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: April 24, 2025

What a week, huh? I made it through WrestleMania weekend with the bold strategy of not watching WrestleMania, but that didn’t stop me from watching 15 hours of live wrestling in the course of a few days. I’ve got a quick recap on my thoughts of the indie and puroresu shows that ran in Vegas over the weekend, notes on the Champion Carnival happening back in Japan at the same time, and a preview of the big Stardom show this weekend. We’ve also got social media drama in NJPW, podcasters-turned-indie-promoters running big shows in Japan this week, and, oh yeah, Meiko Satomura is retiring on Tuesday.

Match Recommendations

I decided to step a little bit out of the usual puroresu lane for the match recommendations because (a) I was watching so many mixed-up Vegas cards that and felt silly to only recommend the stuff with a puroresu connection, (b) AEW Dynamite had the best episode of American TV wrestling in recent memory and I felt the need to put it here, and (c) there wasn’t really much to talk about airing from Japan this week.

All Elite Wrestling Dynamite Spring BreakThru (4/16, check your local listings, Cagematch)

Ring of Honor Prelude to Spring BreakThru (4/17, FREE Youtube, Cagematch)

Prestige Nothing To Lose (4/17, FREE Youtube, Cagematch)

GCW Josh Barnett’s Bloodsport XIII (4/17, TrillerTV+, Cagematch)

Marvelous (4/17, Highspots TV, Cagematch)

TJPW Live in Las Vegas (4/18, TrillerTV+, Cagematch)

GCW Joey Janela’s Spring Break 9 (4/18, TrillerTV+, Cagematch)

DGUSA/PWR The Gate Of Revolution (4/18, TrillerTV+, Cagematch)

GCW: Effy’s Big Gay Brunch 10 (4/19, TrillerTV+, Cagematch)

TJPW vs DDT vs GCW (4/19, TrillerTV+, Cagematch)

AJPW Champion Carnival Night 4 (4/19, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

AJPW Champion Carnival Night 5 (4/20, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

AJPW Champion Carinval Night 6 (4/23, AJPW TV, Cagematch)

Bonus free wrestling: Haven’t had a chance to watch yet, but Stardom’s preview show for All Star Grand Queendom is free on Youtube (Cagematch here).

Vegas thoughts

Some weeks, trying to write a newsletter that covers “the world of puroresu” seems almost impossible, with so many different promotions and so many storylines going on that it is impossible to keep up. This week, though, I feel very lucky that my top story is like the 20th-most-discussed thing happening in wrestling. Other than the good folks over Voices of Wrestling, there aren’t a ton of outlets covering the indie shows in Vegas in detail last weekend, nor are there really a lot of fan conversations happening about them.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing: sometimes, no discourse is good discourse. I was very pessimistic on the drawing power of indies in Vegas, and thought that’s what people would be talking about coming out of WrestleMania weekend. My hypothesis was that the core WWE fanbase is now so far removed from indie wrestling - the smarks (who were already a small subset) having all left for AEW - and these shows would do absolutely dreadful numbers. This isn’t a new phenomenon, but the WrestleMania weekends in 2023 and 2024 (LA and Philadelphia) had indie crowds bolstered by having lots of local wrestling fans in addition to fly-ins, which would not be as much the case in Vegas.

But, at least from anecdotal reports and just watching the shows that were big enough to get streaming, it seems like most of the shows beat expectations. Two things here: one is that the Pearl Theater that the GCW Collective ran, while only 1/3 to 1/2 to full for most of the shows, was also about twice the capacity of the venues GCW has used in the past, so they at least met historical expectations. The other is that a lot of shows did very good walk-up business, especially the indie package at the MEET Las Vegas venue downtown, which I was very concerned about going in. The only show that felt like it really undersold relative to how good it was ended up being the Dragon Gate x PWR show on Friday night, but that had a brutal time slot running opposite Joey Janela’s Spring Break (the only GCW Collective show that looked like it might have actually been a sell-out in the Pearl) and with a card that was pretty weak on paper and wound up overdelivering.

Of course, like last Mania weekend, there’s reports of shows that had zero attendees and just canceled instead of actually starting, and some shows that had more workers than crowd members, so it’s not all roses. But it’s also not the bath that I was nervously expecting.

