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 4, 2025

This issue is a little late, so pretend like I sent it yesterday (particularly, I don’t have any updates from NJPW 7/4, which I’m gonna watch after sending this). I’ll probably be back Tuesday-ish with more NJPW updates and notes on TJPW and Dragon Gate.

Match Recommendations

NOAH Monday Magic Prime Time Season Episode 4 (6/23, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

NJPW Tanahashi Jam (6/29, Cagematch)

AEW Dynamite (7/2, Cagematch)

NOAH Wrestle Magic 2025 (6/30, Wrestle Universe, Cagematch)

NJPW: Tanahashi Jam notes, 7/4 and 7/6 shows

I finally caught the Tanahashi Jam show, which you’ll have to track down on your local tube site (as there’s still no NJPW World archive announced). There’s honestly not a ton on it worth going back and watching - Nagata vs Oleg was fine, and the main was a perfectly servicable interpromotional tag.

That said, the Goto vs ZSJ match was, in fact, really damn good. I don’t have it quite as high as I did the February match, but Goto’s selling here was great, and the match gets really electric once he starts selling his elbow and the crowd realizes he is in actual peril and not just having a foregone house-show defense.

Speaking of that elbow, Goto was announced as off the 7/4 show due to injuring it, but that’s pretty clearly a work. I do think it’ll be a bit weird if he’s just totally silent between now and the G1 (he also didn’t do a post-show promo), so wonder if we get a big G1 press conference promo from him.

I’m looking forward to the big matches on this pair of shows: 7/4 has the G1 play-ins and Tana vs Gabe, while 7/6 finally has Desperado vs Fujita for the junior championship. I really hope Oiwa, Yoshi-Hashi, Gabe, and Fujita win those respective matches. Oiwa and Gabe feel like locks for theirs, Yoshi-Hashi vs Chase Owens seems likely to go Chase’s way given his unfortunate push right now in his move to House of Torture, and Despy vs Fujita feels very 50/50 (in a better-booked company you’d be able to say it’s definitely Fujita, but unfortunately…).

NOAH: Monday Magic wraps up with Wrestle Magic

NOAH wrapped up Monday Magic Prime Time Season with a decent pair of shows in episode 4 & the Wrestle Magic show.

The biggest news coming out of those two shows is really just Galeno is back; I love that dude. He was of course going to come back as he’s the current GHC National Champion, but he’s been away for about a month and a half (not wrestling outside of a quick appearance in AAA). Kind of excited to see who challenges him next; he retained against Alpha Wolf in a solid surprise match on Episode 4 that I kind of wish had been on the bigger Wrestle Magic show.

Episode 4 ended with a fun main event featuring all the international talent who had appeared on Monday Magic, just a really cute way to end the season. I like having some good vibes wrestling, and those good vibes extended into Wrestle Magic.

The only two announced matches going into it were Shuji Ishikawa defending the GHC Hardcore championship against HAYATA and Takumi Iroha defending the GHC Women’s Championship against Victoria Yuzuki, and both were pretty decent matches. Shuji vs HAYATA had one of the funniest botches I’ve seen in a while with HAYATA reaching his leg out too far while being set up for a superplex off the top rope through a table and knocking the table on its side; thankfully they managed to mostly miss the table coming down and didn’t have a repeat of that gnarly GCW botch from a few months ago where Ciclope went ribs-first into the side of a door. Otherwise, surprisingly fun little match. HAYATA won which annoyed me, but like, I can’t say I care that much about who holds this championship.

Iroha vs Yuzuki was a little underwhelming - I think they wanted to give Yuzuki a lot of shine here, which I get, but they really should have tightened up the match and had it feel more like Stardom’s rookie vs veteran showcases where the match doesn’t go too long but the rookie gets some extended hope spots. Instead this was a little too back and forth and went a little too long. Iroha retained and will defend against Utami Hayashashita on a future show, presumably in Marigold.

The surprise matches on this show were great. Archie Cole continued to look excellent in his last match on this tour - he’s back in the UK and preparing to debut in RevPro soon. I hope he gets a Cagematch page soon; he’s certainly earned it. The lucha trios was a delight, and it was kind of nice to see it just feature six NOAH guys who are extremely over (of course, three or four of them are freelancers, but feel like they’re pretty integrated into NOAH’s main roster).

