2024 Joshi Discussion Thread

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Helping our dolfriend @Dolfan in NYC out by getting the 2024 thread going. I'd say "get this party started" to try and get P!nk stuck in his head, but P's Party and Princess Party shows have been discontinued so it's not really topical, and it's not funny if I have to explain the joke, and... you know what, moving on.

Yuuki Mashiro's opponent for her comeback match on 1/27 has been decided, and it will be Makoto. Mashiro asked Makoto directly, and Makoto accepted. Mashiro and Makoto are close, and if you follow Makoto on social media, you'll have seen Mashiro pop up a few times during her retirement, including at Makoto's birthday party.

The participants in the one day tournament are also announced, and they are Hamuko Hoshi, Kyuuri, Totoro Satsuki, Yappy, Saran, Kaho Matsushita, Tsukina Umino, Arisa Shinose, Mifu Ashida, and Asuka Fujitaki, so a ten-entrant tournament. Tsukina immediately protested her entry, saying she wasn't consulted and that she wasn't interested in participating if the prize was going to be a shot at Ibuki Hoshi, and Kaho had to tell her that the prize hadn't even been announced yet.

(Because social media is social media and this has already spawned a couple of "ICE RIBBON IS IN DISARRAY!" bad faith comments, Tsukina's complaints are an angle; Tsukina's story for months now is that she doesn't want to compete for titles, just cause trouble for her rostermates. She's like a new generation Miyako Matsumoto, only dressed like a breakdancer instead of a ballerina.)

Ibuki has also been listed as participating on the card, along with QUEEN VALKYRIE (Ancham and YuuRI), 1111 (Sumika Yanagawa and Misa Kagura), Yoshiko Hasegawa, and the rest of the Challengers (Mayuka Koike, Nanae Furukawa, Yuuki Minami, and Yuu Hanaya). It appears that the reason Yuu Hanaya missed the time between her debut in August and Ribbonmania was because she was injured in training shortly after debut, but she may be ready for more regular appearances now.

[Dolfan in NYC]

Apropos of nothing...  I never liked P!nk.  The music is fine, but she always struck me as... fake?  Or at least what a committee considered "rebellious chick" or "party girl" (but only so far).  

I cannot adequately explain why I feel this way, but... yeah.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

5 minutes ago, Dolfan in NYC said:

Apropos of nothing...  I never liked P!nk.  The music is fine, but she always struck me as... fake?  Or at least what a committee considered "rebellious chick" or "party girl" (but only so far).  

I cannot adequately explain why I feel this way, but... yeah.

So my cunning plan wouldn't have worked anyway! Drat!

And that's okay, I felt this way about Avril Lavinge at first. Until she released "Girlfriend" and AJPW made it their TV opening song, and then I was like "okay, that's cool".

[dragonzombie]

Yuki Arai

Spoiler

Won her first singles title! The International Princess.

 

[Mr. Monday Morning]

Some Stardom spoilers for 1/3 & 1/4

 

Spoiler

God's Eye (Syuri/Mirai/Ami) won the Artist titles from DDM

Mayu successfully defended the IWGP title against Syuri

However possibly (probably) the bigger news is Giulia has disbanded DDM. While she still holds the NJPW Strong title it seems only a matter of time.

Also! They will be running a show in Philly 4/4, tickets are here (link button isn't working for some reason)

https://2300arena.showare.com/orderticketsvenue.asp?p=481

Edited January 5 by Mr. Monday Morning

[Eivion]

DDM disbanding came earlier than expected. I figured it was happening regardless of giulia leaving or not just due to Maika winning the red belt. Will be interesting to see what replaces it. I suspect if Maika forms a a new faction we might see at least one or two people from other factions leave theirs for it.

Nice to see Stardom running another US show. Hope it does well.

[lostinube]

The movie about Mayu Iwatani's life is going to open nationwide in Japan on May 17th this year.

[dragonzombie]

Juria Nagano is graduating from TJPW. Really she is retiring from Pro Wrestling.

She debuted in TJPW on 19.03.2022.

https://www.ddtpro.com/news/22015

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

As this is my 666th post, I am required to post Ram Kaichow threatening an official.

I don't make the rules, I just follow them.

