Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
I don’t know if you noticed, but April was a busy month for wrestling. It was also another busy month for Stuart, so I’m undoubtedly missing some crackers off this list. If you have any particularly strong suggestions, throw them my way, but otherwise, enjoy!
Continue reading “Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for April 2024”
Gatoh Move continued their Road to Korakuen with a trip to Kitazawa Town Hall, rocking up on the same day TJPW held an enjoyable show headlined by Juria Nagano’s retirement. Did Gatoh make it two for two? Let’s find out.
Continue reading “Gatoh Move Road to Korakuen – Challengers (13/4/24) Review”
Tokyo Joshi returned to Sumo Hall for one of the most important shows of the year (it’s certainly the one I care about the most). Fittingly, they’ve gone all out. We’ve got giant pandas, Kyoraku Kyomei trying to take down kaiju, and Miu Watanabe getting her shot at the Ace! That’s just the beginning, too. It is a card that only gets better the longer you look at it, so let’s see what went down.
Continue reading “TJPW Grand Princess ’24 (21/3/24) Review”
The Gatoh Move roster has set their feet on the road to Korakuen Hall, a show that isn’t happening until August but has a lot of tickets to shift. To start that journey, we’ve got Mizuki popping into her old stomping ground to say hello, a new rookie making her debut and a main event in which three teams will try to take Best Bros’ tag titles from them. Will someone succeed? Let’s find out!
Continue reading “Gatoh Move ‘Road to Korakuen – Sakura Days’ (13/3/24) Review”
As 2023 draws to an end, people like me decide to spend far too long coming up with a match-of-the-year list. Honestly, even I think this one is somewhat excessive, as I have nineteen matches to cover in what I’m describing as the best of the rest. However, I didn’t want to let any of my favourites go, as I’d be happy to have any one of these as my number one. As usual, these are the matches I loved, so while you can feel free to throw some suggestions my way (in fact, please do), don’t waste any time telling me I’m wrong. I don’t care how good you think Will Ospreay vs Kenny Omega was – I’m never going to watch it. Anyway, on with the list!
Continue reading “Ramblings About’s Matches of the Year 2023: The Best of the Rest”
Maybe it’s just me, but January always feels like a fresh start for my wrestling viewing. My backlog from the previous year goes out of the window, under the assumption that if I haven’t watched it yet, I never will, and it’s a chance to jump back into promotions that I might have fallen away with it. When you throw in Ittenyon and all the excitement around that, it’s usually a good month, something this list makes clear.
Continue reading “Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for January 2023”
Somehow, we’ve made it through another year, and while I think it’s safe to say all is not well in the world, the wrestling has at least been very good. 2022 was a year of change in the world of joshi, a lot of which was quite anxiety-inducing for someone who takes comfort from this nonsense, but I think we’ve come out the other end of it all with the scene in strong and (more importantly) interesting health. There have also been a lot of incredible matches, and this is my list of the ones that aren’t quite my match of the year but which, on a different day, may well be so. Enjoy!
Quick note: I sorta cheated this year and snuck an extra match in by writing about it elsewhere. The brilliant and lovely Flupke (FlupkeDiFlupke on Twitter) invited me to write about the wonderful Ice Ribbon gauntlet of gauntlets as part of his newsletter. You can find my thoughts (alongside his much better ones) on that here. Then, once you’ve read that, you should also read the rest of his end-of-year stuff, which is equally great.
Continue reading “Ramblings About’s Matches of the Year 2022: The Best Of The Rest”
The UK might have spent September doing the political version of loudly shitting itself while screaming and pointing in the opposite direction to distract us, but that doesn’t mean there wasn’t some great wrestling. This month I go deeper on Stardom than I have in a long time, find a new favourite bear and still have time to talk about a load of other stuff. So, if you’re looking for something to distract you from the UK’s incompetence (or any other country’s), here’s some good graps to watch by candlelight as you try to save money.
Continue reading “Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for September 2022”
It’s sometimes easy to forget that when ChocoPro began, there was no feeling (at least as a fan) that this would be a long-term thing. At the time, we thought COVID would be over sooner rather than later, and Emi Sakura throwing a live show on YouTube to highlight Baliyan Akki vs Minoru Suzuki felt like a fun way to pass the day. Those first few shows had no unique identity or distinguishing features but came across as Gatoh Move without the fans and with added squats. However, as it became clear COVID wasn’t going anywhere, ChocoPro began to search for what made it unique. And while they went through a few ideas (Mei Suruga’s arts and crafts period was a personal favourite), they eventually settled on the formula that exists to this day. And the key to finding that formula? Yuna Mizumori vs Emi Sakura.
Continue reading “Yuna Mizumori: Finding ChocoPro’s Identity”
Where do these months keep going? I swear I finish one of these bastards up and then two days later have to write another. Still, July continued what I think has been a strong year for wrestling delivering everything from exciting rookies to new champions to violent cage matches. Does that sound like your idea of a good time? Because it’s mine.
Continue reading “Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for June 2022”
Ramblings About Wrestling 