プロレス Primer
A weekly guide to Japanese pro wrestling.

Puroresu Primer is a weekly newsletter covering the world of Japanese pro wrestling, written for western fans watching through streams and VODs.

My philosophy is simple: Japanese pro wrestling is fantastic, and video of that wrestling is more accessible to western audiences than ever before. But it can still be challenging to actually keep up with different promotions and find the wrestling that’s out there. My goal is not to be a source of breaking news, but instead act as a viewer’s guide for what’s out there, focusing on recently-aired and upcoming shows.

I don’t claim to be an expert, just a guy who’s watched a lot of wrestling. If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions, please shoot me an email at thomas@puroresuprimer.com.

Newsletter: July 10, 2025

Bit of a late edition here since I wanted to catch up on NJPW’s 7/4 and 7/6 shows and have had a busy week, but managed to get it done in time for the weekend. Apologies if the editing is sloppier than usual; I rushed to get this one done before AEW Collision and TJPW started tonight.

Match Recommendations

Pro Wrestling Evolution Vol. 35 (6/19, Cagematch)

Pro Wresting Evolution Vol. 36 (7/5, Cagematch)

NJPW New Japan Soul Night 8 (7/4, NJPW World, Cagematch)

NJPW New Japan Soul Night 9 (7/6, NJPW World, Cagematch)

NJPW: more decisions good and bad heading into the G1

I’ll just go ahead and start with the thing I’m annoyed about, since the rest of this newsletter is pretty positive: Fujita lost his IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship challenge against El Desperado. I hate to be in a position where I’m annoyed that one of my favorite wrestlers in the world won, but let it never be said that I’m not fair in my assessments. Fujita was hugely over in the BOSJ finals and easily feels like the most well-built guy they have under 30 right now. You can argue due to his young age he’s fine to keep chasing the junior championship for a couple more years, but that’s what New Japan seem to have been thinking about crowning a lot of guys for the past half a decade. You can’t put all your chips on old guys who could get injured or retire or quit to go to America for more money. You gotta just finally say “this guy is young, but he’s our guy,” and they missed that opportunity here.

The match was pretty good and had some great viciousness from both guys, though it also didn’t feel like it built much on their previous match back in February. Which, again, goes to why they really should not have run this if they weren’t planning on having Fujita win. 0-2 just isn’t as compelling as 1-1 would have been.

What’s next for El Desperado? Flip a coin to decide whether he’s facing DOUKI or Hiromu at the Dome, I guess. I think if he’s facing Hiromu it’s going to be at the Dome for sure, but if he’s facing DOUKI there they’ll hold off on a Hiromu match, since that’s a match that would deserve some ceremony. Then again, knowing Desperado it’s entirely possible he’ll just demand to do it on a special Korakuen show the day before King of Pro Wrestling or whatever.

With that out of the way, let’s talk G1, where thankfully, reason has prevailed. First, on the 7/4 show at the Tokyo Budokan, Ryohei Oiwa defeated Satoshi Kojima (who was substituting for Don Fale, who’s theoretically attending to a family emergency though he was able to make the 7/4 show his New Zealand dojo put on), and YOSHI-HASHI defeated Chase Owens. We were spared two more House of Torture entrants into the G1. These matches were actually both really fun - Kojima vs Oiwa is short and doesn’t overstay its welcome; Yoshi-Hashi and Chase actually got some time and really got the crowd bought in.

Then, on 7/5, it was announced that Goto will be out of the G1 due to his shoulder injury. I guess this was, in fact, more than the work I had said it was last issue, but it is still odd to me. It’s totally possible Goto just gutted out a bad injury to work his title loss, but I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s more story there (whether or not we ever hear about it).

So, to replace Goto, it was announced the 7/6 show would have a Gauntlet: Chase Owens vs Kojima vs Taichi vs Ishii for the last spot. This is one of those gauntlets where it’s 1v1, with two random(?) people starting and then a pinned wrestler is replaced by a new one until they’re out of wrestlers. This ended up being Chase pinning Kojima, Taichi pinning Chase, and Taichi pinning Ishii. Unsurprisingly, the first two parts of this match were fine and the last part was great.

Considering Taichi had publicly noted he was really annoyed about having to have the play-in match in the first place, I almost wonder if this was all set in stone a while ago - which would make sense if the Goto injury is a cover for him not wanting to work the G1 for whatever reason. Of course, that reason could just be “he’s old and banged up;” an injury is an injury even if it’s not the shoulder that Zack worked in the title match. I’m excited to see Taichi in, though, certainly he’s the best pick of those three guys (I love Ishii but his knees are totally dust and it’s pretty unlikely he works a G1 ever again).

With the blocks set, full cards for all the tour shows have been released. Rather than run those down myself, I’m gonna turn it over to the NJPW English website for surprisingly in-depth analysis of both A block and B block.

