Joshi Puroresu Discussion Thread

[Richard Nixon]

Tessa was never a problem on this tour. Someone left of their own accord, unprofessionally, not telling anyone. The Observer didn't even say that Tessa started anything. Classic case of "telephone." Start with one thing and at the end of the line it is a totally different statement.

The Observer said that Courtney left and started physical confrontations with Tessa, and the locker room was unhappy with Courtney. True.

People jump to conclusions, and also misinterpret info.

 

[Richard Nixon]

As for homeland freelancers...hard to use them when they have stipulations that come with using them.

[JML]

10 hours ago, Kevin Wilson said:

I'm not a big Rabbit Miyu fan (I think she is fine but not in my Top 25 Joshi wrestlers), so it would depend for me on how much she was in the match.  I doubt it topped Io/Kay Lee Ray for me though :). I'd be interested in Bolshoi/Chisako probably more though. Hope they taped it.

The King of Trios Final in Chikara between the teams was a pretty good match and I would recommend checking out. 

[.STAP]

Watching the older Stardom, I am really impressed by what I am seeing. The workrate is so much different than how it is in Stardom these days.. seems a lot faster and intense. Yuzupon, Bito and Hoshiki were on another level compared to what Threedom are doing.

[Trocar Slush Weasel]

So Kris did end up with stitches under her chin.  Weird, because I never saw blood on her chin and it looked like blood was coming from her mouth when she went to the back.

[Dshuks]

Not Sure I by 2015 Stardom being that much better than 2016.

 

2015 had higher highs with the Meiko matches and io vs Koguma , but theres been a bunch of very solid house show main event tags and singles matches this year. If anything I'd say  the Korakuen Hall shows have been a little weaker but the other shows have been stronger. Also think that the 2016 5 star GP was >>>>>>>>> 2015

 

2015 was basically one really good match ( Io vs Mayu), one pretty solid match ( Mayu vs Rosa) , and a bunch of mediocre stuff. 

 

2016 had Io vs Kairi, Toni Storrm vs Kay Lee Ray, Mayu vs Kay Lee Ray, Io vs Kyona, Kyona vs Momo, and Yoko Bito vs Kay Lee Ray.  Considering fact that Ivelisse had to drop out from the start, Io missed the first week,  and Kairi missed the last two shows the quality was very good .   The fact that the final was bad ( and honestly the 2015 final wasn't very good either Hudson Envy is slow and boring)  shouldn't detract from the rest of tourney too much. 

 

That is not to say that Stardom does not have significant problems they do. For example they really need to use Kagetsu and Hiroyo more and actually push them into the main event scene. They need to find away to retain their talent  at a better rate. They also need to have a more clearly defined roster organization in terms of Main Event Level, Mid-Card , Opening match. This means taking mid card belts off of the likes Kairi and mayu and give them to lower card wrestlers . I'd also argue that getting rid of the high speed belt would be a good idea as it serves no real purpose as none of the roster outside of Io and Mayu really wrestle a high-flying style, with Kagetsu and Yoneyama (sort of) as freelancers. Having only  one mid card belt would stretch the roster out less .

 

Heres how I would organize the roster

 

Main Event

Io

Kairi

Mayu

Kagetsu

Hiroyo

 

In-between 

Yoko Bito 

 

Mid-card

Jungle Kyona 

Momo

Saori Annou 

Kris Wolf 

Kaori Yoneyama 

Gajin of the month ( this can be changed depending on the talent level of the Gajin they bring in, obviously Kay Lee Ray or Rosa Negra would be higher, Tessa and Dragonita would be lower. 

    In-Between 

Natsumi Maki 

Hana Kimura 

Hiromi 

Lower Card 

Eimi (The other actress z girl)

Azumi 

Arisu 

Alex Lee 9 Is she even in Japan any more?) 

 

      

[Hoope]

The 2nd day of the GP last year outworks any GP show this year or last year

 

Also Kris Wolf doesn't belong anywhere above lowcard. It's baffling that she's even above the card to Yoneyama

[Eivion]

I think this year was a much better tournament than last year's. I think Kairi/Io & Toni/KLR were better than anything from last year's show save maybe Io/Mayu. The rookies were generally decent save when wrestling Stewart & Tessa, who were the worst performers this tournament. Even saying that I thought Stewart had a nice match with Kairi. KLR & Toni Storm looked good throughout. Natsumi Maki showed way more potential than I would have guessed she had going off of her work from 3-4 months ago. I think Stardom is better off than they were a year ago. Hopefully things only get better.

