2024 Joshi Discussion Thread

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

The rest of Ice Ribbon's Korakuen for 1/27 has been announced.

The opening match will be a trios match where each side has a team that debuted on the same day. YuuRI, Sumika Yanagawa, and Misa Kagura (debut date November 11, 2020) go against Nanae Furukawa, Yuu Hanaya, and Yuuki Minami (debut date August 26, 2023).

As a break between rounds of RIBBON-1, Ibuki Hoshi will partner with GanJo's Yoshiko Hasegawa to go against Ancham and Mayuka Koike. As an aside, Yoshiko Hasegawa appears to have struck up a friendship with Nanae Furukawa and wants to team with her in future.

The previously announced Yuuki Mashiro return match against Makoto will be between the semifinals and finals of RIBBON-1.

For this show, Ice Ribbon has a special women's only section, and is providing a student discount of 2,000 yen off as well. They're also providing discounts for the general admission seats, which are normally 5,000 yen; instead, pairs of those seats are being sold for 8,000 yen, and three seats are being sold for 10,000 yen. It really feels like they're making a big push for groups/families, women, and students, which leads more credence to my thought that Kaho Matsushita will end up winning RIBBON-1 and get her wish of free admission for women/students for the March Korakuen.

Edited January 22 by Stefanie Sparkleface

[Eivion]

1 hour ago, Kang said:

Club Venus is finished.

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

Mina said they decided on a name. They just won't reveal it until she and Maika team up. I'm guessing they reveal at next weekend's show.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Tsukina Umino resurfaced on Twitter today and revealed her wish if she wins RIBBON-1 - she'll seal all of Ice Ribbon's titles!

MIO also confirmed something long speculated, that she is Ice Ribbon's acting player representative after Arisa Shinose directly appealed to MIO for a match she wanted using a hashtag that translates to "MIO please please!", and MIO confirmed that she was the player representative by saying "that's why people ask me for things, not because I'm their mother". It'd been assumed that MIO had some position of power after Yappy mentioned that nobody gets on an Ice Ribbon show without MIO's personal approval, but this confirms it.

The player representative for years had been Tsukasa Fujimoto, who stepped away from the role when she went on maternity leave. This led to a bizarre rumor among English-speaking fans that Tsukka had secretly quit Ice Ribbon because she left all her roles of power while on maternity leave, which shows that some people don't understand how maternity leave works.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Ice Ribbon just announced that Mifu Ashida has been diagnosed with influenza and will be forced to withdraw from Saturday's show. Totoro Satsuki has been given a win by default and will advance to the semifinals of RIBBON-1, where she'll meet the winner of Asuka Fujitaki and Saran.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Ice Ribbon RIBBON-1 results:

Spoiler

Hamuko Hoshi steamrolled (Ham rolled?) through the tournament, beating Arisa Shinose, Kaho Matsushita, Tsukina Umino, and surprise finalist Asuka Fujitaki en route to collecting the RIBBON-1 tournament. Hamuko was the only one who hadn't revealed her wish prior to the tournament, but did so after receiving her trophy - she wants to challenge her daughter, Ibuki Hoshi, for the Infinity title! The match is set for the next Korakuen on March 23. Hamuko and Ibuki have had 12 singles matches against each other, with a record of 10 wins for Hamuko, no wins for Ibuki, and 2 draws. It's the third time they'll meet for a title, as Hamuko beat Ibuki in IW19 title defenses in June 2020 and December 2020. Needless to say, this is a major threat to Ibuki's title.

Asuka was able to directly pin Saran en route to the finals, and took advantage of the time limit rule advancing the wrestler with the shorter career, beating Totoro Satsuki via the ten minute time limit. The Totoro match was a slugfest though, leaving her easy prey for Hamuko. Needless to say, though, it was a great performance by Asuka, who is showing it's not just Mifu Ashida as the only breakout Challenger. Though really, all the Challengers looked solid today, with Mayuka Koike impressing while teaming with Ancham against Ibuki Hoshi and Yoshiko Hasegawa. Nanae Furukawa, Yuu Hanaya, and Yuuki Minami also had a solid performance, but fell short against Misa Kagura, Sumika Yanagawa, and YuuRI.

