When I started to put together my end of year list, my initial feeling was that I wouldn’t include this match. It seemed too obvious, too boring. I’m well aware that’s a fault of mine, a need to point towards the unnoticed rather than accept when the thing in front of me is just as special, but I long ago made peace with that. Besides, it was easy to double down on that feeling when friend-of-the-site Unmanned Local Train posted their writing on it, a piece that beautifully captured so much of what made it great.
However, when I sat down to rewatch the match, I realised quickly that ignoring it wasn’t going to be an option. You see, something has changed since I first watched it. In the last few months, I have recommitted to going through everything on the GAEAISM YouTube channel in chronological order. It was a project I started a few years ago, but like with so many plans, I fell off with it fairly quickly thanks to life. Now, however, I’ve got the bug again, and I’ve raced through most of the ’90s output of a promotion I’m increasingly convinced is the greatest of all time. In doing so, I completed an arc that started with my initial watching. I fell in love with Meiko Satomura.
And that’s not to suggest I didn’t like Satomura before. Of course, I did. She’s Meiko Satomura, the first joshi wrestler I ever saw live, and a living legend. However, if I’m honest, it was always more respect than adoration. She was, just like this match, too obviously great. As I dived into this world for the first time, working my way out from that initial Stardom-heavy toe in the water, I was always more likely to fall for the charms of Lulu Pencil or Pom Harajuku than a near-perfect Satomura. However, going back to the beginning meant she was no longer just that. In early GAEA, she’s not the finished article, but rather a somewhat self-serious teen who has been tossed into an ocean bristling with legends and left to swim for shore. She’s the rookie charging across a ring, waving her arms wildly as she flies into the corner. She’s a kid trying to bear the burden of being handed the legacy of Chigusa Nagayo. I’ve no longer only seen the end of the journey, but the beginning, too, and that makes all the difference.
You could write an essay on any of the performances in this match. Manami, burdened by the pressure of being Meiko’s final ever partner weighing down on her shoulders, throws her everything into it, buzzing around the ring, taking her licks and daring to hand out a few of her own. Like Meiko back then, she’s in a land of giants, but much like her trainer, she refuses to let that crush her. Then there’s Big Hash, the loyal disciple to the end. She might be standing across the ring from Satomura, but you never lose the sense that she has the back of the woman who helped forge her. Ready to throw herself in the way of a bomb to make sure this all comes together. Finally, Aja Kong, the wrestler who every fucker with a podcast is desperate to tell you isn’t who she once was, but who, if you actually watch, you quickly realise has simply found countless other ways to be brilliant.
That’s for a another day, though, because this was never really about them. It was about Meiko Satomura. The final act is what pushes it into brilliance. As Satomura kicks out of a Big Hash powerbomb, desperately grabs onto Kong’s arm to counter a falling elbow drop and stands ready to face, for what must be the thousandth time, that bin being cracked over her head, she sparks with the grit and steel that got her this far. She may never have picked up the mantle of Nagayo, carrying women’s wrestling in Japan into a new golden age, but she stuck with it. Through the dark ages, through a shitty warehouse in England, and back to this stage, a sold-out Korakuen Hall, where if you think she is going to die quietly, then you’re a fucking fool. You can almost hear that teenage girl who faced down those legends screaming at her through the years, demanding that she keep fighting. That she kick out more time to keep her career going for just that little bit longer.
The bell ringing wasn’t really the end of Meiko Satomura’s career, though. And no, not just because of the delightful coda, where she and Aja take on a makeshift team of wrestlers desperate for one last shot at her. Not to get overly sentimental, but her career lives on in what she created. It’s in Manami, Big Hash, Iwata, Oka and Yuna. It’s in the countless young girls she inspired to turn up to wrestling training for the first time, and the scene she helped ensure was still there to carry their dreams. It survives in the matches that we will all continue to watch. I can’t imagine not loving the wrestler who gave us all of that. You’d have to be a goddamn fool.
You can watch Sendai Girls on Wrestle Universe: https://www.wrestle-universe.com/
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