If January brings the excitement of a new year and the motivation to keep up with every promotion going, then February is inevitably the month when real life intrudes. Unless you’re young enough to have very few responsibilities (and lucky you if so), the sad reality is that you can’t watch everything. However, fear not, because that brilliant match you missed in the crowd? It might just be on this list, ready for you to discover it.
I swear it was only a week or so ago that I was putting together this list for the end of September, but here we are, the spookiest month of the year is in the bag, and alongside watching a shitload of horror films, I did find some time for wrestling. It ended up being quite a busy month, what with TJPW and Stardom running big events, the G1 ending (I didn’t watch it, but people still care) and AEW continuing to make things enjoyable in America. So, what did I watch and, more importantly, what did I enjoy? Time to find out.
Let’s get D! Yes, we’re back with the company with the catchphrase that will always make me giggle because I am a child. On paper, this was a hell of a card, and spoiler, but it lived up to that expectation. So, I’m going to stop talking nonsense and get into the brilliance.
It’s SEAd’s sixth birthday, and to celebrate, they’re giving the devil herself a title shot. It’s perhaps not how I’d have chosen to do it, but hey, it’s Aniki who is taking the beating, not me.
Twenty-five years is a long time to do anything, never mind something as physically demanding as wrestling. That’s doubly true when you are Nanae Takahashi, who hasn’t exactly taken it easy. Thankfully, she’s made it this far in one piece and chose to celebrate her 25th Anniversary by putting together one hell of a card. Although, I would question the logic of booking herself against Arisa Nakajima, who, let’s face it, probably wants to hurt her. But hey, what do I know?
I don’t know if it’s just me, but May’s felt like a long old month. Maybe it’s because I’ve actually been able to do some stuff for the first time since March last year, and that’s exhausted me. Seeing other people is hard, you know? Anyway, enough about me because there has also been plenty of wrestling to enjoy, and that’s probably why you’re here.
Okay, so removing the ten-match limit for these lists has maybe caused me to go a bit overboard. In my defence, April was a hell of a month for wrestling, despite the event I was looking forward to most, GAEAISM, being postponed because of Japan’s COVID issues. Thankfully, plenty of other stuff was there to pick up the slack, and, well, scroll down to see how much I had to talk about.
From shit, occasionally a flower blooms. Is that a saying? I wrote it thinking it was, but now I’m not so sure. Fuck it. It’s there now. Sadly, Yoshiko has had to drop the SEAd title, her recent injury issues getting the better of her. In response, though, Nanae has booked Rina Yamashita vs ASUKA, and that’s one hell of a flower. Throw in a one-day tag tournament, and this show was can’t miss.
Assemble is back! It’s the third show for the joshi collective, although I’ve also seen it being billed as volume 4 because volume 3 was cancelled, which was confusing, so I decided to stick with three. Sorry, none of that is important. What’s important is that we have a whole load of wonderful companies in the same venue, all going out of their way to make me happy. Isn’t that nice of them?
I’ve decided to make a couple of tweaks to my matches of the month round-up. The most obvious one is that this hasn’t been a top ten list for a while, so there is no real need to stick to ten entries. Some months it might be more, some months it might be less, and it’s silly to force myself into a corner for no reason. Secondly, I am going to make a tiny change to the kind of things I write about. There are often brilliant wrestling matches where I have nothing to say. That doesn’t take away from how good they are, but not everything requires analysis beyond saying it rules. On top of that, if they come from one of the promotions I write about regularly, I’ve often reviewed them before. So, rather than stretching myself to come up with something new, I’m adding an honourable mentions list to the bottom of each month, where I’ll round up all the stuff you should watch, but where I have nothing new to add to the conversation.
Apart from that, it’s business as usual! Here are a load of matches from the last month that I loved.
Ramblings About Wrestling 