7/4 show & Gabe Kidd notes

The 7/4 show at Tokyo Budokan was kind of a weird production. This venue is not the historic Budokan you might be thinking of (the Nippon Budokan), but a newer gymnasium with around a 4,000 capacity. Unfortunately, it only drew about 1,400, down from 2,400 the year before for a very similar card at the same time of year. This show had a stage with a screen setup and some lights, but notably, no house lighting in the venue. It felt very much like a low-budget touring show setup, and that’s kind of sad to see at a venue actually in Tokyo.

The main event of the show was Gabe Kidd defending the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship against Tanahashi. This wasn’t a great match by any means, but wasn’t as bad as some people have made it out to be. It did have a killer post-match promo by Gabe, which I think helped a lot (really wish he’d been able to do more before the match, but it was set up on pretty short notice). I don’t think you need to watch this match, but you should watch this promo.

There’s a lot being made of Gabe being a bad draw or something because of the downturn here, but I think there’s a bunch of other stuff in play. It’s worth noting that last year, they ran Korakuen then Tokyo Budokan, with the Korakuen having the semi finals of the G1 play-in and the Budokan having the finals, plus a big LIJ vs LIJ tag and DOUKI defeating El Desperado for the junior title in the main event.

They weirdly flipped things around this year: they didn’t have a finals round for the G1 play-ins so they just split the four matches across a touring show and the Tokyo Budokan, they put Fujita vs Desperado on the Korakuen after the Budokan, and they tried to shove Gabe vs Tana in as a big main event at the last minute. I don’t think this show was ever going to draw well, regardless of what they put in place there. It was a bad idea to run the Budokan and Korakuen back to back - hell, the announced 7/6 attendance was higher than the Budokan. I think they’ll either drop that venue from this tour next year or at least flip things back around.

Gabe will make a quick appearance at AEW All In this weekend, teaming up with Claudio & Yuta of the Death Riders to face the Opps (Samoa Joe, Shibata, & Powerhouse Hobbs) for the oft-forgotten AEW trios belts. As ever, Gabe’s face/heel alignment between companies continues to be a little confusing, but remember that he’s basically a substitute for an injured(?) PAC here, so I can give them a little leeway. I think if Gabe just turns on Death Riders after they lose this match it would pop the crowd big (because even if they’re cool on Gabe, they hate the Death Riders), so I hope that’s where this is going. Gabe will almost certainly factor heavily into Forbidden Door next month in England, so a big moment here to solidify him with the crowd (right before he disappears for a month for the G1) feels necessary for whatever they’re planning there.

Also Gabe is facing Shibata on the live AEW Collision tonight (7/10). Weird thing to get announced right as I was about to send this.

Wato, Yano, & YOH defeated House of Torture for the trios belts on 7/4, but Wato & YOH lost their bid to reclaim the tag belts on 7/6. I’m not going to watch these matches, you shouldn’t either.

Dragon Gate: Kobe World this weekend

I’m so glad to be able to say that Voices of Wrestling have a detailed preview of Dragon Gate’s huge Kobe World show so I don’t have to write up my own feeble attempt at one. Suffice to say, I am really excited about this show. Shun Skywalker’s self-imposed “if I lose, I leave” main event title shot against YAMATO isn’t quite as big as the Tam/Saya angle, but it’s still a pretty big deal!

If you want an even more detailed breakdown of this show, the folks at Open the Voice Gate have an episode with DG’s English commentator Jae Church going through the card and their predictions as well.

Outside of the main event, people seem a little cool on this card, but I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed Dead or Alive and expect at least one or two of these undercard matches to be a much better time than they seem on paper. U-T defending the Brave Gate belt against Ryoya Tanaka might be the match I’m looking forward to the most here; I’ve really enjoyed watching U-T as I’ve gotten into Dragon Gate this year.

Stardom: Rina injury, 5 Star lineup

Both the 5/31 Natsupoi PPV and the 6/21 The Conversion PPV are up on Stardom World. The Natsupoi show’s upload was cut down to just the matches and not the 40 minute concert that apparently concluded the show, but if you’re enough of a sicko to care about that you’ve probably already watched this PPV anyways.

Also, Sareee vs Syuri is on NJPW World along with the other two IWGP Women’s Championship defenses this year; I forgot that those get cross-uploaded. Absolutely worth watching bot Mayu vs Syuri and Syuri vs Sareee if you haven’t; they’ll be in MOTY discussions this year for sure.

One bummer note from Stardom: Rina got a bad concussion in the opening match of the 7/4 New Blood show and was stretchered out. She seems to be “fine” now (as far as anyone getting a bad concussion is fine) and will be back soon. Interestingly, they edited this out of the free Youtube upload of the New Blood show. I think that’s probably a good call, but wonder if the logistics of it being a free thing are why they did it - whether because it was more visible and easy to share and could have made the company look bad, or just because no one could complain about the rest of the match being edited out of a thing they paid for.