Finally, the big surprise main - which was only announced as featuring Dragon Gate, DDT, NOAH, and New Japan wrestlers - featured two of the most fucked up teams I’ve ever seen. First out were DDT’s veteran Akito, NOAH’s comedy(?) guy Daiki Inaba, Dragon Gate’s rude heel KAI, and… YOSHI-HASHI. Thankfully they came out obviously as a team; I think the crowd might have revolted if they thought this was going to be a 4-way between these guys.

Thankfully, there was another team: recently-returned Dragon Gate face Yuki Yoshioka, DDT’s ace Yuki Ueno, Ryohei Oiwa (who, while an NJPW wrestler, had an extended excursion in NOAH where he basically was the second-most over guy in the company), and, of course, Kaito Kitomiya. This was a delightful match with a bunch of fun face-offs - I popped for an extended Yuki Ueno vs YOSHI-HASHI faceoff - that elevated it beyond just a multi-man filler match. The crowd was extremely into it, too. Daiki Inaba ended up taking the pin from Kaito (a lot easier to book than having any of the guests get pinned or get the pin).

Speaking of the crowd: this show didn’t do super well, it was at a relatively small venue and did I think around 800-900. It did have a massive lighting production so it looked fantastic. This is all a step down from Wrestle Magic at Ryogoku last year, and I believe didn’t sell out, but I think with a mostly-unannounced mystery card this isn’t too bad.

Monday Magic will return in October for three episodes at Shinkiba 1st Ring, dubbed “Monday Magic Xtreme Series.” That’s also a step down in venue size from Shinjuku FACE (going from 600ish to 250ish capacity). Hopefully the vibes stay as good as they were in Shinjuku FACE.

Stardom: Syuri is on excursion

My one non-NJPW/DDT piece of news in the last issue was that Syuri announced she’ll be out from Stardom for a bit to heal up from injuries. It turns out, actually, she’s going on excursion. This may have originally been me misinterpreting Google Translate or something, so I appreciate the Stardom Twitter account for posting this message in English.

I don’t think this would be that weird in isolation. She’s been wrestling for 17 years and she’s worked a number of matches in the US over the past few years; her taking an extended break to work somewhere isn’t that surprising.

In the context of Stardom’s recent losses - Tam retiring, Mina going to AEW, Mayu Iwatani going to Marigold, Maika taking a year off for elbow surgery - it seems to encourage further speculation. Syuri is 36, a year younger than Tam and Mina.

Like Mina and Tam, Syuri started out in other joshi promotions before making her way to Stardom. Unlike those two, part of Syuri’s journey involved a 13-1 record in kickboxing and a 9-6 record in MMA. She joined Stardom in 2020 after wrapping up her MMA career, around the same time that Mina (who had trained and come up in TJPW) joined.

Syuri did accomplish a lot in Stardom - she held the World of Stardom Championship for 365 days. She also held both the trios and tag belts twice, and of course, just held the IWGP Women’s Championship long enough for a single defense in the UK before dropping to Sareee.

Stardom has a lot of wrestlers in their undercard and on their New Blood rookie shows. They might have to be in the business of pushing people out of the top of the card, as nasty as it seems. And the thing to hope is that everyone involved in this is fine with it - that Syuri is happy to go work overseas in front of new crowds and that the fans are happy to see more opportunities for younger wrestlers. This has worked out for Stardom so far, most obviously with Tam (the shows since she left have not been down in the slightest), but I do think there’s a lot of valid concern around whether Stardom is going to lose some medium to long term drawing power.

Storyline wise: now, both Maika’s unit Empress Nexus Venus and Syuri’s unit God’s Eye have absentee leaders. That feels like something that needs to get resolved? Maika’s at least continued to hang around the shows to do commentary so you can at least buy that she’s directing Empress Nexus Venus backstage or something, but God’s Eye felt entirely built around everyone following their MMA ass-kicker leader’s direction in the ring.

All these absences are particularly interesting given Stardom’s 5 Star Grand Prix is coming up shortly. The names for this will be announced on Saturday, and I’m really curious to see what rookies and undercard names get to make their 5 Star debut.

Other news

GLEAT had a show for their 4th anniversary. MxM Collection appeared, as did Alberto Del Rio, and Katsuhiko Nakajima won the G-REX Championship (their primary belt), becoming a double champion as he already held the UWF rules belt. All of this might sound like a Korakuen-level show, but uh, it was at a tiny convention center venue and had an announced 340 attendance. Seems not ideal. This was streamed on Youtube for free and may stil be available if you’re curious to see it.

