It has been awhile since the first State of Joshi Column, over four months actually, but we are back with more of my thoughts from the world of Joshi. Needless to say a lot has happened in the meantime so lets get right into it.

Oedo Tai Takes Over Stardom

This was a necessary move for Stardom, for a number of reasons. There was always the injury concern, when three wrestlers hold eight titles it can lead to a lot of vacant belts if someone gets hurt. Io did miss about a month in the summer due to an injury, but luckily it was minor. Still, it showed why it isn’t a great idea as Io and Mayu both had three titles. Also, since all of Threedom were so hard to pin, it was creating too big of a gap between the top of the card and the midcard. While Oedo Tai is still a fun midcard act, they have now also shown they can win, and they will no doubt have entertaining feuds with the rookies such as Kyouna, Momo Watanabe, and Hiromi Mimura for their newly won titles as I imagine Threedom will generally stay away from the tag belts in 2017.

While Stardom is far from a perfect promotion, they have at least made strides in getting a better belt distribution which can only help the promotion down the road.

Kyoko and Hana Kimura Dominate

This is extraordinary for a number of reasons. First of all, while I didn’t do an awful lot of research, I don’t think that a mother/daughter team has ever held a title together before. At least not for a major promotion. Also, Hana Kimura is only 19 years old and in her first year of wrestling, and yet already is holding three championships which is (needless to say) quite an accomplishment for a rookie. Kyoko is retiring in January so this level of excitement won’t last much longer, but for the short term its definitely bringing something different to Joshi to have a mother/daughter combination being so incredibly successful.

Expect to see more of Kyoko and Hana over the next two months, as no doubt Kyoko will continue wrestling regularly in Stardom and JWP leading up to her retirement, and her daughter will be right there with her. Their next big match is on October 16th in Sendai Girls’ as they wrestle together on one of the biggest Joshi events of the year.

Yoshiko and her role in SEAdLINNNG

While I certainly wouldn’t defend her actions, in the history of wrestling no wrestler has ever been blackballed, it can be a bit of a seedy business sometimes. Wrestlers have even killed people and still continued their wrestling careers. It isn’t something I can say is a great idea but the fact is the wrestling promoters and other wrestlers tend to care more about making money than taking moral stands. Plus, Yoshiko was only 21 at the time, which is incredibly young to be blackballed from your chosen profession.

Since returning to the ring in early 2016, after a year away from wrestling, Yoshiko has been pushed by SEAdLINNNG as the promotion’s young ace. The crowd appears to have embraced her and the promotion’s attendance is in line with other mid-range Joshi promotions at Korakuen Hall. Yoshiko has also wrestled in a number of other promotions this year while representing SEAdLINNNG, including Pro Wrestling WAVE, Sendai Girls’, Diana, Oz Academy, and JWP. Her wide range of participation shows that whatever she is saying behind the scenes is working as there is little sign that her incident with Act Yasukawa is still negatively impacting her career, aside from her exclusion from Stardom.

It certainly isn’t my place to tell people that still don’t like Yoshiko to change their mind, everyone has to do what they feel is right. But on Joshi City, as people probably noticed, I haven’t stopped covering Yoshiko or SEAdLINNNG and give them the same amount of coverage as any other wrestler or promotion. Not because I support her actions, but instead of trying to figure out where to draw that line I have opted to not have a line at all. If TARU and Jimmy Snuka teamed on a major Joshi show I am sure I’d cover that too. Where her career goes from here will be interesting, as while she is the young rising star of SEAdLINNNG, SEAdLINNNG is a small promotion that only runs shows every two months.  It is not something people want to think about, but in a year or two if Yoshiko makes a stunning return to Stardom to challenge Threedom it would instantly be a hot rivalry, and remember that when Yoshiko ‘retired’ from Stardom there were several wrestlers there that tried to convince her to stay (either for storyline reasons or because they really felt that way). How that would impact their popularity globally I am not sure, but it certainly would cause a lot of interest and conversation, two things that wrestling companies love. I guess we will just have to wait and see if Stardom/SEAdLINNNG ever cash in on what could be the hottest rivalry in Joshi.

