It’s slightly late again (sorry, life is busy), but here are my matches of the month for August. We’ve got rookies convincing you of the impossible, a hybrid wrestling-and-judo fight and another banger of a main event from Big Hash. That’s before we even talk about two lads taking swings at each other in a basement. It was a good month, but if that’s not enough for you, I also did a recap of the Princess Cup last week (hence none of the matches appearing here), so you can always read that afterwards.
Baliyan Akki vs Kaho Hiromi, ChocoPro #538 (2/8/26), ChocoPro
I’ve spoken about it before, but Akki is having a great year. He’s settled into his role as ChocoPro’s enforcer, dishing out beatings where required. Whether it’s taunting Shin Suzuki by encouraging cheers from Konigiri-chan (Shin’s daughter) or leaving his handprint on Miles Karu’s chest, he really relishes being a bit of a dick (albeit in a likeable way). However, it’s not only that role he’s excelling in. This was his second singles match with Kaho Hiromi this year, with both outings proving to be as big a highlight as any of the hard-hitting affairs he’s been involved in.
The reason for that also goes back to something I’ve talked about before. Akki knows how to approach these matches. It’s probably not acceptable for him to boot a thirteen-year-old lass in the head. Instead, they’re almost treated like puzzles. Hiromi ducks and dodges, desperately trying to stay a step ahead. We all know she’s eventually going to be caught, but there is a real joy in watching her defy the odds, sneaking her way into bundling Akki up. Kaho is a perfect example of how you can make limitations work for you. There is a load she can’t do at her age, particularly on the hard mats in Ichigaya, so she’s had to find another way. Her offence is almost entirely based around wrapping bigger, stronger wrestlers up in knots in the hope she can catch them off-guard. There aren’t many people who wrestle like that.
And Akki is incredibly generous in response. When Kaho catches him, he lets those two counts ring out, teasing the possibility of a monumental upset. Against people his own size, he’s cool and powerful. Against Kaho, he’s happy to scramble around, trying to keep up with her. You’re not going to make it in ChocoPro if you’re not willing to play that game, but he goes above and beyond to make sure that she looks great. In doing so, he almost hides how difficult his role is. In many ways, it’s easy to go out and chop the shit out of someone. It’s much harder to create an interesting five minutes with a wrestler who you could quite easily beat by simply holding their shoulders to the mat.
Yet, Akki does it, repeatedly, and when it comes time to talk about the best wrestlers of the year, I think that’s as valuable as anything else.
Mio Momono vs Sareee, Marvelous (8/8/26), Marvelous
I’ve said it before, and I’ve no doubt I’ll say it again, but no one makes me believe in professional wrestling like Mio Momono. As she walked out, holding that Marvelous flag aloft, I couldn’t help feeling a flutter of emotion. Mio believes in this stuff, and the more she believes, the more I believe.
It carries into her wrestling, too. I said it in my main review of this show, but if you told me there was genuine heat between Sareee and Mio, I’d buy it. The match was full of moments of petty violence, a stomp that was delivered a little bit harder or a random chair hurled at an unprotected head. There was a real sense that they didn’t just want to win; they wanted to beat their opponent. And while that sounds like the same thing, there is a difference.
I wish we got this Sareee more often. Much like her partner, Takumi Iroha, it’s not that I think she’s bad. She focuses on the wrong things. On spamming moves and crafting epics, whether that suits the situation or not. When she’s in there with someone who knocks her off that path, be it Chihiro Hashimoto or a rookie she can bully, she’s almost as great as everyone says she is. And Mio is one of those people. She allows Sareee to be the aggressor, but she also forces her to work for it. This still had the hallmarks of a big Sareee match – those stiff blows and at least one too many endings – but they were earned. Sareee had to wrangle Mio into the positions she wanted her to be in. It always felt like a struggle.
The same was true of the semi-main on this show, in which Senka Akatsuki channelled Iroha into a stripped-back battle of attrition. I sometimes worry about Spark Rush being positioned at the head of Marvelous. If they’re given full control, it feels likely they’ll play to their worst instincts. Thankfully, in Momono and Akatsuki, they have people who can wrangle them into line. Who can force them to work for their extravagance. That’s so important, and as long as they’re around, I have faith Marvelous will be just fine.
Cohaku & Momoka Hanazono vs Sayaka Obihiro & Soy, Gokigen in Itabashi #8 (14/8/26), Gokigen
It almost feels cruel to put poor Soy in this match. She struggles with Mei Suruga! Making her wrestle Momoka, who is basically Mei without the pretence of not being the devil, is basically torture.
