I started writing a full review of this show, only to realise that there were a few matches I had very little to say about. They weren’t awful, or even that bad, but it’s hard to wrangle opinions on everything. What am I going to say about another Titus Alexander vs Starboy Charlie match? They seem like nice lads, and Titus gets Marvelous in a way only a handful of foreign talents have, but them wrestling each other is what it is. It was for a WWE belt, for Christ’s sake. So, instead, I’ve picked out some talking points that I do have something to say about.
A Mixed Bag When It Comes To Presentation
I’ve always had a lot of love for Marvelous’s presentation. I dare anyone to watch the entrance ceremony on this show and not get goose bumps. It’s the kind of pomp and circumstance Chig has always excelled at. I even quite like the small mistakes scattered through the production. It makes me smile that someone had managed to mess up the teams the rookies were on for their entrance videos, meaning they were both, at least on the big screens, introduced as each other. It might have been salvageable if they weren’t also both wearing white. Still, Marvelous has always had a bit of jank around the edges, and that’s part of why I was drawn to them. It’s the wonderfully human part of their presentation.
Which is why it also sucks that someone backstage has clearly figured out how to use AI. Look, I’m no expert on this shit (I’ve never touched any of it outside of whatever Google has shoved into my life), so I’m not going to give a lecture here, but the research is easy to do. Plus, it didn’t add anything to this show! One of the first things I fell in love with regarding this company was the fact that Chigusa Nagayo was holding a camera, and the entrance videos were clearly made in PowerPoint. That’s so much more endearing than some AI nonsense.
I think every wrestler tempted by AI could learn from Uta Takami’s Twitter. Uta, in her delightful ways, regularly throws something together in what I’m going to nicely call Photoshop, but is more likely Paint, and it makes me smile every time. There is so much personality and Uta-ness in those little pictures, and if she were to swap those out for AI, I’d be genuinely gutted. I feel similarly about Marvelous leaning that way, and I hope they don’t embrace it too much. They’ve got far too much humanity for that.
It’s Yamashita’s Turn to be the Outsider Veteran
I haven’t yet had a chance to go back and rewatch the original to see if this is a valid comparison or simply an easy one, but it was hard not to think about Miyu Yamashita vs Meiko Satomura when Miyu walked into Yokohama Buntai. The circumstances aren’t identical. Miyu was at the top of a young promotion, holding her own in a small pond, only to be introduced to a shark. Senka is still not in that spot. She’s surrounded by veteran faces, all of whom are ready to make sure she doesn’t get too far ahead of herself. However, in the sense that this was an outsider Ace coming in to teach her a few lessons, the similarities were obvious.
And it made for one of my favourite Miyu singles matches in a while. I’ve always loved her in this role. Whether it was schooling Natuspoi back in the day or even just going up against a young TJPW wrestler, I think she’s great at being that Ace while also highlighting someone’s strength. She kicked Senka around here, laying into those strikes, and making sure the precocious rookie understood what she was up against. However, she also made sure the kid got her moments. That she was able to barrel through some of that offence and show off her brutal simplicity. We don’t often get to see Miyu in a match this gritty, but it worked for her, and it made Senka look great in the process. This was a very different challenge to an Aja Kong or a Chris Hero, but she faced it in the same bull-headed way.
I really hope this surprise friendship between TJPW and Marvelous continues. Marvelous have been keeping their cards fairly close to their chest recently, only really working with Sendai and Marigold on a regular basis. However, they have some history with more light-hearted promotions like AWG and Ice Ribbon, and slotting TJPW into that role in 2026 would make a lot of sense. Both sides feel primed to learn from each other, and if there is any chance of making this even a semi-regular thing, I think they should leap on it. If not, well, the two interactions we did get were great, and Senka has surely learned a thing or two from being kicked in the head by Yamashita.
Some Shit Never Stops Being Cool
The sight of Aja Kong standing in the ring, staring up the ramp at the Crush Gals, gave me goosebumps. Yes, there was a touch of, ‘and then the bell rang to it,’ but even a few minutes of Aja Kong vs Chigusa Nagayo still rocks. They know how to make the most of it. It was just a shame it was in such a cavernous building, making it that much harder for the noise to swell at the moment two legends came face-to-face.
