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: June 13, 2025

Managed to watch just a tiny bit more puro since the last newsletter (blame the 4 hour AEW TV show and wasting my Saturday on WWE hate-watching). Still, not too much happened last weekend to catch up on, but I’ll have a few notes on news and previews heading into this week’s big NJPW show and three (!) AJPW shows.

Match Recommendations

DDT A Love Letter from Me 2025 (6/7, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

Stardom (6/8, Stardom World, Cagematch)

Sendai Girls (6/7, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

NJPW: Looking at Dominion 6.15

Here’s our first big show of the post-Naito era, and what we’ve lost in charisma, we’ve maybe replaced with beef. Dominion on Sunday has Takeshita vs Boltin Oleg, Yota Tsuji vs Gabe Kidd, and Hirooki Goto vs Shingo Takagi. I hope you’re excited for chops and forearms.

Conspicuously absent among the beef is the IWGP Junior Heavyweight championship - as noted last week, BOSJ winner Kosei Fujita will challenge El Desperado on a later show. But the IWGP Junior Heavyweight Tag Team belts are still on the line, as are the IWGP Heavyweight Tag Team belts, the NEVER Openweight Championship, the IWGP Global Heavyweight Championship, and the IWGP World Heavyweight Championship. That’s a lot of gold!

NJPW1972 has a full rundown as usual, so I won’t go into too much detail here. The biggest story I’m watching, buried in the undercard, is the debut of a new House of Torture member. Hiromu Takahashi is notably absent from this card and has come up as a potential name, but that seems like way too sudden a turn for such a beloved face, unless I’ve been missing an angle.

Other notes: the Toru Yano vs Super Sasadango Machine NJPW vs DDT one match PPV happened; I haven’t had a chance to catch up on it but it was apparently a two hour match with a double count out finish and also had some bonus matches happening in the middle of it, which sounds about right. Dramatic DDT has a full writeup on this that I look forward to reading over with my coffee tomorrow.

Naito and BUSHI are now going as “Los Tranquilos de Japon,” which is so lazy I can’t help but respect it, as with most things about Naito (and BUSHI, tbh).

Sendai Girls: Yuu announces her retirement

I managed to catch just the first of Sendai Girls’s two shows last weekend. YUNA vs ZONES was a banger of a rookie match, and Sadie Gibbs brought some fun energy (if occasionally some sloppy wrestling) in her tag on that show. She does some fun flips and dives that give her a, dare I say it, Mike D Vecchio energy?

While I haven’t seen the 6/8 show yet, I do know that Yuu announced her retirement on it. She’ll be retiring on a show on 12/28. That show isn’t listed on Sendai Girls’s calendar yet (though a November Korakuen is), so not sure where that will be.

Yuu debuted in 2016 for TJPW (where she was the second ever Princess of Princess champion) and left in late 2018 on a freelancer excursion, touring Europe (including RevPro, EVE, and wXw). I remember first seeing her in NYC for WrestleMania weekend in 2019, where she worked both a wXw show and a DDT battle royal. She started in Sendai Girls in mid-2019 and also worked everywhere from Oz Academy to WAVE to Marvelous to SEAdLNNNG that year, eventually forming a tag team with Chihiro Hashimoto that would become known as Team 200kg.

She also had appearances in Stardom in 2022 and 2023, mostly teaming with Nanae Takahashi. She at one point simultaneously held the Oz Academy and Sendai Girls tag team titles with Hashimoto and the Goddesses of Stardom championship with Takahashi, a heck of a feat. She’s also held tag belts with Hashimoto in Marvelous and singles belts in EVE, JTO, Pure-J, was the AJPW TV Six-Man Champion along with Hashimoto and Shuji Ishikawa, and had a couple DDT Iron Man Heavy Metalweight championship reigns too.

Yuu had announced a hiatus earlier this year but that didn’t end up happening, so this retirement isn’t too shocking of an announcement. I couldn’t tell you how much Yuu’s retirement would hurt SenJo’s drawing power because I don’t really know, but I could imagine her sticking around to make sure they’re on okay footing after Meiko Satomura’s retirement.

I think Team 200kg rock, I am extremely sad to see Yuu go, but understand that after a decade she might be wanting to do other things. With Hashimoto as the current Sendai Girls champion and clear ace going forward, I wonder how much of Yuu’s retirement tour will be spent on Team 200kg and how much will be about getting Yuu cool singles matches (freeing Hashimoto to have championship matches and stories) - hopefully we get a nice mix of both.

