Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for September 2025

It’s a quieter roundup this month, not because of a lack of good wrestling, but because I haven’t had a chance to watch a lot of it. There’s no big, dramatic reason for that, I’ve just been a bit busy. Fingers crossed, I’ll be able to check out a bit more in October. However, I have decided to add a permanent ‘Past Rambles’ section, which gives me a chance to focus on matches that I’ve watched from, well, the past. It makes its debut here with a WCW Women’s Cruiserweight Title match from 1997. So hopefully you enjoy that!

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01/10/2025 0

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for February 2025

Raku is in charge of the train now. Credit: TJPW

It doesn’t matter if the month is long or short – I always get to the end of it feeling like there are at least twenty matches I haven’t got to yet. Despite that, I think February’s ramble has a nice selection of gems to get excited about. There’s all the usual stuff (Ice Ribbon, ChocoPro and TJPW), but also a bit more lucha, a touch of New Japan and a trip over to Evolution, who are becoming one of my favourite promotions outside of my typical fare to keep up with. Hopefully, there is something there that you’ll enjoy, and if you think I’m missing anything particularly exciting, drop it in the comments.

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01/03/2025 2

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Months for January 2025

Arai booting 2025 into life. Credit: TJPW

We’re back for Ramblings Abouts’ first matches of the month for 2025. I apologise for missing a few of these towards the end of last year, but I had some personal shit that took up a lot of my brain space, and I’m sure the two of you who read this didn’t even notice. However, I am back for 2025 and planning to watch far too much of this dumb stuff while also complaining that I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to. Multiple big hitters are missing from this list because I haven’t had a chance to watch them yet, but that doesn’t mean what I have seen loses any value. They’re all great matches, which I recommend going out of your way to see. And if you have any recommendations, stick them in the comments below!

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01/02/2025 0

Yappy vs Ancham, New Ice Ribbon #1395 (18/1/25), Ice Ribbon

Getting back into Ice Ribbon is one of my wrestling goals for 2025, and one of the early joys of that has been watching more Bad Butts. I would never have conceived the idea of Yappy embracing her dark side because it seems to be the antithesis of her lovely public persona, but Ancham and her have got something with this pairing. They’re managing to be cool while retaining enough of a bumbling, heelish nature that they never slip into the tired trope of bad guys who are desperate to be cheered. Plus, on an Ice roster full of plucky young underdogs, having two experienced bullies to go after them will never be a bad thing.

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28/01/2025 0

Rambling About’s Matches of the Month for June 2024

June is over and done with, and like every month, it’s been busy for the old wrestling. I can’t pretend this month’s roundup is particularly eclectic, as I’m staying fairly close to my usual haunts, but there is still plenty to enjoy in there. Give it a read, and let me know if there is anything you think I need to see.

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01/07/2024 0

Ice Ribbon After the Rain (23/6/24) Review

If you’d asked me at the start of the year to list the things that could help Ice Ribbon get close to filling Korakuen Hall in 2024, I would have got a few hundred deep before even considering the idea of pairing up with Stardom. It’s not that I would have doubted such a strategy’s ability to work, but with Rossy Ogawa involved, the idea seemed implausible. In recent years, Stardom and Ice Ribbon have not got along, and that’s putting it mildly. I would have been more comfortable betting on myself to win the ICExInfinity title than this relationship coming to pass. Yet, here we are. Following on from Best Friends beating Eye Contact at Flashing Champions, Mayu Iwatani stepped into a proper company to take on Tsukasa Fujimoto. By now, I’m sure you all know how it ended, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t still plenty to discuss.

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27/06/2024 0

Team 200kg (Chihiro Hashimoto & Yuu) vs Best Friends (Arisa Nakajima & Tsukasa Fujimoto), Sendai Girls (9/6/24) Review

Watching this match, I couldn’t shut up the nagging question in the back of my mind: ‘Why don’t I love it?’ Two of the best joshi tag teams of recent years got fifteen minutes to clash heads in Shinjuku, and I wanted it to be incredible. Instead, it was good, maybe even great. While those descriptors typically aren’t an issue, they’re not what I pictured. Is it fair to expect the extraordinary? No, but I can’t pretend I didn’t.

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12/06/2024 0

Ramblings About’s Matches of the Month for March 2024

Somehow, March is over and done with, making it time for another roundup of my favourite matches from the past thirty-one days. We’re entering the busy portion of my working year, so I haven’t seen everything I would have liked, and a show like Grand Princess happened a touch too late for it to make the list (although, keep an eye on the site for a full review), but there is still plenty to get your teeth into. Enjoy!

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01/04/2024 0

Ice Ribbon #1337 (23/3/24) Review

After a sparsely attended Korakuen in January, Ice Ribbon returned to that famous old venue backed by what appeared to be a much healthier crowd. With the show headlined by a rare mother vs daughter battle, plus the return of the Triangle Ribbon title and a hoss pairing going after the tag belts, this had the structure of a pre-everything going wrong Ice card, which is what I want to see. Let’s see if the vibes were able to match the potential.

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29/03/2024 0

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