Of course, this isn’t the first time Soy and Momoka have done this, but it’s one of those effortlessly good pairings. A clash of personalities and styles that it’s hard to imagine not working. Plus, it doesn’t matter how many times they’ve wrestled – Soy will always fall into the Hanazone. She’s not got the mind meant to deal with someone like that. Towards the end of this match, she got caught in protecting a cuddly cat toy that Momoka introduced, only for the Chibi Gang to beat the shit out of it in a moment of pure petty violence.
Add Obi (one of the great underrated wrestlers and a master of this kind of midcard tag) and Cohaku (who also feels underrated at this point, partly because I don’t know anyone who is regularly watching WAVE), and this was a perfect Gokigen match. Will I necessarily go back to it? No, probably not. However, that’s the difference between live wrestling and taped. There’s every chance I’d have half-watched this from home, smiled at the right moments, and barely registered it. In the room, with your full attention and the crackle of a live crowd, it’s impossible not to have a great time.
Complicated? No. A lot of fun? Definitely.
Trans AM Hiroshi vs Hideki ‘Shrek’ Sekine, Pro Wrestling Judo #6 ~ Ippon Mania (14/8/26), Gokigen
Confession time: I didn’t mean to buy a ticket for this show. I didn’t realise Yoneyama was running two events on the same day, so when I went to book for the Gokigen event, I saw the date and paid before it had clicked that it was the wrong one. Yes, I am that bad with money. If I’m honest, I probably wouldn’t have gone to it otherwise. Glimpsed from afar, Yoneyama running a judo-based version of pro-wrestling is such a bizarre concept that I relegated it to a corner of my brain and forgot about it. That was a mistake. This turned out to be one of my favourite shows of the year.
And that was because the card was top-to-bottom great, but this was the cherry on top. To celebrate his birthday, Trans AM Hiroshi got the chance to test his mettle against Hideki Sekine, one of our more unique-looking human beings. Now, to give Hiroshi his credit, he is an accomplished judoka in his own right. I’m far from an expert on this, but according to his Japanese Wiki, he’s a 3rd-dan, which, as far as I can gather, is pretty decent. I can’t find where Sekine stands in judo, but that’s somewhat made up for by being a 3rd-dan black belt in BJJ. Oh, and the fact that he’s got a fair few kilos on Hiroshi.
It made this a fairly significant mismatch, but that’s also what made it some great pro-wrestling. They fought for three falls, under judo/wrestling hybrid rules, and it was thrilling. Not because I ever thought Hiroshi was going to win, but because you could see him adapting to fighting someone so much bigger and stronger than him. Sekine was able to power through basically everything thrown at him, but Hiroshi didn’t give up. Even when he was dispatched fairly easily in the first fall, with the kind of throw that would have me laid up in bed for a month, he kept plugging away, desperately searching for a way through. It didn’t really matter that he couldn’t win. What mattered was that he was in the fight, and when he took the second fall with a throw of his own, that was almost enough to make this a moral victory.
That feeling brought to mind the Lulu Pencil vs Chris Brookes Iron Man bout, a match I don’t drop as a comparison lightly. To be clear, this wasn’t that. Lulu and Brookes had the advantage of months of build and, at least for me, an emotional connection that I’ve had with very few other wrestling stories. It’s one of my favourite matches of all time. However, this had that same sense of small victories meaning everything. Lulu lost that match, but her pinning Brookes meant she didn’t really. She’d done more than anyone could imagine. Now, Trans AM Hiroshi is not Lulu Pencil. He was certainly in this fight more than she would have been. However, it was still a near-impossible challenge, and the fact that he held his own and bloodied Sekine’s nose even a touch felt momentous. They hooked me in, and while the result went as expected, the journey was a great one.
Chie Koishikawa vs Miya Yotsuba, ChocoPro #540 Fruit Juice 2545% (16/8/26), ChocoPro
Okay, so the result didn’t go the way we hoped, but the journey was still worth it. Next time, Chie simply has to bite her harder.
And while I was genuinely a bit gutted that Chie didn’t get her moment, I think any questions about her ability as a main event player can now be dismissed. Between this, the match with Mirai, and her title shot against Suruga, she’s proven she can adapt what she does in Ichigaya to that style. Importantly, though, she does that without losing her innate Chie-ness. I might want her to win all the belts, but I definitely don’t want her to be any less Chie. That’s what makes her special.