The wrestling itself… was fine, I guess. There were some great highlights and some dreadful lowlights. A lot of the matches that I’d hoped would be great were just fine, though I was very happy that Bozillla vs Megan Bayne and ZSJ vs Kidd Bandit wildly exceeded my low expectations - those matches featured a bunch of people that I really wanted to do well but I didn’t think they’d really be in spots to do well. Bozilla’s US debut ended with her losing to Megan Bayne, but Bayne bumped her ass off for Bozilla. Bandit’s new focus on grappling and technical sequences since her return looked great with only a few sloppy moments, and while working that kind of match with ZSJ might be easy mode, I think she could go pretty far on the indies if she keeps focusing on that style.

The Marvelous show had a bunch of fun rookie and veteran interactions for a surprisingly hot crowd for a midnight show with not a lot of name talent. The highlight here is an excellent Aja Kong vs Senka Akatsuki rookie squash. This match was 5 minutes long and one of the best of the weekend, with a finishing sequence involving Senka forcing her shoulders up and refusing to be pinned getting the crowd astonishingly loud at 1 in the morning. This was apparently a spot that used to be common to All Japan Women’s matches in the 80s and 90s - especially rookie squashes, as rookies were essentially taught to fight off pins as if it was a shoot (as sometimes it was!). In an age of infinite recorded wrestling where so many modern wrestlers are pilfering spots from generations past, it’s rare to get to see a “lost art” like this in a wrestling match. I feel like, if any indie workers were watching this match, we’re going to see a bunch of them replicate this spot over the next few months.

The TJPW show was pretty good, with Suzume vs Jada Stone being my surprise match of the card. Miu Watanabe vs Masha Slamovich was a bit underwhelming, with a last-minute TNA Knockouts title match stipulation making it obvious Miu would lose, and it ran a bit short. That said, Masha worked eleven matches over the weekend, so can only blame her so much.

The DDT show was pretty bad, unfortunately, but you could tell that on paper so it wasn’t a letdown. MAO vs Takeshita in the main event was the only real underwhelming match here. MAO, like Masha, worked a hard weekend, but I also don’t rate him quite as highly in straightforward singles matches as I do in basically any other context. I kinda wish they had gone in on some plunder here. They redeemed themselves a bit in the DDT vs TJPW vs GCW show the next day, running opposite WrestleMania Night 1 to a surprisingly lively crowd, and with what ultimately ended up being a much better show that far fewer people saw. Yukio Naya, a man who has never shown any charisma in his life, actually appeared to be having fun for once teaming with Microman; that match is definitely worth a watch.

GCW Bloodsport was weirdly good, even though like half the card was WWE wrestlers. The highlight and/or lowlight of this was Shinya Aoki vs Charlie Dempsey, a great match with Dempsey going over in the end. That’s right: Shinya Aoki, Japanese MMA legend, lost a shoot-style match to a rookie who barely even been on NXT TV. He did lose with a suplex TKO and not, like, a submission, but itt was very funny and did not exactly beat the “WWE has co-opted Bloodsport allegations.” Miyu vs Natalya was surprisingly good, but also had a very funny finish with Miyu getting knocked out by a sharpshooter. I think the idea was that Miyu had been knocked out by running into a ring post and the sharpshooter just sealed her fate, but god knows why they went for a KO finish here.

The Wagner kids, including NOAH’s Galeno, looked great this weekend, as did the Z-Brats from Dragon Gate, just a well-oiled heat-generating trios machine. No surprises there. The Z-Brats vs Ben-K, Hyo, & Kzy match on the DG x PWR show is the standout puroresu match of the weekend. I dropped a “MUST SEE” on it in my recommendations because it’s just such a perfect DG trios match. There are lots of eye-rolling invocations of “the tradition of the WrestleMania weekend trios match” these days (one Gabe Sapolsky was proudly touting this tradition in the context of… like… some bad match on WWE ID show he booked), but this is absolutely a match that can stand against the best of them. Unfortunately, it had a much smaller live crowd than many of those, and not much of a streaming audience, so I really want to encourage people to check it out, especially if you’re not familiar with the Z-Brats - this match is a perfect introduction to them.

Mike D Vecchio, the Belgian heavyweight high-flyer who has been in the Champion Carnival in AJPW, flew to Vegas for a few bookings in the midst of the tournament, including a scramble cage match that ended with him taking a powerbomb off the cage through two stacked tables. I might be all-in on this guy.