I’m a big fan of the Emerald Flowshow for AJPW/NOAH coverage, and the most recent episode (#87) had a really interesting first half hour about the current state of Big Japan Pro Wrestling. That state is, unsurprisingly, not great - would you believe that Mad Man Pondo had to vacate the tag belt?? - but they go quite deep on how the promotion got here in a way I hadn’t heard in English-language media before. Definitely worth a listen.

Yuu “signed” to Sendai Girls, which is kind of funny because she’s retiring at the end of the year. Not sure if this is something to set her up for an office job later or what.

DDT’s Shunma Katsumata sustained another ACL injury. I’m very concerned about this one; Shunma is 32 and has already racked up a lot of knee injuries, having only just returned from four months off from a previous one. It seems likely he didn’t spend enough time rehabbing his knee before a return. Can’t help but look at El Phantasmo, who’s about to work a G1 on a partially born MCL, and think maybe he should bow out of this tournament if he still can.

Watch Guide (7/3 - 7/9)

This weekend has a lot of companies in a lull before their next big shows, which is kind of relaxing.

NJPW has their last two shows before the G1 starts. The first show on Friday 7/4 (which has now aired) features two G1 play-in matches, with Yoshi-Hashi facing Chase Owens and Ryohei Oiwa vs Satoshi Kojima. It’ll also have House of Torture defending the 6-man belts against YOH, Wato, & Yano, and Gabe Kidd defending the IWGP Global Heavyweight Title against Hiroshi Tanahashi in what could very well be Tanahashi’s last ever title challenge.

The second show on Sunday 7/6 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card) features the long-awaited IWGP Junior Heavyweight Championship match with El Desperado defending against BOSJ winner Kosei Fujita. This is can’t miss stuff considering the year Despy has been having and the incredible BOSJ finals that Fujita had. It also has Tanahashi facing off against Tiger Mask on Tana’s retirement tour and DOUKI & SHO defending their just-won junior tag titles in a rematch against Wato & YOH.

Dragon Gate had a Korakuen on Wednesday 7/3, which has already aired by the time you read this. This is their last major show before the big Kobe World show next weekend.

TJPW has two shows leading up to their weekend in Texas. The first show on Saturday 7/5 (12pm JST / Friday 11pm ET, full card) features more Tokyo Princess Cup qualifying matches, with Wakana vs Shino Suzuki and Haru Kazashiro vs Ivy Steele. Then we have Yoppy’s graduation show on Tuesday 7/8 (7pm JST / 6am ET, full card).

NOAH have a live show on Saturday 7/5 (6:30 pm JST / 5:30 am ET, full card) with Dragon Bane & Alpha Wolf defending the GHC Junior Tag Team Championships against Team 2000X’s Owadasan & Tadasuke, plus a taped show going up on 7/9.

Stardom have a Korakuen on Sunday 7/6 (11:30 am JST / Saturday 10:30 pm ET, full card). Pretty sleepy show with two belts on the line: Hina defending the Future of Stardom belt against Mi Vida Loca’s newcomer Akira Kurogane (who somehow doesn’t have a Cagematch page yet?), and Neo Genesis (SLK, AZM, & Miyu Amasaki) defending the Artist of Stardom championships against HATE (Konami, Rina, & Fukigen Death).

There’s also small shows by DDT and Pro Wrestling Evolution (the second round of their women’s tournament, I think) this weekend.

A nice little week in pro wrestling, and a good palate cleanser from my MLW experience last week. I did end up buying tickets for DPW in Jersey City in August, excited to have some better indie wrestling to go to. I’d love to see more wrestling between now and then, but my primary options appear to be GCW at Coney Island or TNA Slammiversary, both of which are shaping up to have two of the worst cards I’ve ever seen (and in TNA’s case they want $70 for it). Bah.

While watching Monday Magic and Wrestle Magic, I kept thinking, “I would kill to have ’low stakes’ wrestling at this quality near me.” Not even the production values, just the good vibes and fun roster and weird guests. I guess that is part of the curse of watching a lot of puroresu: you do start wishing you had access to the kind of wrestling people in Tokyo do on a weekly basis.