Last but not least, Yuuki Mashiro had her comeback match, losing to Makoto via the Sexy Wave. Mashiro didn't look like she missed a step, and has added new moves to her arsenal as well.

Ice Ribbon's core roster is looking really healthy after a couple of years of leaning on freelancers! There's still work to be done but there's a lot to be positive about.

 

[dragonzombie]

Maika and Mina's new unit name is..

E neXus V, or EXV for short.

[Ace]

The E is for Empress and V is for Venus, naturally.

 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

So it looks like the attendance for RIBBON-1 was really poor. Ice Ribbon announced the attendance as 299, and they're pretty reliable on not inflating their totals, so I think that number can be taken as legitimate.

I'm not really surprised by this. As much as I was excited for the concept of RIBBON-1, unless you're really into Ice Ribbon, the card does look weak on paper. Without a title defense by Ibuki Hoshi and the tag team champions Kyuuri & Mifu Ashida slotted in the tournament (and Mifu having to withdraw due to illness), unless you bought into the concept of the tournament, there really wasn't that solid of a draw. Not only that, but not using the COLOR'S or Pure-J wrestlers meant no crossover from their fans, and the JTO and Ganbare wrestlers were not in featured positions, so this was a skippable show for fans of those groups.

Pre-pandemic, Ice Ribbon historically only ran Korakuen three or four times a year, and took up running Korakuen more often during the pandemic due to the reduction in rent as well as the increased space for social distancing. They went back to their old schedule in 2023, but now with Rebellions at the helm, it seems as though they wanted to go back to the 2021/2022 Korakuen schedule, while not burning through story. This sort of show would have been a SKIP City or Yokohama Radiant Hall show on last year's schedule, so it probably could have used some adjustment.

I don't fault them for taking chances, though. I enjoyed the show in spite of the on-paper issues, and most of the feedback seems to be that those who watched it did as well. Big Japan didn't fare much better in the evening slot, drawing 410, so it might have just been a bad day, too. Either way, quite a few people in the company addressed it, with both of the Hoshis saying they wanted to give the fans a great reason to come to March, and MIO said that everyone was disappointed in today's attendance but wanted to work hard to keep giving the fans a product to support, since fans can tell if wrestlers are just going through the motions.

In an additional plus, one of the 299 in the audience was Nao Ishikawa, who came to watch Yuuki Mashiro's return. Perhaps a sign that maybe Nao might be interested in coming back to the fold? She hasn't been involved in much since departing in March, outside of her one-off appearance on Stardom's side brand and dropping falls on Prominence shows. Hassy was the one who noticed her in the audience, and it seems like everyone was happy to see her.

https://twitter.com/Hassy0924/status/1751178324037263847

 

[lostinube]

TJPW and Stardom both only got around the 300 mark at their shows on Saturday. They weren't running Korakuen, of course. It is that time of year where people are just staying at home - hotel rates in non-ski areas are a bit lower right now.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

6 minutes ago, lostinube said:

TJPW and Stardom both only got around the 300 mark at their shows on Saturday. They weren't running Korakuen, of course. It is that time of year where people are just staying at home - hotel rates in non-ski areas are a bit lower right now.

Yeah, definitely. And Ice Ribbon's live streaming is reliable and good quality, so if the choice is between 4,000 yen for live streaming or 5,000 yen per ticket plus costs to get to Korakuen, it's hard to turn down a good stream if someone's on the fence about whether to stay home or not.

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

VENY got turned back at point of entry into the United States because West Coast Pro brought her over without a visa. She was deported back to Japan and her future status re: entering the United States is unknown, but she's likely facing a multi-year ban from entering the country.

This resulted in the promoter of Kitsune cancelling several wrestlers from his show on March 24, as visas won't be ready for them. He admitted to suggesting that they come in as tourists rather than wait for visas to be cleared, but after what happened to VENY, he didn't want it to happen to anyone else, so I'm assuming he was responsible for what happened with West Coast Pro.

Far too many promotions try to use international talent without proper paperwork and it's only going to hurt the talent. Poor VENY.