The two worst matches of the weekend were back to back on the WrestleCon SuperShow, with a dreadful Maki Itoh vs Mickie James match that included a singing contest and Mickie doing some sort of shoot promo on Dave Meltzer, and Minoru Suzuki vs Butterbean having a match that can really only be described as “not a match.” I can’t recommend watching either of these, even for a laugh.

That’s about as granular as I want to get on these shows: they were fun, I mostly felt like my time was used well, it was a pretty successful weekend all around. If you want more detailed breakdowns of matches, Voices of Wrestling have a number of written reviews. If you have TrillerTV+ I do recommend checking out the matches I posted above; I tried to stick with ones that I think really hold up outside the context of vegging out in front of your screen for an entire weekend of wrestling. I expect the DDT and TJPW matches will eventually make their way to Wrestle Universe as well.

That WWE thing

I guess I should talk about this: WWE announced they bought Mexican lucha libre promotion AAA, causing what can only be described as “widespread concern.” If you’ve somehow missed this story, far smarter people than me have examined it from a hundred different angles; as usual thecubsfan over at luchablog has written the most interesting material about it so far and I encourage you to read the several posts he’s made covering it.

The puro aspect here is twofold. One, the one that frankly no one really cares about, is that AAA has a partnership with GLEAT for talent, and… hypothetically… one could wonder what this means for that partnership. In practice, this is about the 500th most interesting aspect of this story, and no one really cares. LIDET (GLEAT’s owner) did publish a tweet that can basically be summed up as “hmmmm (thinking emoji).” It’s probable they’re in the dark on this and will find out what has happened to their partnership when AAA stops asking GLEAT to send over the Tokyo Bad Boys. I do not think we will see SB Kento working in NXT anytime soon.

More importantly: this announcement did lead to a lot of concern about WWE buying into the Japanese market by acquiring a promotion.

As cubsfan points out, WWE bought into AAA not for its talent - AAA probably has like 10-15 full time wrestlers, and WWE doesn’t care about most of them - nor for its TV deals, which are absolutely worthless compared to WWE’s Netflix deal. What they wanted was a brand they could co-opt for authenticity, deals with some local promoters around big venues (though, frankly, it’s hard to imagine any venue turning down WWE in favor of AAA had WWE gone an independent route), and to remove one of their potential competitors from the board.

That last part is the thing that sticks with me. Mexico, of course, only had two major promotions (CMLL and AAA). Both were more or less independent companies. Japan is more complicated:

If WWE wants to get into Japan in a way that removes a major competitor in the process, they’d be looking at New Japan or NOAH. Both seem fairly unlikely for various reasons, but nothing about this AAA purchase seemed “likely,” I suppose.

Given they’re both owned by major media companies, it mostly comes down to “how much do these companies think their wrestling subsidiaries are worth, and will WWE be willing to come up with a comically large check to buy them out?” It’s hard to imagine the amount WWE spent on AAA -an independent private company - being anywhere near what they’d have to spend to buy out subsidiaries of two large public companies.

The other question is, of course, whether New Japan and NOAH are actually worth a lot in revenues.

The thought for a long time is that Cyberfight has been an operation that sets money on fire for the good of wrestling fans everywhere. That said, NOAH has had a very, very strong year so far, and if they can keep building on what they have now they could be make Cyberagent more money than they ever have before. Yes, NOAH does have a WWE relationship, but the leap from “NOAH and WWE send a few guys back and forth” to “WWE has bought NOAH” is immense.

On the other hand, New Japan is in a tricky spot, having lost their entire upper card over the last few years - Omega, Okada, Naito, Ibushi, and soon Tanahashi. There are a lot of sour outlooks on New Japan’s drawing power once Tanahashi’s retirement tour ends. New Japan clearly know this and are finding ways to conserve their budget where they can (spending less on foreign talent, for example), but it is possible WWE could look at this as an opportunity to take an asset that’s a bit down on its luck off Bushiroad’s hands.

Finally, there is some weirdness around American businesses entering into Japan. This is the kind of thing where, frankly, I see Discord posts and Twitter discussions with people just stating matter-of-factly “everyone knows it’s hard for foreign companies to start a Japanese subsidiary,” and… is it? Is it really? For a company at the scale of WWE (TKO)?

