When she turns up at Mei’s door, having slowly taken on more and more of the Big Apple’s confidence, well, then we might just have a monster on her hands.
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