That switch to the main event way of working pivots around her work on the leg. It’s been a common thing in these big matches, and Chie is getting very good at it. There’s a gap between them in experience, but it reminds me of what Haru Kazashiro’s been doing recently. She is reworking her approach to adapt to a new plan. Chie doesn’t just pull out that Stretch Muffler – she makes sure to repeatedly go to the limb, even redirecting her slaps towards the thigh. While I could have used Miya selling it a touch more, that didn’t take away from what Chie was doing.
Yotsuba wasn’t just a spectator, though. Even as a signed-up member of Team Chie, it’s hard to argue that this title run isn’t working. She’s growing in confidence, and potentially madness, as it goes along. I still think the Miya Hammer lacks the oomph it needs as an effective finisher, but the powerslam is helping with that. It’s left me very intrigued to see what her match with Sakura looks like. While Emi has finally started to slow down over the last couple of years, she’s still one of the smartest wrestlers out there, and I’m excited to see what she comes up with to get the best out of Miya.
That’s the next big show, though, and in the here and now, this, even with its disappointments, goes down as a success for Chie. She’ll get her hands on that belt one day.
Mio Momono vs Ruka Amahane, Marvelous (17/8/26), Marvelous
I always appreciate Mio’s approach to these matches. She mentioned on Twitter before the show that she could obviously beat Ruka quickly, but that isn’t the point. She was going out there to teach some lessons. It’s a really smart way to explain how one of the company’s best wrestlers went nearly ten minutes with a 13-year-old, and considering we recently saw her flip that switch when she brutally dispatched Ai Houzan, we know her declaration has weight. If she ever needs to teach Amahane a starker lesson, she will.
It also, importantly, doesn’t take away from the rookie’s performance. I’ve talked about it before, but Ruka is improving with every show. She’s also incredibly easy to root for. Part of that is down to her age, which naturally makes her sympathetic. However, that’s not the whole story. Like Sendai Girl’s Reina Takano or Ayame Sora, she has a natural likeability. You know she’s outgunned. She’s young, inexperienced, and still limited in what she can do, but she goes out there anyway. She plugs away, throwing her forearms and desperately trying to close the gap against these incredible veterans. When she caught Mio in a rollup towards the end, it wasn’t that I actually thought it could be the finish. It was that I wanted to believe it could be.
In reality, it could be years until Ruka gets a win. She’s got a long way to go. That’s not a problem, though. She’s going to grow up in front of these fans, and if they’re already rooting for her this hard, imagine where they’ll be in ten years time? On the day she actually catches Mio or Maria or whoever else it might be – they’ll feel like they’re watching one of their own win the big one. That’s a special thing, and these matches right now, with Ruka’s plucky underdog performances, are laying the groundwork for that to be the case.
HARASHIMA vs Thanomsak Toba, Fucked Up Festival (22/8/26), Baka Gaijin & Friends
If I remember correctly, these Fucked Up Fest shows only get released on DVD. I might be wrong, but if I’m not, this feels like the kind of match someone will stumble upon in a few years and excitedly post all kinds of GIFs on Twitter. Toba vs HARASHIMA is already something of a wrestling nerd’s dream match, and that’s before you throw it on a mat in Basement Monstar with the fans crowded around them. It rocked.
And it did so in a very simple way. Early on, HARASHIMA realised he was at a disadvantage, so he wrenched off one of Toba’s gloves and levelled the field. For most of the rest of this match, the two of them stumbled their way around the venue, swinging wildly at each other. Toba, in particular, was sent flying by HARASHIMA’s punches and kicks, regularly wiping out rows of fans as he went. It was a move that obviously added hugely to the live experience, but I don’t think that was what made this great. You had two brilliant wrestlers properly hammering away at each other, and I just don’t think it’s possible not to enjoy that. Who doesn’t want to see these lads duke it out?
There probably is a more intelligent version of this match, but that wouldn’t have worked here. This felt wild and out of control, which is perfect for a day of punk and wrestling in a basement. You could do it in Shinjuku Face or Korakuen, and it would obviously have been great, but it would lose a touch of the magic. Certain wrestling, just like certain music, is made for the underground, and while HARASHIMA is a main eventer all over the country, this was him getting down and dirty. I loved it.
Mei Suruga, Mizuki & Uta Takami vs Miu Watanabe, Arisu Endo & Ren Konatsu, Princess Cup Final (23/8/26), TJPW
Pure joy in wrestling form. TJPW can throw Uta, Mei and Mizuki across from anyone, and I’m going to enjoy it. In fact, I’m not sure they need opponents. I kind of just like watching them hang out. It’s the adoring way that Uta looks at her two new big sisters. It suggest there’s trouble ahead, and while Takami’s going to be in the middle of it, you know full well who is responsible for her being there.