That match wasn’t only about them, though. I’ve already touched on the mistake with the rookies’ entrance above, but that aside, these were some strong debuts. Marvelous are keeping the shoot-pin thing going, and there was a real scrappiness to everything they did together. It’s worth pointing out that Ruka Amahane is 13! The fact that she got into the ring with two of the greatest wrestlers of all time and didn’t just burst into tears is an achievement in itself. It’s not like 19-year-old Hijiri Saotome is bursting with life-experience, either. They’re both so young, and there will be plenty of time to discover more about them as wrestlers, but getting through this without anything going wrong counts as an achievement to me.
The real stars here, though, were Ai and Ayame. They were the ones tasked with stringing everything together between their young and old partners. From their great interactions with each other to Ai repeatedly headbutting Aja Kong to, yes, Ayame dishing out some shin bootings, they were great. They’re also both clearly popular. It would have been easy for them to fade into the background, but the fans wanted to see them, particularly when Ayame started booting Chig in the shins. People love it so much.
It all made for a match that probably won’t satisfy people who loved Starboy Charlie vs Titus Alexander, but which I adored. You had legends, teenagers, and two of my absolute favourites in there, so in what world was I not going to have a good time? Plus, I can now say I’ve seen Chigusa Nagayo wrestle. That is fucking cool.
Never Doubt Mio Momono
With her injuries having piled up over the years, I was a bit worried that Mio Momono would struggle to keep up with Mei Seira. Mei is rapid. Don’t get me wrong, Mio can still go, but she’s not wrestling that style every week any more. All her playmates went away.
Thankfully, I was wrong. It was seven minutes of beautifully intricate wrestling where these two clicked back into a rhythm that apparently never left them. Most importantly, though, it never felt like a dance. Mio and Mei didn’t lose sight of the fact that they were in a fight, littering the match with moments of pettiness and always pushing for the win. It’s what makes this stuff different from so many of its weaker imitators. These two know it has to be rooted in wrestling.
It also made me cry. That generation of wrestlers meant a lot to me, and I’ve always been gutted we didn’t get to see Mei, Cohaku and even Hibiki grow up alongside Mio. It’s clear Nagayo felt she had to do what she did, and I’m so glad that there appears to be no bad blood around it (Mei referred to Chig as her mother both before and after the show), but there is a lot of lost potential there. Obviously, Mei and Cohaku are having great careers and are still brilliant wrestlers, but I’ll always be asking what if.
Still, seeing these two in the ring again, desperately trying to control their emotions and utterly failing, was a special moment, and I hope it is the building of a bridge that will stay open. A world where Mei Seira and Mio Momono aren’t wrestling each other at least every now and then is a darker one, and there is enough darkness right now.
Rin Bows Out
Bless Mayu Iwatani. She picked up an injury just before this show but still powered through, turning up for Rin’s final match. She kept it sensible, but she was there, and you’ve got to imagine that meant a lot to Rin. She got to retire surrounded by her idol, her friend and her rival. There are worse ways to go out.
And it was another great Mio Momono performance. With Mayu on one leg and Rin having never quite reached her previous levels on this retirement tour, Mio stepped in to do the heavy lifting. Thankfully, even if she had already wrestled a frantic encounter, she’s very good at that kind of thing. She bumped around, played the villain, trying to end her old rival’s career, and ultimately put her over on the way out (after Itsuki got cold feet and broke up a pin when Momono had it won). It was a really selfless performance.
But matches like this aren’t really about the match, are they? It was about Rin. Coming home one more time to wrestle in front of an audience who watched her grow up. These people were there when she debuted, when she announced she was getting married and when she stepped away to have a child. It’s no secret that the core Marvelous fans are Chigusa Nagayo fans, and I have come to recognise a lot of the faces sitting in the front row, so I’m sure Rin knows them all. That’s before you even get to Chig herself, who was perhaps more emotional than I have seen her at any retirement in the last few years. Again, Rin has described Nagayo as being like a parent to her, and when they embraced long and hard after the match, you’d have to be of tougher disposition than me to not shed a tear.