[dragonzombie]

Triple Crown Unagi

[dragonzombie]

Stardom Roster page updated 

https://wwr-stardom.com/fighters/

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Ice Ribbon will have a few foreign talent over in February. JC Storm, who has been training at the dojo for a couple of weeks already, debuts on 2/3 at on a dojo show. She'll be teaming with YuuRI against Kyuuri and Ancham. Also, she'll be teaming with YuuRI and Ancham on 2/11 at Osaka's 176BOX against Tsukina Umino and Las Chicas Indominables, who are La Jarochita and Lluvia. I'm not sure how long Las Chicas Indominables will be over for, but if it's like Dark Silueta or Stephanie Vaquer and Dalys' tours, it will probably be for a few weeks.

[dragonzombie]

Bushiroad Fight Co., Ltd. terminated Rossy's contract 

https://twitter.com/wwr_stardom/status/1754339208440004861

Hell of a year for changes.

[J.H.]

Apparentlyvhe was poaching talent for a new venture?

Is he in league with Ishikawa or launching another promotion?

James

[dragonzombie]

Either new company or WWE, or so fans say.

[Casey]

Sapp says there’s rumors he’s WWE bound.

[Elsalvajeloco]

Just now, Casey said:

Sapp says there’s rumors he’s WWE bound.

I ain't no body language expert, but Giulia taking that picture at the anniversary show like she would like to be anywhere BUT Stardom now seems to make much more sense now.

[Kevin Wilson]

Everyone involved with wrestling is crazy. Rossy Ogawa is 66 years old, I can't imagine (me personally) starting a new venture/duties with a different company at that age. I'd just retire. There have been some rumblings of issues within Stardom last year, if he wasn't happy there for whatever personal or professional reason, I get it. But him at his age leaving for WWE (or the hypothetic NXT Japan) is something else for sure.

Its a shame there aren't any better "sources" for Joshi wrestling as while I thought the Stardom product was still strong in 2023 just due to the quality of their wrestlers, there clearly were a lot of issues behind the scenes we either don't know about or only got hints about.

[Kevin Wilson]

 

[Stefanie Sparkleface]

Well.

"Things are going to be very interesting" is a massive understatement.

[Elsalvajeloco]

10 minutes ago, Kevin Wilson said:

Everyone involved with wrestling is crazy. Rossy Ogawa is 66 years old, I can't imagine (me personally) starting a new venture/duties with a different company at that age. I'd just retire. There have been some rumblings of issues within Stardom last year, if he wasn't happy there for whatever personal or professional reason, I get it. But him at his age leaving for WWE (or the hypothetic NXT Japan) is something else for sure.

Its a shame there aren't any better "sources" for Joshi wrestling as while I thought the Stardom product was still strong in 2023 just due to the quality of their wrestlers, there clearly were a lot of issues behind the scenes we either don't know about or only got hints about.

People thought Okada wouldn't leave Japan with the added reason of his wife being a huge national celeb. Then, it happened. So I mean, you cannot rule out anything. That and if they do want to branch out to Japan (i.e sending more talent there like Regal's son), then who else would be a better liaison than Rossy Ogawa especially with the female talent (maybe Meiko since she's back doing stuff w/ Sendai Girls)?

It's been sounding like there is something going really wrong with Stardom internally. 

That said, getting caught talent poaching in 2024 would be wild cause I dunno if WWE wants to be associated with that.

[Kevin Wilson]

TK immediately made two tweets related to it. Which just adds another wrinkle, and if the "AEW wasn't interested in Giulia" rumor was related to Rossy potentially joining WWE and getting wrestlers like Giulia to join him. Just a hypothetical but somehow AEW is either involved or impacted by whatever was going on. Gonna be a messy next few days, I think.

[Elsalvajeloco]

2 minutes ago, Kevin Wilson said:

TK immediately made two tweets related to it. Which just adds another wrinkle, and if the "AEW wasn't interested in Giulia" rumor was related to Rossy potentially joining WWE and getting wrestlers like Giulia to join him. Just a hypothetical but somehow AEW is either involved or impacted by whatever was going on. Gonna be a messy next few days, I think.

Drama.