But let’s say it is: that could be a reason to buy an even smaller company and use that as the starting point. An All Japan, a GLEAT, a… really those are the only two I can think of. Yeah, it sounds stupid, but WWE buying AAA sounded stupid. They’d get a few Korakuen slots and maybe some other venue deals (clearly, WWE will be thrilled to have the coveted Umeda Sky Room that for god knows what reason only GLEAT runs). Both would give them some good local trainers and scouts to work with. It’s somehow not entirely out of the question that Hideki Suzuki could find himself with an NXT job for a second time. The mind reels.

Stardom: All Star Grand Queendom preview

This weekend has Stardom’s biggest show in a long time, All Star Grand Queendom at Yokohama Arena. This is a huge, huge show on paper, it will draw a big crowd (though I’m not sure if it will beat Stardom’s previous attendance record at the same venue in 2023, which somehow had an even more stacked card), it is something you should not miss if you watch joshi wrestling.

The main event is Saya Kamitani defending the World of Stardom Championship against Tam Nakano in a Loser Must Retire Match. I wrote about this angle back when Stardom set it up at the end of February, but the short version: Saya challenged Tam to a career vs career match at Korakuen in a huge main event that was made free on Youtube, and then won. Post-match, she decided she didn’t want Tam to simply leave Stardom, she wanted her to retire forever, thus this match. There was a little bit of controversy at the time about that being a bait-and-switch angle, but I don’t think anyone actually expected Tam to randomly retire on a Korakuen show with a match announced a week earlier, and I think the storyline makes sense due to how unhinged these two are.

Now, I’ll be honest: I haven’t kept up with Stardom over the past month besides videos of Saya Kamitani finding new ways to assault Tam Nakano in public. Which is a very funny and charming way to build this match, though it reads a bit sillier to me than the gravitas this match seems to deserve. Because this almost certainly is Tam Nakano’s real retirement. She’s 37 - not old (the same age as Mina Shirakawa, who’s have a late career renaissance in AEW) - but she has been wrestling for a decade, and if she doesn’t have designs on wrestling outside of Stardom, it’s understandable that she’d want to hang up the boots before she racks up more bumps and injuries, putting Saya over in the process.

I do not think Saya is losing and retiring. It would be the single biggest surprise in wrestling this year (like, genuinely more surprising than WWE buying AAA). She is young, she has been going on talk shows crying about how much she loves pro wrestling and cutting face promos to sell tickets while being a ruthless and believable heel in the ring; she is in an absolutely perfect place as a wrestler right now. I can’t imagine she’s going anywhere.

This is still going to be a dramatic match, even with a seemingly predestined outcome. Saya’s heel unit, HATE, will be barred from ringside, so we shouldn’t get too much in the way of shenanigans. I can’t wait for this.

Moving down our stacked card: Starlight Kid will defend the Wonder of Stardom championship against AZM. This is a longstanding rivalry (the kind where, if you google “SLK vs AZM,” you’ll get like 20 Youtube videos about it going back several years). They are both currently in Neo Genesis together, and this will be their first singles match since 2023. This is AZM’s first shot at the title, and there’s some faction drama as well here: AZM wants to lead Neo Genesis, especially in the wake of Suzu Suzuki’s defection a few weeks ago (more on that in a moment).

Mayu Iwatani defends the IWGP Women’s Championship against Syuri. Mayu has now held this title since April 2023 when she beat Mercedes Mone for it, and this will even be her second defense against Syuri. This feels like the time for this belt to change hands. That said, Sareee will be ringside and wants to get revenge on Mayu, so if Mayu retains here we at least should have a really good followup match.

Hanan and Saya Iida are defending the Goddesses of Stardom belts against Hazuki and Koguma, putting both of STARS’s tag teams against each other. Hazuki & Koguma have held these belts three separate times, and I’m not sure they’ll regain them for a fourth time here. I really like what I’ve seen of Iida and Hanan and they’ve only gotten two defenses so far; I’m hoping we get a successful V3 here.

Chihiro Hashimoto will defend the Sendai Girls championship against Maika. I don’t have any notes on this other than that it should own; I’m glad Meiko dropped to Chihiro last month before her retirement show so we could get this big match on a big show.

Our last championship match is Hina defending the Future of Stardom championship against Ranna Yagami, another inter-faction fight with both being members of God’s Eye. This will be Hina’s second defense, and seems like a bit of an afterthought compared to the rest of the card, but should be a fun early-show match.