Her getting this moment to come and say goodbye properly was important. Everyone deserves their time in between those ropes, with the bell ringing them out, before the streamers fly. I’m sure she’ll go on to have an amazing life, but I’m certain she also knows that she’ll always have a home in Marvelous.
A Weird Tag-Title Match
When Magenta turned heel, I wrote on this very website that I hoped they went all the way with it. I wanted to see them embrace LCO or Ozaki and Kaoru. To start carving people up. They haven’t done that. Well, they’ve embraced Ozaki and Kaoru’s fashion choices, but not the rest of it. However, Magenta have still done a great job. They’ve figured out their act, morphing into likeable pests who can cheat and steal, but are still, on the whole, fairly beloved of everyone. On top of that, they’ve figured out how to mesh that with having great matches. They’re consistently the people who deliver on these Marvelous cards.
So pairing them up against two monsters didn’t make a whole lot of sense. If they were getting red-hot heat, it would have been a perfect punishment, but in the here and now, this match babyfaced Magenta. They still worked hard, bumping around for Nightshade and Rose (although it was Rose who took the wildest bump, as she took inspiration from Mayu and went tumbling down some stairs), but they lost a lot of their bite because of it. I wanted to see the Magenta who try to win by locking people in the Shinjuku FACE elevator, not the one that is constantly on the back foot.
I also don’t love using them to put over two foreign wrestlers who might not be around much. Maybe I’m wrong. If Rose and Nightshade are sticking in Japan, that’s great. I like them both (although Nightshade needs to turn her spooky gestures down by at least 75%), but this Magenta run has felt primed for Senka and Ayame or even Ai and a partner to be the one to end it. For the younger members of the roster to be the ones to finally punish them for their nonsense. Instead, they ran into a brick wall, dropped the belts, and all that effort feels a bit wasted.
Fingers crossed I’m proven wrong on that, and I didn’t hate this match. It just wasn’t what I wanted to see Magenta do right now. They’re at their best when they’re outsmarting opponents, sneaking their way to victory, and it didn’t feel like time for that to end.
Spark Rush Get Close
I saw someone on Twitter complaining about how quiet the crowd were for this match, which was not my feeling in the building. They may have started subdued, but the longer it went on, the more they woke up. Which, coincidentally, was how I felt about it all. As is often the case with Iroha and Sareee, there was a lot of stuff at the beginning. Limb work that didn’t go anywhere, filler that never really felt like it was going to have an impact. If you’ve watched these two wrestle, you know the deal, and you either accept it or, like me, find it quite frustrating.
However, it is kind of hard to deny those final moments. The switch here came when Sareee managed to bring the nasty out of Iroha. It’s something that’s been missing from her wrestling in recent times (apart from when she’s wrestling Marvelous rookies), as I think she’s got a bit too comfortable at being the cool Ace. Sometimes she just needs to let loose and boot a cunt in the head. When she started snapping back at Sareee, playing dirty, this match found itself, and the final moments were, if nothing else, at least exciting.
There were still flaws. Sareee insists on spamming that Uranage to the point where it means basically nothing. It was made to feel doubly so by Iroha hitting a single Running Three for the win. For all Takumi’s flaws, if she hits that move, you’re almost certainly staying down, and it makes those moments where she teases it all the more exciting. Still, this is the kind of wrestling that always works for me better in the room. When I’m there, and I’m caught up in the atmosphere, yelling and whooping along with everyone else. There is a good chance that if I ever get around to watching it back, the flaws will outweigh the good, but in the here and now, I’m willing to give it a tentative thumbs up.
Marvelous have a Nico channel where you can watch older shows and a YouTube Membership where they (might) upload videos. You can also buy access to live streams here and find shows on Wrestle Universe.
Ramblings About Wrestling 
Leave a comment