 

[Curt McGirt]

He looks like he's cowering before a version of the doll in M3GAN.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Arisa Nakajima was injured during the SEAdLINNNG show today and was taken from the building in an ambulance. It appears to be a spinal cord injury but she has no current numbness in her limbs. She'll remain in hospital for a few days for observation.

Hopefully she'll be okay and takes all the time she needs to get back to a healthy state.

[Kevin Wilson]

19 hours ago, Stefanie Sparkleface said:

Arisa Nakajima was injured during the SEAdLINNNG show today and was taken from the building in an ambulance. It appears to be a spinal cord injury but she has no current numbness in her limbs. She'll remain in hospital for a few days for observation.

Hopefully she'll be okay and takes all the time she needs to get back to a healthy state.

I watched the show and honestly its the oddest thing. There was nothing about the spots leading up to her collapse that would imply anything was wrong. She did a diving footstomp from the top rope that missed, she landed on her feet, turned around and got held/choked by Takase over the top rope. She was clearly in distress as she fell to the mat once Takase released her, rolled out of the ring and the match continued.

I'm only giving these details as early word is she is doing better, she just sent out a tweet that she is doing ok. My only two theories are the diving footstomp miss vibrated up her spine but it was a delayed reaction, or Takase by accident was holding her just the wrong way over the top rope and the rope/her arm was pressing into her neck. Which would be the most freakish way for a wrestler to get injured, which sadly is usually the way it works. Hope she fully recovers quickly!

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

16 minutes ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I watched the show and honestly its the oddest thing. There was nothing about the spots leading up to her collapse that would imply anything was wrong. She did a diving footstomp from the top rope that missed, she landed on her feet, turned around and got held/choked by Takase over the top rope. She was clearly in distress as she fell to the mat once Takase released her, rolled out of the ring and the match continued.

I'm only giving these details as early word is she is doing better, she just sent out a tweet that she is doing ok. My only two theories are the diving footstomp miss vibrated up her spine but it was a delayed reaction, or Takase by accident was holding her just the wrong way over the top rope and the rope/her arm was pressing into her neck. Which would be the most freakish way for a wrestler to get injured, which sadly is usually the way it works. Hope she fully recovers quickly!

That almost sounds like maybe it was a spinal concussion, which to use extremely simplistic terms sort of rattles the nervous system but full recovery usually comes within a few days. A lot of spinal concussions are just written off as stingers because of the relatively quick recovery time.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Ice Ribbon's Korakuen tournament, called RIBBON-1, had the bracket selection and the prize announcement (which is that the winner can name their own prize!). The video is here (and won't embed, alas):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hj8A3v1kNsU

The brackets were selected by random drawing, as Yappy (drawing for herself and Asuka Fujitaki), Ibuki Hoshi (drawing for Totoro Satsuki), Saran, Kaho Matsushita, MIO (drawing for Tsukina Umino), Hamuko Hoshi, Yuuki Mashiro (drawing for Kyuuri), and Arisa Shinose (drawing for herself and Mifu Ashida) made the picks. We ended up with:

- Yappy vs. Tsukina Umino
- Hamuko Hoshi vs. Arisa Shinose
- Kyuuri vs. Kaho Matsushita
- Totoro Satsuki vs. Mifu Ashida
- Saran vs. Asuka Fujitaki

The way the brackets are lined up, Hamuko/Arisa and Kyuuri/Kaho are the unlucky draws, as they are in Round 1. The winners of those matches will face each other in the quarterfinal, and the winner of that quarterfinal faces the winner of Yappy/Tsukina. On the other side of the bracket, Totoro/Mifu and Saran/Asuka are in the quarterfinals, with the winners meeting up in the semifinals. If Hamuko, Arisa, Kyuuri, or Kaho want to win this, they'll need to potentially win a maximum of four matches, whereas everyone else needs three.

It's hard to pick a winner. Kaho would be the best option but has a really tough road to get there, needing to win four matches and having to overcome the always-tricky Kyuuri in the very first round. The winner of Totoro/Mifu is also a good choice. With the winner being able to choose whatever they want for their prize, that might also motivate Tsukina to win instead of wrestling for DQs or causing problems, but Yappy has looked really strong in the last few months, so again, a tough choice there. Hamuko being in the field also makes for an interesting play, but needing to win four matches might be a little much at this stage in her career. Same with Asuka on the opposite end of the career spectrum. Saran and Arisa are absolute longshots to even get out of their first matches, much less win, but Ice Ribbon has done stranger things before.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

I got around to watching the Arsion reunion today.