But that’s not all - in addition to those six title matches we also have rookie Rina taking on veteran Yumiko Hotta (and presumably getting destroyed), a big moment for Meiko Satomura and Sendai Girls with Cosmic Angels (Saori Anou, Natsupoi, & Aya Sakura) taking on Meiko, Mika Iwata, & Yuna, and Mei Seira vs Suzu Suzuki. That last one has a lot of heat: Suzu Suzuki has defected from Neo Genesis and started her own faction, and will be looking for a big win to solidify it. She’s facing her former tag team partner Mei Seira, who she turned on when leaving - first teasing joining HATE, but then turning on HATE as well, and thus ending up with her own new faction. This feels like a card with a lot of finality to it, so it’s nice to get a match like this that feels like it “sets up” more than it concludes.

AJPW: the Champion Carnival rolls on

We’re now through three more nights of the Champion Carnival in AJPW, bringing us to about the halfway point. Nights 4 and 5 were fairly low-energy, without too much to write about. Night 6, on the other hand, was a very entertaining Korakuen with a few weird matches.

We have gotten a few surprising upsets, especially from our friends in ELPIDA. On night 4, Ren Ayabe got a surprise win over Rei Saito, who seems like he might be set for a 0 points story in this tournament (he thinks the problem is that he stopped drinking, which, okay, sure). Ryuki Honda then picked up a big upset over Yuma Anzai on the same night, before getting another big win over Yuma Aoyagi the next night. And then, surprisingly, Ren Ayabe beat Ryuki Honda on night 6. I have to wonder whether we’re getting an ELPIDA EXPLODES storyline coming up. Does seem rude of All Japan to have booked them all in the same block.

The standings still have B Block as pretty much anyone’s game, with Mike D Vecchio and Ryuki Honda at the top with 6 points and Yuma Anzai, Aigle Blanc, Madoka Kikuta, Yuma Aoyagi, and Ren Ayabe all tied at 4. Some of these wrestlers have easier paths to victory than others: Vecchio still has to face all three ELPIDA members, for example, and while I’d love to see him take the block I’m not sure we’ll get that here.

Over in A Block things are still up in the air, with a couple huge developments on night 6: Davey Boy Smith Jr is now undefeated with 8 points after a victory over Kento Miyahara in a rematch of the 2024 Champion Carnival, while Hideki Suzuki is now at 6 points with a shocking upset over Triple Crown Champion Jun Saito. These weren’t great matches - the fans were so unexcited about them they voted for the night’s 10-man tag to main event instead, something Suzuki mocked in his postmatch promo. They feel like big moments for the tournament, though. Kengo Mashimo also sits at 6 points, while Jun, Kento, Kuma Arashi, and Xyon all sit at 4 (sadly, Shotaro Ashino is down at 0 with Takashi Yoshida).

DBS Jr still has to go through Jun, Suzuki, Ashino, and Mashimo, so there’s plenty of chances for his run to be spoiled. I am now expecting either him or Hideki Suzuki to win the block, especially with Suzuki’s big win over Jun. I think Suzuki’s had a very good tournament and I’d like to see him in the finals, but I’d also definitely like to see him lose the finals.

A couple extra scattered notes: Mike D Vecchio’s return match from Vegas, against Yuma Aoyagi on night 6, was good but had a botched finish where Vecchio didn’t kick out and the ref pulled the count anyways, leading Yuma to quickly hit another move and do a short postmatch promo to cover. Hard to say what went wrong here: Yuma hit a pretty nasty move on Mike so it’s possible Mike got stung and was too out of it to kick out, but he seemed to be moving okay after the match. More likely he just forgot what the finish was supposed to be. I kinda blame the ref for pulling the count because, at the end of the day, the move Yuma hit looked nasty and would have been a totally credible finish, but eh. Didn’t seem to upset the crowd or anything.

The main event tag of night 6 had like 8/10 members crossdressing, with Omori’s team dressed as maids and Atsuki Aoyagi, Rising HAYATO, and Taishin Nagao having nurse, schoollgirl, and maid costumes respectively. Shame on Rei Saito and Dan Tamura for not going for it. This match was super fun even without the gimmick, and doesn’t really come across as particularly problematic. Notably, Atsuki Aoyagi pinned current Junior Heavyweight champion MUSASHI then cut a promo asking for a Jr Heavyweight league. That might be a problem given AJPW has about five junior heavyweights, but I’d enjoy seeing them run something and bring a more outsiders in.