The 5 Star GP lineup is out, but I’ll have more notes on that next week before the tournament starts. Sneak preview of that coverage: I’m very excited for the Bozilla block. Also, Bea Priestly is in it! Neat.

Other news

I watched Pro Wrestling Evolution’s women’s tournament, which spanned the 6/19 and 7/5 shows. I believe these shows are both on their cheap streaming service, but I had trouble getting my card to work on there so I found them through other means.

If you can figure out where to watch them, they’re totally worth a watch, but if not don’t feel too bad; there’s other ways to get to watch these wrestlers. These wound up just being two very solid indie wrestling shows from Shinkiba 1st Ring and Shinjuku FACE respectively, with a Suwama vs Shinya Aoki match helping draw for the latter show (and, of course, ending in a time limit draw).

The finals came down to Chi Chi vs ZONES, which was both obvious from a “this is the correct booking” perspective and also telegraphed by the post-main segment on night 1. The surprise, though, was that it was ZONES who won the tournament and became Pro Wrestling Evolution’s inaugural women’s champion (and, indeed, their first champion of any kind after 36 shows). Both wrestlers debuted great new gear on night two (well, if I’m being honest, Chi Chi’s gear is the gear that looked great; ZONES’s was just kinda fine but also a massive improvement on her previous gear).

I suspect maybe some of the other promotions Chi Chi has worked in lately are interested in giving her more championship opportunities (if not belting her up like Sendai Girls did), so it makes sense for Chi Chi to not hold a championship and instead for ZONES to have it instead. Not to take any credit away from ZONES, who looked awesome in this main event.

Following up on the Emerald Flowshow episode about Big Japan Pro Wrestling I mentioned last week, here’s a great Voices of Wrestling article covering a lot of the same stuff.

What to watch (7/10 - 7/17)

Alright, I’m gonna use this section to talk about TJPW in Texas, which starts tonight or Thursday 7/10 in Houston (7:30 pm ET, full card), then continues through another Houston show on Friday 7/11 (7:30 pm ET, full card), then wraps up in Dallas the day after AEW All In on Sunday 7/13 (1:30 pm ET, full card). The big surprise is that these shows will be live streamed with commentary by Veda Scott, Rich Bocchini (Houston), and Joe Dombroski (Dallas).

These shows have apparently sold super, super well; the Houston shows are sold out and look to have been 300-ish capacity, while Dallas is on track to be the best-attended joshi show to ever run in the US (beating out Stardom at the 2300 Arena in 2024, which announced 976).

Unlike the show with GCW earlier this year, they didn’t try to fit any championship matches on this, but there are some surprisingly big matches on these cards. Houston Night 1 has Miu vs Wakana and Miyu vs Maki Itoh. Night 2 is pretty sleepy by comparison, though Mizuki & Suzume vs Yuki Arai & Moka Miyamoto has a lot more juice with Moka’s upcoming Summer Sun Princess challenge for Suzume’s International Princess Championship. And Dallas is stacked compared to the average TJPW show, with Shoko Nakajima vs Miu Watanabe and Mizuki vs Maki Itoh. Add in some special guests (including Maya World, Vert Vixen, and Billie Starkz) and these could be some great shows.

Dragon Gate have their big Kobe World show on Sunday 7/13 (3pm JST / 2am ET). This will, of course, be live on Dragon Gate Network, and if you want a full card run down check out that VoW preview I linked above.

AJPW have a midweek Korakuen on Thursday 7/17 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card). This show kicks off their junior tag league, which I briefly previewed way back in the 6/20 issue. Looking forward to that.

That’s it for this newsletter. I’ll be back next week, hopefully with match recommendations for TJPW and Dragon Gate. Of course, the biggest show I’m looking forward to this weekend is AEW’s All In PPV.

I wanted to give a heads up about the G1 Climax: I’m not really planning on doing a lot of coverage of it. Like with the BOSJ, my plan is to just try to watch a few matches that get rave reviews, and I’ll pass along any match recommendations I can personally attest to and any interesting tidbits from the results. NJPW’s English language site will have plenty of coverage of the G1 with Chris Charlton and Walker Stewart putting in overtime; it’d be redundant for me to do too much coverage. If you want critique and analysis, Voices of Wrestling will likely have you covered.

I will say, if I were doing this as a job, I probably would make a special point of watching the G1 this year, given it is such a weird inflection point. You’ve got Tanahashi’s last G1, you’ve got all the House of Torture guys, you’ve got all these dudes who seem like they can and should win, and then you have zero trust in the guy booking all of this. It demands coverage and analysis, really. But as a fan, I just… really don’t want to watch this. Not even just from a “I need to have a normal sleep schedule and do my normal day job” perspective, but also a “I have so little patience for Gedo’s booking that the first time House of Torture win a match with interference I’ll immediately want to cancel my NJPW World subscription.” I don’t really want to put myself through that, uh, torture, so I’m gonna keep it at arm’s length and try to stick to the 4*+ matches (of which I’m sure there will be quite a few, in spite of everything!).