Big Matches in the Pipeline

Keep an eye out for these matches happening in the next month:

• October 16th – DASH Chisako and KAORU vs. Hikaru Shida and Syuri (Sendai Girls’)
• October 16th – Meiko Satomura vs. Chihiro Hashimoto (Sendai Girls’)
• October 16th – Arisa Nakajima vs. Yoshiko (SEAdLINNNG)
• October 20th – Kyoko Kimura vs. Manami Katsu (JWP)
• October 28th – Makoto and TAKA Michinoku vs. Emi Sakura and TAJIRI (REINA)
• October 29th – Misaki Ohata and Ryo Mizunami vs. Dynamite Kansai and Rina Yamashita (WAVE)
• November 3rd – Misaki Ohata and Ryo Mizunami vs. Maya Yukihi and Risa Sera (Ice Ribbon)

If you need any help finding the matches after they air or just have questions/complaints/remarks, I can be reached at kevin@joshicity.com or through the Contact page at the bottom. Thanks for reading!

The post The State of Joshi: Oedo Tai, The Kimura Family, and Yoshiko! appeared first on Joshi City.

One of my greatest fears in life is that Joshi City will just turn into a review website, which was not the original intention when I first created it almost a year ago (see all those categories on the right on the main page?). With how quickly Stardom uploads events now, however, the bulk of the posts have been reviews as since Stardom is the most popular Joshi promotion I did not want to skip any of their events. I still intend to review their shows, however I also am going to try to do other updates as well so that the site doesn’t turn into Stardom City.

With that in mind, welcome to the first edition of The State of Joshi! This will be a special collector’s item in a few years like the first Wrestling Observer, so be sure to print it out and have it professionally graded. I do not want to just do a results report as I find those tedious to type up, but just give an update on what has been going on around the scene. I do not know if this will be a weekly, monthly, or random type of column but I hope to keep people up to date on all the bigger stories going on in Joshi Wrestling while sprinkling in my opinion on Joshi as well.

Stardom – Championships Held Hostage by Threedom

Joshi promotion Stardom currently has a very unique situation with their title scene, with three wrestlers holding all eight titles in the promotion:

Io Shirai – World of Stardom Championship, Goddesses of Stardom Championship, Artist of Stardom Championship
Mayu Iwatani – High Speed Championship, Goddesses of Stardom Championship, Artist of Stardom Championship
Kairi Hojo – Wonder of Stardom Championship, Artist of Stardom Championship

The promotion as a whole only has nine active contracted wrestlers according to their website, but even with a small roster all the belts are held by the Three Daughters of Stardom (aka Threedom). In most promotions, this would be a very bad thing, as if a promotion is this top heavy it leaves them vulnerable if something happens to one of the top stars. There is literally no upper midcard in Stardom, as in the last year Threedom has elevated themselves so high that no other wrestler is close to their level. So far in 2016, no contracted wrestler in Stardom has pinned any member of Threedom, with their small handful of losses coming against Freelancers.

Short term this is an issue, a gap this noticeable is never a good thing as it leads to the matches being less compelling and if there was a major injury then no other wrestler is poised to step up. Some of it is not Stardom’s fault, as last year they lost three wrestlers that would have been upper midcarders or challengers of Threedom: Act Yasukawa, Yoshiko, and Koguma. The new rookies that debuted aren’t up to speed yet and Stardom doesn’t usually have Freelancers hold their major titles unless it is for a specific storyline. It takes time to build up wrestlers so it is a waiting game while they get there.

Long term they should be ok as long as none of the Threedom wrestlers get hurt. Oedo Tai should have a title (or two) by the fall, as they are building Kagetsu well. If Kagetsu loses her title challenges this summer, she will be knocked right back to the midcard like everyone else and the cycle will continue. Yoko Bito is in the same boat, if she comes back and is able to pick up where she left off, she could challenge Threedom by the end of the year, or she could become just another midcarder as well. I am holding off judgement until the end of the year as things can change so fast in wrestling, but at the moment Stardom has the largest gap between the top and everyone else in wrestling and sometime within the next few months it is an issue that needs to be addressed to shake things up a bit in the promotion.