This week we have four Champion Carnival shows on 4/26, 4/27, 4/28, and 4/29. You can preview these cards in full on All Japan’s site, but the highlights:

Now, that said, the points situations do get more interesting the further into those shows we get, so there might be some extra drama that isn’t obvious in some of the later matches. One annoying thing about watching the CC is that there’s no on-screen graphic for the current standings (at least, not on the fixed-cam no-commentary shows; there might be one on the Korakuen?). There is an up to date Wikipedia page for the CC, but if you’re watching on a delay, this of course spoils anything you haven’t seen yet. I might actually wind up keeping my own standings in a spreadsheet while watching these shows, just so I know what the heck is going on going into the matches.

NJPW: things seem less than ideal

It is fair to say, going into Wrestling Dontaku in a couple weeks, the vibes are off in NJPW. Sometimes, this is just a western fan bubble problem: yeah, they lost Naito and Cobb and that’s a shame, but the local fans probably will be happily watching shows and buying tickets and it’s just us in English-language Discords having discourse about New Japan’s problems while everything is in fact perfectly fine.

And then, sometimes, you have a week where Shota Umino makes a tweet referencing an animal abuse scandal Shingo Takagi was involved in years ago, a week where TJP and his wife scream at Jeff Cobb on Twitter and accuse him of buying steroids in the New Japan locker room, and a week where every wrestler in New Japan is doing interviews for Tokyo Sports that, run through Google Translate, sound like they’re each having an existential crisis over Naito leaving. Sometimes, the vibes actually are off.

I’ll start with the Shota thing, since it’s by far the weirdest thing. Shingo Takagi rather infamously was involved in an abuse scandal at the Dragon Gate dojo where the dojo had a “pet” monkey that they did horrible things to. This involved a bunch of people in the dojo, notably CIMA and Akira Tozawa; CIMA shaved his head and lost three months pay but that was more or less the end of it. It’s not necessarily a scandal that is hidden as much as it is something that is just not talked about. Anyways, Shota referenced Shingo’s past and dropped a monkey emoji in a tweet. Seems like a bad idea to me, unless Shota’s goal is to get Shingo to drop him on his head for real in their Wrestling Dontaku match coming up.

Much more explicit but less surprising: TJP and his wife randomly started shooting on Jeff Cobb on Twitter after Cobb tagged everyone but TJP in a “United Empire is in good hands” tweet. Cobb’s defense was that TJP isn’t full time (and, indeed, it seems likely that TJP is wrapping up with New Japan soon, his only booking being on the Resurgence show in California). They said some pretty heinous stuff but the most spicy thing is referencing Cobb getting steroids in the New Japan locker room. That tweet seems like a great way for TJP to ensure he is never invited back to New Japan, or to, uh, any professional wrestling organization that gives the slightest damn about professionalism. Maybe he’ll have a big run in MLW with Matt Riddle and the other guys who are too toxic for anyone else to touch.

Tokyo Sports sits at an intersting position in wrestling where they keep kayfabe, but aren’t as directly in the pocket of the promotions as you might expect. That leads reporting on some interesting interviews like this one where Hiromu is mad at how NJPW handled the departure announcements and wish they had done more to keep Naito. He might be working a bit there - lord knows Google Translate removes a lot of the nuances that make it more obvious whether someone is working or shooting that we tend to rely on in the English-language press - but it’s still surprisingly forthcoming about the situation. In particular, he mentions knowing that the Naito vs Hiromu match at Wrestle Kingdom was supposed to be the passing of the torch and Naito was on the way out (which, in retrospect, makes their tag team championship run afterward way weirder).

We also get fun promos from guys like Taichi and Great O Khan saying they want to step up and save the company, which is hilarious to imagine. I love Taichi, but if NJPW does what he asks and runs Goto vs Taichi on Dominion or whatever, we are really in trouble.

Other news

The folks at Deadlock Pro Wrestling flew straight from Vegas to Japan this weekend to run a double header of shows - one at Shinjuku FACE and one at Shinkiba 1st Ring. This is their first time back since a couple collaboration shows with Gatoh Move in 2023. The shows will be on 4/24 and 4/25 but won’t air live; they’ll probably go up a week or so later on the DPW On Demand service. Sadly it looks like the DPW content deal with Wrestle Universe has expired, but this could be a good month to just go in on a month of DPW On Demand - they already uploaded their Vegas show from last weekend, so if these Japan shows have similarly quick turnarounds, that’s a lot of fresh content for one month of that service.