However, there was a match here, and it also delivered. I already talked about the Mei vs Miu stuff in my main review, but it was everything you could have hoped for. Miu’s strength combined perfectly with Mei’s ingenuity, and they threw out a couple of ideas in the few minutes they had together that left me convinced a full match would be spectacular. I want to see what they can cook up with more time and space. It wasn’t the only part that clicked, though. Endo and Mei is another match I’d love to see, while Takami trying a bit of bullying on Ren and her sheep was a delight. There isn’t a combo they could create out of these wrestlers that I wouldn’t be at least intrigued by. And that’s including the ones we’ve seen before.
I almost don’t feel the need to pick over this kind of wrestling too much. You could tease out what it is that makes these combos zing, but I’m not sure what it would achieve. I like watching them interact, and the more they do that, the happier I’ll be.
Mei Suruga vs Kaho Hiromi, ChocoPro #541 (24/8/26), ChocoPro
Talking about things that make me happy, Mei and Kaho’s relationship is also on the list. Kaho has found a hero in Mei Suruga, and while hero-worshipping wrestlers can be a dodgy path, I feel like this is one of those instances when it’s alright. In fact, after this match, which was celebrating her second anniversary, Kaho went through the whole ChocoPro roster, thanking them all individually for the ways they’ve helped her. It was enough to have Chie welling up.
It wasn’t just a feel-good moment, though. The match might be the latest that you could declare Kaho’s best, something that is happening quite often in recent times. Here, we had the added benefit of Mei, coming off the tag mentioned above, sporting a massive bandage on her injured thumb. That added to things in part because it was quite a funny visual, but also because it gave Kaho a target, and thankfully, she learnt from the goblin best. Every chance she got, she poked or prodded on Suruga’s huge thumb, cutting the gap between them by showing no shame in taking advantage of her mentor’s injury.
That wasn’t the only thing, though. Mei gave Kaho a lot here, to the extent that we got one of those beautiful moments where everyone thought she might be about to steal the win. As mentioned already, Hiromi can’t do anything too impactful yet. She’s smaller than similarly aged people like Ruka, so even something like a slam is a tough ask. However, she’s great at ducking and dodging, darting her way through people’s legs and into roll-ups. Against Akki, with the size advantage, that only goes so far. Against Mei (who I’m pretty sure she’s taller than now), you can buy into her crafting the leverage to see her off. It’s, again, something you want to believe in, and as this month has shown, if wrestlers have got me thinking like that, they’ve succeeded in my mind.
Chihiro Hashimoto vs Mika Iwata, The Top of Joshi Wrestling (28/8/26), Sendai Girls
I don’t want to become an attendance wanker, but it was not that long ago that Big Hash was in tears at the end of a Korakuen, broken by how small the number Sendai Girls had got through the door was. Here, having seen off Iwata’s challenge, the tears were for very different reasons.
And I’ve written on this site before about not always connecting with Iwata’s singles matches in recent years. Her runs with the belt never clicked like I wanted them to. That was not the case here. This was the Iwata I want to see. She was up against the mountain that is 2026 Big Hash, but she was stubborn and aggressive, refusing to give her long-term rival an inch. There was a moment towards the end when they clasped hands, wildly exchanging blows. It was a fight that Big Hash should always win, but not this time. Iwata came out on top, not because she’s bigger or stronger, but because she’s the kind of person who will refuse to go down.
Obviously, Big Hash was also great. I think momentum sometimes gets overlooked in wrestling. It’s a key part of any real sport, but in a world where results are decided, I think we sometimes shunt it to one side. However, Hash is currently wrestling with the confidence of someone who is on a hot streak. She holds herself like a champion, and with her boss out of the game, it’s hard not to hold her up as the Ace of the whole damn country. There aren’t many people right now with that combination of presence and talent. It doesn’t matter if she’s going to the mat or dishing out haymakers, Hashimoto is doing everything with the poise of the very best.
Which is why it was the right call to keep the belt on her. In a busy room, the crowd went with Iwata, but that’s only natural. She was the underdog, as anyone across from Hashimoto is, and with Senjo Spirit having softened her image, I think she’s become lovable as well as cool. You know that underneath her stern, boiling anger, there’s a person who is quick to laugh and has (while she might not admit it) a huge heart. When she’s throwing herself at the wall that is Hashimoto, you’ve got to support her. However, right now, Sendai Girls is Big Hash, and while there might come a day when that belt should leave her waist, I personally think it’s one far in the future.
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