Catch The WAVE – The Biggest Tournament of the Year (that we can’t watch)

Unbeknownst to many wrestling fans, Pro Wrestling WAVE is currently in the middle of one of the largest tournaments of the year as 32 wrestlers are participating to take the crown. Unfortunately, none of these matches have ‘made tape’ yet so we haven’t gotten to watch any of it. WAVE’s show on V*PARADISE will eventually catch up but it tends to be at least a month behind, and matches on the show are clipped. We heard rumors of WAVE starting their own online subscription which may have helped, but as of May 22nd there has not been any additional news.

The tournament is using what they referred to as “World Cup” rules, which are pretty simple. The 32 wrestlers are split into eight Blocks of 4. Within each Block, each wrestler has a singles match against the other three wrestlers in their Block. After all the matches are done, the two top wrestlers in each Block move on to the Knockout Round. That begins the 16 wrestler single elimination tournament until only one wrestler is left. Pro Wrestling WAVE added wrestlers from a variety of promotions, including SEAdLINNNG, Daijo Pro, Sendai Girls’, Ice Ribbon, JWP, REINA, and even Ryukyu Dragon. The winner of the tournament gets a shot at the single’s championship and 1 Million Yen. So far most of the Blocks have had two of the three matches while others are just about done, here are the current standings:

The wrestlers I put a * have locked up a spot in the Knockout Round. LEON is injured and has forfeited the rest of her points. The tournament goes through June 5th so we still have a ways to go, but I hope the standings at least shows the quality of wrestlers that WAVE assembled and hopefully some of these matches (or maybe all of them on DVD) will be released soon.

Makoto – Ace of a Forgotten Promotion

While I try to discuss as many different promotions, there is one I don’t talk about very often – REINA. REINA got a bit more love in 2015 as it was one of the promotions that Kana wrestled in quite a bit and Syuri was the ace. Unfortunately, Kana has left and Syuri is now a Freelancer, leaving the promotion without the wrestlers that many fans identified with. Add in that REINA rarely makes tape, and it is easy to forget that they even exist.

Normally this wouldn’t be a big deal, not every promotion can get maximum coverage as there are simply too many promotions, but it does leave Makoto in the dark. Makoto won the REINA World Women’s Championship on March 25th against Tsukasa Fujimoto, and has taken over the role of Ace of the promotion. Makoto’s next big match is against Miyako Matsumoto on May 24th at Shin-Kiba 1st Ring, which likely won’t be taped. She is in the Catch the WAVE tournament I mentioned above, which hopefully will keep her in the spotlight and maybe bring some fans back with her to REINA. Makoto is a nine year veteran but is only 26 years old and has many years in front of her to compete at a high level, so we can hope more of her matches become available as the year progresses.

Big Matches In the Pipeline

One of the good things about Joshi is they like to tell us way in advance what we should be looking forward to. Here is what we currently have announced:

May 24th – Makoto vs. Miyako Matsumoto (REINA)
June 5th – Io Shirai and Kairi Hojo vs. Meiko Satomura and Mika Iwata (Stardom)
June 16th – Thunder Rock vs. Kagetsu and Kyoko Kimura (Stardom)
June 16th – Yoko Bito vs. TBD (Stardom)
June 19th – Aja Kong vs. Hana Kimura (Oz Academy)
June 22nd – Riho vs. Kaori Yoneyama (Gatoh Move)
July 18th – Sonoko Kato vs. Mayumi Ozaki (Oz Academy)
July 31st – Hiroyo Matsumoto vs. Aja Kong (Matsumoto Produce Show)

That is it for this week, next time I will give some news and thoughts on SEAdLINNNG, Marvelous, and probably whatever Stardom is up to. Until then, if you have any suggestions or feedback feel free to reach out to me on Twitter @PuroCentral.

The post The State of Joshi: Threedom, Catch the WAVE, and Makoto! appeared first on Joshi City.