I was disappointed by the lack of Aja Kong, but wasn't surprised. It seemed like in the leadup, they really went out of their way to not mention Aja. Their Twitter account went over literally everyone who worked for Arsion license by license except for Aja, so her not being there wasn't a surprise. It seems like everyone who wanted to participate was there, since Ryo Miyuki was there. For those not familiar with Ryo Miyuki, she is remembered for another attempt at capturing the Ayako Hamada lightning in a bottle, debuting way before she was ready and wrestling only seven matches for Arsion, including her worked(?) shoot quitting against Michiko Ohmukai, plus one match for GAEA against Chigusa Nagayo that Chigusa cut short when she realized Miyuki was nowhere near ready for this.

Spoiler

Speaking of Ayako Hamada, she was there too, and apparently didn't tell the show organizers she'd be there. She was fairly warmly welcomed and gave a speech, even hugging Rossy Ogawa, which was very much a surprise considering those two had LEGENDARY heat with each other. Ayako was originally only shown in a video message, which caused the crowd to gasp in surprise.

Mariko Yoshida wore her ring costume and still looked like she could tie everyone up in knots. Michiko Ohmukai also looked like she hasn't aged much, but that wasn't too much of a surprise for me since I saw her during the Mizuki Endo/Aiger retirement. It was great to see Etsuko Mita again as well. There were videos sent in for folks who couldn't be there, which wasn't shown on the stream but ambient audio picked it up. Reggie Bennett, Bionic J, and Melissa were included, and it sounded like the Apache sisters were as well.

As for the matches, they were what they were. Risa Sera had to fill in for the injured Unagi Sayaka as the fill in for La Galactica 2000 against noki-A (Unagi was billed as the 2nd Generation La Galactica, and when Unagi was concussed and had to pull out, Risa was billed as the 3rd Generation La Galactica). The mask she was wearing was clearly made for Unagi and Risa didn't look comfortable in it at all, so they played the match for comedy with Risa only wearing the mask from the costume and opting for her usual ring gear instead, and insisting she wasn't Risa Sera. noki-A accidentally twisted the mask around with boot scrapes and that's when Risa decided just to take the mask off and wrestle normally, and the match picked up from that point. I kinda wish we had a time machine and could get AKINO/noki-A from the Arsion era against the mid-2010s Risa Sera, but this was fine for what it was.

Sareee & Cherry against Kakeru Sekiguchi & Kizuna Tanaka was also fine. I'm probably a lot higher on Kizuna than a lot of folks, and I like seeing her working places other than Wave to pick up experience. She reminds me a lot of her mom, in that she's got the plucky underdog work down really well, but I think she could be a lot more, especially with her grappling skill. When Sareee and Kizuna were in together, it made me want to see a singles match between the two after Kizuna picks up more ring time so it isn't booked as a squash considering the difference in experience between the two. Sareee didn't do a lot, but she didn't really need to; she's seen as very much above the opponents elsewhere, so rather than squash Kizuna, she let Kizuna shine against Cherry before putting her away.

The main event was three wrestlers who were still active (Leon, AKINO, and Yuu Yamagata) against Michiko Ohmukai, Yumi Fukawa, and Ai Fujita. It was smart to put the active wrestlers on one side so they could carry the match if needed. Ohmukai works a couple of matches a year and usually looks good, but Fukawa and Fujita haven't worked in years (almost 20 years for Fujita, 23 for Fukawa), so I was very interested to see how they'd come off. The active trio kept it very smart, low bumps and they took most of them, a lot of spots playing to the crowd, and keeping it fairly simple and low-risk for everyone. For what was essentially a nostalgia match, I was very satisfied (and especially thankful considering Fukawa's injury history).

Should you watch the show? Sure, if you liked Arsion. It won't blow you away, there's only three matches, but everyone who participated looked happy and that gave me a warm feeling to know that these folks are doing okay.

Edited January 14 by Stefanie Sparkleface

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

More details on RIBBON-1 just got announced. The first round and quarterfinal matches will have five minute time limits(!), the semifinals will have ten minutes, and the finals has no time limit. If a match goes to a draw, then the wrestler with the shortest career advances. If the wrestlers have the same career length, then they have to wrestle an overtime period until someone wins.