[Dshuks]

Another problem I have with Stardom ( and this is a Joshi wide problem) is the lack of story-lines/feuds. They have little glimpses of things that could be good like cocky almost hellish Io but they never go all the way with it. 

[Kevin Wilson]

27 minutes ago, Dshuks said:

Another problem I have with Stardom ( and this is a Joshi wide problem) is the lack of story-lines/feuds. They have little glimpses of things that could be good like cocky almost hellish Io but they never go all the way with it. 

You should watch more OZ Academy  I actually like the way they do the storylines in Stardom, I think after watching 20 years of WCW/WWE I enjoy having storylines that are a bit more subtle. Oedo Tai has plenty of personality, Io is cocky, Kairi is the 'heart on my sleeve' type. I don't need a Bullet Club or Ozuki-gun type of faction in every promotion being crazy up and down the card, a simple "I'm better than you and I'll show you in the ring" is fine with me as long as the match delivers.

[Dshuks]

21 minutes ago, Kevin Wilson said:

You should watch more OZ Academy  I actually like the way they do the storylines in Stardom, I think after watching 20 years of WCW/WWE I enjoy having storylines that are a bit more subtle. Oedo Tai has plenty of personality, Io is cocky, Kairi is the 'heart on my sleeve' type. I don't need a Bullet Club or Ozuki-gun type of faction in every promotion being crazy up and down the card, a simple "I'm better than you and I'll show you in the ring" is fine with me as long as the match delivers.

Oh I don't wan't factions believe me , the opposite really I can't watch OZ because I hate the faction interference nonsense. I want more one on one feuds that actually have a story or direction behind them.

 

Like  Io's win over Meiko had some actual menaingand story behind it which mae the win mean more, than a random match would have. Even the Meiko reign really wasn't as utilized as well as it could have been. Although that is mainly because of the lack of contracted main event talent Stardom had in 2015 ( and now tbh). 

 

 

Honestly Iroha deciding to become basically irrelevant in the Joshi world by joining with Chigusa really screwed Stardom over more than any other departure imo.  If they still had Takumi  they would have 4-5 (if you count Yoko)  main event talents under contract.  Having a Meiko vs Takumi match  during her reign would have been great. 

[Kevin Wilson]

16 minutes ago, Dshuks said:

Oh I don't wan't factions believe me , the opposite really I can't watch OZ because I hate the faction interference nonsense. I want more one on one feuds that actually have a story or direction behind them.

 

Like  Io's win over Meiko had some actual menaingand story behind it which mae the win mean more, than a random match would have. Even the Meiko reign really wasn't as utilized as well as it could have been. Although that is mainly because of the lack of contracted main event talent Stardom had in 2015 ( and now tbh). 

 

 

Honestly Iroha deciding to become basically irrelevant in the Joshi world by joining with Chigusa really screwed Stardom over more than any other departure imo.  If they still had Takumi  they would have 4-5 (if you count Yoko)  main event talents under contract.  Having a Meiko vs Takumi match  during her reign would have been great. 

I do wish Iroha hadn't taken that path. Losing both Iroha and Koguma last year I think hurt more than even losing Takahashi or Act, I think both would by now have been upper midcarders and still obviously had a lot of good years ahead of them. I am not sure what 'terms' Iroha left on but I assume she won't stay in Marvelous forever.

[Hoope]

1 hour ago, Dshuks said:

Another problem I have with Stardom ( and this is a Joshi wide problem) is the lack of story-lines/feuds. They have little glimpses of things that could be good like cocky almost hellish Io but they never go all the way with it. 

 

Yeah that's another thing. On top of uninteresting or just straight up not good cards, they do even try to make things interesting except for the tiny spark "feud" that lasts maybe 2 shows. Even stuff they can do things with like Kairi and Hiroyo, just dropped off the earth. At least JWP for example actually tries; the Kana stuff, the Seikigun angle with the Arisa swerve and the match for the title, this potential Best Friends Implode thing with Arisa and Fujimoto. OZ too, but it does get repetitive and even nonsensical. In Stardom though they have this goofy heel faction and it's just "we got moar gaijin to rent so them and Kris can eat pins" and "can we have a title shot". And of course, these title wins mean nothing cuz there's no reason to care, like a lot of things they do. 

