Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for January 2024

January is a good month for wrestling. Not only do you have Ittenyon and companies setting out their stall for the year ahead, but I have a habit of wiping the backlog clean and starting fresh, leaving me motivated to check out as much new wrestling as possible. As a result of that, my matches of the month are significantly more eclectic than usual. There is all the regular stuff, but we’ve also a BJW tag, a lucha brawl and even an AEW rookie match. It’s as far out of the bubble as I am likely to venture, so fingers crossed you all enjoy it. As usual, if you’ve got any cool recommendations, let me know below or on Twitter.

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01/02/2024 1

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Year 2023: The Best of the Rest

It’s been a hell of a year. Credit: TJPW

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!

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29/12/2023 1

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for August 2023

August is a slightly different month for my Ramblings About roundup. Since the 18th, I’ve been in Japan, so the second half of this list is entirely made up of matches I’ve seen in person. Seeing something live alters how you view it, and if you’re looking for in-depth analysis over more feeling-based yelling, you might want to go elsewhere. However, I’ve been having a lovely old time, and I still hope there is some value in what I have to say.

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01/09/2023 0

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for June 2023

Another month down, another group of fantastic matches that I want to ramble about. The wider wrestling world has been busy over the last thirty days, but, as usual, not much of that made the cut (although there is a taste of New Japan). I actually watched most of Forbidden Door, but was it as good as a WAVE show in front of 80 people? I think we all know the answer to that.

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01/07/2023 0

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for March 2023

Even when you remove the start of WrestleMania Weekend (which came too late to make this list), March was a packed month for wrestling. TJPW ran their biggest venue yet, Gatoh Move celebrated their 300th show, Takumi Iroha returned to Marvelous and Ice Ribbon, well, Ice Ribbon did a lot of stuff. Good and bad, it was a busy old time, and there were plenty of great matches to get our teeth into.

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01/04/2023 0

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for December 2022

Wait, that’s not your gimmick. Credit: TJPW

That’s a wrap! My final round-up of the month for 2022 is a bit shorter than the others, thanks to Christmas, end-of-year stuff and probably a few too many beers. Still, there were a few matches that I wanted to shout out, so there is plenty to get your teeth into anyway. Plus, if you do want more, I’ve written about my wrestlers of the year, the best of the rest matches and my match of the year, so give those a read after you’re done with this.

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01/01/2023 0

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Year 2022: The Best Of The Rest

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.

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29/12/2022 1

Ramblings About’s Wrestler of the Year 2022: Mei Suruga & Pom Harajuku

Having gone back and forth for weeks over who my wrestler of the year was, I managed to whittle it down to two candidates and began the process of figuring out who would be number one. Then, having spent far too long thinking about it, I realised that this award is my own creation, which means I can do whatever I want. Therefore, for the first time ever, Ramblings About Wrestling have two wrestlers of the year, and what a pair they are. The best in the world in 2022, as decided by me, were Mei Suruga and Pom Harajuku.

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27/12/2022 1

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for October 2022

October is over, and with it, another month of rather good wrestling. Between Wrestle Princess, the end of the 5STAR and who knows how many smaller events going on over the last thirty-one days, I had plenty to get my teeth into, and fingers crossed that there is something here that will entice you into checking it out too. Enjoy!

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01/11/2022 0

Yuna Mizumori: Finding ChocoPro’s Identity

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.

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30/09/2022 0