That announcement practically teases Mifu Ashida and Asuka Fujitaki advancing to the semis to face each other, as they have shorter careers than Totoro Satsuki and Saran respectively, and they're the only two wrestlers with the exact same career length, so realistically a semifinal for them has no time limit.

This should mean some pretty high action matches considering the time limit, and since Ice Ribbon is a rollup-heavy group, I'd expect a LOT of flash pins. I will say that I'm disappointed that we're finally getting a Kyuuri/Kaho Matsushita singles match and it'll be capped at five minutes, but those five minutes (or maybe less?) should be a lot of fun. That said, it's a clever way to get around a few folks losing while keeping them strong. The time limit rule could eliminate people who probably shouldn't be losing right now (Yappy, Kyuuri, Totoro, and Hamuko Hoshi could all go out in the their first matches due to the rule, for example, while Saran can take a direct loss and wouldn't be any worse off).

[Elsalvajeloco]

Mariko Yoshida because she has such a youthful countenance hasn't age since like 1992. That's scary.

Anyway, I am surprised Ayako Hamada showed cause her time primarily has been spent training people in Mexico and taking care of her father. That latter seems like a full time job itself based on his condition. Catching a long ass flight to Japan didn't seem like it was it was in the cards. However, glad she could make it.

However, yeah, it sucks that there is still that residual heat with Aja. Guess you can't have it all.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

2 hours ago, Elsalvajeloco said:

Mariko Yoshida because she has such a youthful countenance hasn't age since like 1992. That's scary.

Anyway, I am surprised Ayako Hamada showed cause her time primarily has been spent training people in Mexico and taking care of her father. That latter seems like a full time job itself based on his condition. Catching a long ass flight to Japan didn't seem like it was it was in the cards. However, glad she could make it.

However, yeah, it sucks that there is still that residual heat with Aja. Guess you can't have it all.

Mariko seems like she takes really good care of herself. I think she's in some sort of physical therapy (I can't remember if it's massage therapy or what) but I remember her always seeming like she does quite well in terms of her physical health. I was happy to see that.

And yeah, I wish Aja had been involved considering how integral she was to the start of the promotion, but once Rossy was announced as cooperating, I knew there was no way.

[lostinube]

She is a Feldenkrais practitioner. Works for her, apparently.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Ice Ribbon released a video hyping up what everyone's wishes might be if they win RIBBON-1, so they're really pushing the concept hard. Asuka Fujitaki is the only one who said she'd convert her win into a title shot against Ibuki Hoshi. Mifu Ashida wants a self-produce show with a cheerleading exhibition, while Kyuuri wants a self-produce show that features some sort of beer festival. Totoro Satsuki wants a show in her hometown, Yappy wants a mixed tag tournament, Arisa Shinose wants Ice Ribbon to do a joint show with her father's promotion (her father is the promoter of Asuka Pro), Saran wants to do some kind of special training. Tsukina Umino and Hamuko Hoshi didn't reveal what they wanted (Tsukina didn't participate in the video, Hamuko did but declined to state what she wanted).

Kaho Matsushita is the one that I think might be the most realistic to happen; if she wins she wants to make the March Korakuen show set to free admission for women and students, since she got into Ice Ribbon while she was in school and thinks that would be a good way to raise interest. I could see Ice Ribbon's new owners being willing to take a flyer on a loss leader show to get more people in the building and see what they're doing.

I ESPECIALLY can see this happening because there's been a major problem in joshi of fans harassing wrestlers on social media, and people being creeps to wrestlers (nearly every promotion has posted a message recently asking fans not to contact wrestlers directly anymore). TJPW has done a women's only show, but I can't recall if any group has done free admission only to women before.

[dragonzombie]

Stardom:

Maika has her own new unit. Mina and Waka are in it, Xena is back and is in it and so is the new big rookie HANAKO. 

Rana Yagami is with God's Eye.

Yuzuki is with STARS.

Women not assigned to any units belong to the "Unit independent."

[assfax]

Xena vs Megasus when?

[dragonzombie]

Fans are saying Megan Bayne is done with Stardom tonight.

She actually is AEW contracted.

 

[Eivion]

Bayne said her goodbye after her match. If she comes back I assume it won't be until some sort of partnership is made between the companies or she is out of AEW.

[dragonzombie]

Club Venus is finished.

Maika's new unit doesn't have a name yet, but soon the unit will be named.