And at this point, they need to just drop Odeo Tai already. Just drop the faction. Act is gone, the year you do this whole gaijin overdrive they get nothing out of it, and your big real of a new member is just Kimura's daughter? This is obviously not a promotion that needs(and doesn't show that they really want) a heel faction or any real angles, just kill it

[Eivion]

It was mentioned earlier, but its hard to do or keep up angles involving native freelancers when said freelancers have demands that can't be met or can't meet your demands. Its sort of obvious that happened in the case Matsumoto as they were building her up only to kind of drop it after the draw with Kairi. Stardom technically did have something with Sendai last year, but that was mostly over once Meiko lost the belt. They could never go too far with that one anyways as neither group had the roster roster size. Still it technically did last half the year. This year has mostly been about rebuilding.

[Richard Nixon]

3 hours ago, Eivion said:

It was mentioned earlier, but its hard to do or keep up angles involving native freelancers when said freelancers have demands that can't be met or can't meet your demands. Its sort of obvious that happened in the case Matsumoto as they were building her up only to kind of drop it after the draw with Kairi. Stardom technically did have something with Sendai last year, but that was mostly over once Meiko lost the belt. They could never go too far with that one anyways as neither group had the roster roster size. Still it technically did last half the year. This year has mostly been about rebuilding.

Bingo. Freelancer A, B and C are all like "Well, I can work these dates...but i can't lose and in the tag match I can't take the fall." Which makes it pretty hard to do anything.

[Kevin Wilson]

The funny thing is, and I am openly biased about this for the record, I wish that Hikaru Shida lost less matches. By my count she has lost 9 singles matches already in 2016, that is way too many. I am really looking forward to watching Shida and Syuri's title win in OZ a few weeks ago (I think it airs in late October), its like the Joshi Gods knew they were two of my favorite wrestlers and paired them up just for me. Probably not the real reason but either way I'm pretty excited. But this is one hell of a card:

OZ on September 11th, 2016

• Mochi Miyagi vs. Yumi Ohka 
• Aja Kong, Manami Toyota and Rina Yamashita vs. AKINO, Kagetsu and Kaho Kobayashi
• Aoi Kizuki vs. Hiroyo Matsumoto
• Hana Kimura and Kyoko Kimura vs. Maya Yukihi and Mayumi Ozaki
• Kaori Yoneyama and Tsubasa Kuragaki (c) vs. Hikaru Shida and Syuri
• Sonoko Kato (c) vs. Dynamite Kansai

[rzombie1988]

8 hours ago, Eivion said:

It was mentioned earlier, but its hard to do or keep up angles involving native freelancers when said freelancers have demands that can't be met or can't meet your demands. Its sort of obvious that happened in the case Matsumoto as they were building her up only to kind of drop it after the draw with Kairi. Stardom technically did have something with Sendai last year, but that was mostly over once Meiko lost the belt. They could never go too far with that one anyways as neither group had the roster roster size. Still it technically did last half the year. This year has mostly been about rebuilding.

The thing is to me, none of the freelancers have any real "fuck you" power. Maybe in 70's America where there were a ton of places to work and make great money, but there's only a few places to work in Japan.

[Kevin Wilson]

13 minutes ago, rzombie1988 said:

The thing is to me, none of the freelancers have any real "fuck you" power. Maybe in 70's America where there were a ton of places to work and make great money, but there's only a few places to work in Japan.

Well it depends on what their goals are. If they make enough doing what they are doing now, they won't feel compelled to go to another promotion and lose. I mean its well documented that wrestlers aren't like us, they want to protect their image just as much as they want to make money either for vanity or (in their mind) protect their future in the business. I don't know if any Joshi wrestlers are making great money anyway. So (just using her as a made up example) if Matsumoto is making good enough money in OZ, WAVE, etc. and thinks that losing to Kairi will lower her popularity/draw/etc in the other promotions she wrestles in, she may not want to lose to her. Freelancers have to look out for themselves since at any point any promotion can just stop using them for any reason.

I mean there was a story recently in the US that... I think it was old school Demolition refused to lose to old school Rock n Roll Express on an old person wrestling show. Vader just beat Ospreay. You won't see Dump Matsumoto getting pinned clean by a random wrestler anytime soon. So we can't use normal ways of thinking on wrestlers, they are a unique bunch

[.STAP]

I think Hiroyo Matsumoto has only been pinned once in Stardom and that was by Nanae in 2012, IIRC. S-OVATION is pretty damn protective of her. She only ever falls to the vets in OZ Academy, even Satomaru got a time over against her. I can't imagine it would be easy to book someone like that in a feud unless you're giving them a run with the belt.