Other News

Stardom continued their build to their 6/21 PPV with a good Korakuen show. The big match announcement here is Hanan & Saya Iida (Winggori) will defend their tag belts against Natsupoi & Saori. Rian got her first ever pin in a fun undercard match and was rewarded with a title shot against Hina and her Future of Stardom Championship (thanks Talk Joshi for filling me in on that one). I’m looking forward to this PPV; Sareee vs Syuri is a can’t miss match but I’m glad they’re putting some major matches on the undercard to fill it out.

TJPW’s Neko Haruna is out with a torn ACL, which is some rotten luck for a wrestler who’s had two previous knee injuries.

Shinjuku FACE is having an anniversary show on 7/31 with some fun crossover matches (full card over on Dramatic DDT). Most notable is the main of Hiromu Takahashi & Chris Brookes vs Yuki Ueno & Atsuki Aoyagi; really hoping that makes tape.

What to watch (6/13 - 6/19)

The biggest show of the weekend is, of course, NJPW Dominion 6.15 in Osaka-Jo Hall on Sunday 6/15 (4pm JST / 3am ET). Full card for that here.

AJPW has three shows over the next few days: small shows on Saturday 6/14 and Sunday 6/15 (both uploaded on-demand that day) and a Korakuen on Wednesday 6/18 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET). The 6/14 show is mostly just a preview for the Korakuen, though Dan Tamura vs Seigo Tachibana and Ryo Inoue vs Fuminori Abe sound ok. 6/15 has Rising HAYATO & Yuma Anzai defending the All Asia Tag Championships against Yuma & Atsuki Aoyagi, which sounds pretty good. It also has Yuko Miyomoto defending the GAORA TV title against Takashi, which sounds horrendous. It also provides another opportunity to see the team of Shotaro Ashino & Xyon, which… could be okay.

The Korakuen is pretty stacked, with Naruki Doi challenging Seiki Yoshioka for the junior belt, Kento & Yuma Aoyagi defending their World Tag Team Championships against Dragon Gate’s Madoka Kikuta & Kai (with Kai making a big return to AJPW here), and Hideki Suzuki challenging for Jun Saito’s Triple Crown Championship. The undercard matches aren’t much but have some interesting guys, like the return of new debut Talos, freelancers Suwama, Hikaru Sato, and Kengo Mashimo, and both members of Astronauts weirdly in different tag matches. I’ll be tuning in for this show for sure. The other two, ehhhh.

TJPW has ring announcer Sayuri Namba’s retirement show on Saturday 6/14 (11:30 am JST / 10:30 pm on 6/13 ET). I actually assumed this would be a PPV and I’m pleasantly surprised that it’s not. There’s some goofy matches on this and tons of bits I will not understand due to the language barrier; as ever I look forward to Dramatic DDT’s report and will probably watch the show with it as my guide to what on earth is happening.

NOAH Monday Magic returns with a show on Monday 6/16 (7pm JST / 6am ET). No advance card for this one, as is Monday Magic tradition.

Marigold have a Korakuen on 6/17 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 ET). This has a card but I have no idea how the hell to find it, as is Marigold’s tradition. The Wrestle Universe graphic shows Mayu Iwatani and Takumi Iroha, but I assume they’re not having a singles match because I’m guessing that will be on the Wrestle Magic PPV coming up?

Dragon Gate has three shows over 6/14 and 6/15, I won’t bother to itemize them because the Dragon Gate sickos know where the schedule is and have marked it in their calendars already. There’s also, uh, no cards listed on the DG website. One is at the beautiful Kyoto KBS Hall, which knowing Dragon Gate production they’ll probably find a way to drape a curtain over the entire stained-glass window or something.

Finally, my hated enemy Daisuke Sasaki is having a show called Charismania II on Wednesday 6/18 (7pm JST / 6pm ET). The card looks very silly, with all of DAMNATION TA getting some level of spotlight. Hideki Okatani in a hardcore match with deathmatch wrestler Isami Kodaka could be really good. Daisuke Sasaki vs Dick Togo could be incredibly unwatchable.

That’s all for this week. I’m very excited for Dominion; nice to have the return of big show New Japan after chilling through BOSJ. I’m not sure how much G1 I’ll watch this year so this and whatever show Fujita vs Despy winds up on might be the most time I spend with NJPW for the next couple months. I’ve wrecked my sleep schedule to watch full G1s before; it’s something puro fans should do at least once, but I am now an old man with a job and a partner who doesn’t want me staying up until 6am four days a week and I have big responsibilities like “watching other puroresu shows for this newsletter.”