These are some super fun cards. DPW is bringing over DPW Women’s Champion Dani Luna, DPW National Champion LaBron Kozone, former DPW National Champion Adam Priest (a fun heel who just had a great match with Minoru Suzuki in Vegas), former DPW Tag Team Champions Violence is Forever, and former DPW Worlds Champion Calvin Tankman. That’s a small list of people, but a very solid list of people that is enough to make this feel like an authentic DPW show. DPW love the Astronauts, so night 1 features The Astronauts vs Violence is Forever, while night 2 features LaBron Kozone defending the National Championship against Takuya Nomura and Fuminori Abe going up against Adam Priest. Various folks from DDT and Gatoh Move round the cards out, plus Dani Luni defending her Women’s Championship against TJPW’s Rika Tatsumi on night 1.

Speaking of TJPW, they have a 5/3 show coming up that includes Himawari challenging Suzume for the International Princess Championship and Yuki Kamifuku defending the Vietnam Pro Wrestling championship against Viva Van. Not a huge show, but one of TJPW’s biggest between now and Summer Sun Princess in a few months.

We were just talking earlier about NOAH and WWE’s relationship, and on Tuesday on NXT we found out Yoshiki Inamura is returning to Japan. He’ll have one last match with tag team partner Josh Briggs next week where they challenge for the tag belts; I assume Briggs will kill him on the way out and that’ll be the end of Inamura in WWE (unless, y’know, he gets back to Japan and finds WWE plastered on the NOAH office door). I hope they find something cool to do with him in NOAH, does feel like we’re ready for another roster (re)addition.

Meiko Satomura’s final matches on her retirement tour are this week: a tag with DASH Chisako against Ryo Mizunami & Hiroyo Matsumoto on the 4/26 Sendai PIT show, a 6-woman tag on Stardom’s 4/27 show, and the main event of her retirement show at Korakuen Hall on 4/29. That’s finally been revealed to be Meiko teaming with Manami versus Chihiro Hashimoto & Aja Kong. A little underwhelming, though potentially a cool moment for Manami - while she’s not a rookie, having wrestled seven years, she is still only 20 years old (that’s joshi!). I would hope Meiko would take the pin in this match, and it’d be neat if Hashimoto getting another pin on her lead to Manami getting a title shot against Hashimoto as revenge.

What to watch (4/24 - 5/2)

This week is all about Stardom, with All Star Grand Queendom airing on 4/27. This will be a PPV, it’s $33, it will also probably be worth it. This is absolutely the show of this week and is can’t-miss stuff. You can buy it on Stagecrowd here - I will warn you that Stagecrowd seems to almost always get flagged as a fraudulent transaction when you try to buy a PPV internationally, so if you want to go this route, I’d go ahead and buy the “ticket” now so you have time to, like, call your bank and say that no, you did in fact intentionally buy a Japanese wrestling PPV if they block the transaction.

Meiko Satomura’s retirement show - which is also can’t-miss stuff - will air on Wrestle Universe on 4/29. Before that, she’ll have one last Sendai Girls show at Sendai PIT on 4/26, also on WU.

AJPW have four straight Champion Carnival shows from 4/26 to 4/29, as previewed in brief above.

New Japan’s special shows in the middle of the Road To Dontaku Show are Wrestling Redzone in Hiroshima on 4/26, with the vacant heavyweight tag belts up for grabs, and Wrestling Hizen no Kuni on 4/29, with the TV title, junior tag, and junior championships all on the line.

Marigold, TJPW, NOAH, and DDT all have various shows going up on WU this week as well. One of those shows for Marigold (4/25) is a Korakuen; it might be worth checking out even though I cannot find a card for it for the life of me. I think it’s continuing a Marigold vs Marvelous feud?

That’s all from me. One big programming note, which you may have guessed from the dates in the “what to watch” section: expect a Thursday or Friday newsletter next week. I will have a lot to watch midweek due to the 4/29 holiday shows (Meiko, Champion Carnival, & NJPW), so rather than publish an issue that doesn’t cover those shows, I’m just gonna push the issue back a couple days.