 

Edit: She lost to Dark Angel in the tournament for the #1 contendership to Red Belt. That's two, then.

[Dshuks]

Maybe the We Are Stardom dude can answer this but why are the actress girl Z girls different other than being rookies? I think I remember reading somewhere that there is a working/trianing relationship between the two promotions ( I use that term loosely with actress girl z)   so maybe that's why.  Does this mean that theres a higher chance of someone like Saori Annou or Natsumi Maki getting a push ?

 

Also am I the only one who has been impressed with Natsumi lately I think Elvion said he was, but she's turned from somene who I thought was going to be nothing more than a lower card comedy wrestler to someone I would like to see get a high speed title match with Mayu. 

[zev]

I just wanted to say Welcome to the site, new users/joshi fans.

May Satomura never grow angry of you and then dropkick you in the face.

[Trocar Slush Weasel]

48 minutes ago, Dshuks said:

Also am I the only one who has been impressed with Natsumi lately I think Elvion said he was, but she's turned from somene who I thought was going to be nothing more than a lower card comedy wrestler to someone I would like to see get a high speed title match with Mayu. 

I said she had the most enjoyable match for me at the Osaka show over the weekend.  Some of that was Kimura, but she also showed some more nuances to her personality than just getting to her signature pose.

[Eivion]

48 minutes ago, Dshuks said:

Also am I the only one who has been impressed with Natsumi lately I think Elvion said he was, but she's turned from somene who I thought was going to be nothing more than a lower card comedy wrestler to someone I would like to see get a high speed title match with Mayu. 

I didn't think Maki would be a comedy wrestler for life, but I definitely didn't think she would improve this much so soon.

[Richard Nixon]

4 hours ago, Dshuks said:

Maybe the We Are Stardom dude can answer this but why are the actress girl Z girls different other than being rookies? I think I remember reading somewhere that there is a working/trianing relationship between the two promotions ( I use that term loosely with actress girl z)   so maybe that's why.  Does this mean that theres a higher chance of someone like Saori Annou or Natsumi Maki getting a push ?

 

Also am I the only one who has been impressed with Natsumi lately I think Elvion said he was, but she's turned from somene who I thought was going to be nothing more than a lower card comedy wrestler to someone I would like to see get a high speed title match with Mayu. 

I don't think they are ready for a "push" really, but let's take Maki for instance. She and Hiromi had zero points in the GP. Probably everyone thought that Maki should beat Hiromi. And weeks before Rossy said whoever is better will win. Well Maki performed her butt off in her matches, and she got the win.

On that level, yeah I can see her moving from opening matches with Azumi towards the middle card on a regular basis. I also don't know how long the Actress girl'Z will be staying in Stardom. I wish they were part of Stardom. But they aren't.

And I've told their promoter that fans wouldn't mind seeing their shows, so they should do DVDs or whatever and still we've seen nothing. So I have no idea what kind of goal they have as a promotion. Most of the girls are exactly that: actresses that do stage plays or models or singers; kind of how Stardom began, and J'd. 

[Dshuks]

15 minutes ago, we.are.stardom said:

I don't think they are ready for a "push" really, but let's take Maki for instance. She and Hiromi had zero points in the GP. Probably everyone thought that Maki should beat Hiromi. And weeks before Rossy said whoever is better will win. Well Maki performed her butt off in her matches, and she got the win.

On that level, yeah I can see her moving from opening matches with Azumi towards the middle card on a regular basis. I also don't know how long the Actress girl'Z will be staying in Stardom. I wish they were part of Stardom. But they aren't.

And I've told their promoter that fans wouldn't mind seeing their shows, so they should do DVDs or whatever and still we've seen nothing. So I have no idea what kind of goal they have as a promotion. Most of the girls are exactly that: actresses that do stage plays or models or singers; kind of how Stardom began, and J'd. 

Well that doesn't sound promising.

 

Losing Natsumi and Saori's presence on the shows ( although Saori doesn't really appear nearly as much)  would hurt. As they have some of the less basic move sets of the younger less experienced wrestlers on Stardom's shows.  I mean I don't think anyone thinks someone lie Arisu is going to be a Koguma level talent any time soon.